637. RT Rewind October 1988 Ads & Features

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hello there and welcome to episode number 637 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell, Amanda is with me, and it’s time for the ads and features from the Romantic Times Magazine issue dated October 1988. Woohoo! We’ve got vintage gossip; we’ve got blind items; we’ve got Danielle Steele’s two blue Mercedes; we’ve got fuchsia covers, riverboat gambler heroes. It’s 1988, and there is so much fuchsia.

Also, blanket CONTENT WARNING for, well, romances that were written in the ‘80s. Be ready for very offensive tropes; they’re just everywhere.

I want to thank Amy M. for sending me this issue. This is the oldest issue in my tiny collection, and it is truly a time capsule. I hope you enjoy traveling through time with us.

I also have a compliment this week!

To Sarah E: Whenever people you love see your name on a call or a text alert, it sets off a very complex chemical reaction that leads to feelings of excitement and joy because you are delightful.

If you would like a compliment of your very own or you would like to support this here show, have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches. Monthly pledges keep me going, make sure every episode is transcribed by garlicknitter – hey, garlicknitter! – [Greetings! – gk] – and make sure that every episode is accessible to everyone, which is important to me and many of the people in the community. If you join the Patreon community, you get a fantastic Discord, you get bonus episodes, and you get the full PDF scan, which, believe me, 1988 is a really good – [laughs] – good reason to subscribe. Woohoo! Have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches to find out more.

Support for this episode comes from Playmaker, a Hidden Attractions novel by author Deanna Faison. If you’re a fan of Tessa Bailey and Elle Kennedy novels, then Playmaker, a spicy football romance, is for you. Cameron is a hot NFL prospect, and a total player on and off the field. But his moves do not seem to work on Maddie. While she once crushed on him hard, that crush has since faded, and she’s got big plans of her own that do not include him. Then Spring Break turns their plans, and their feelings, upside down. Maddie and Cameron start a steamy affair, sneaking around behind their families’ backs. But there’s one big problem: Maddie’s WAY overprotective brother – who happens to be Cam’s best friend. Will Cam be able to admit he’s got real feelings? Will Maddie be able to stand up to her brother and make her own decisions? Cam may be the pro, but Maddie is the one calling the shots. Readers are saying that Playmaker is perfect for folks who love lots of yearning in their romances, especially because there are chapters from both Cam and Maddie’s perspectives. And if you like friends with benefits and forbidden romance with a hefty amount of spice, this is perfect for you. Originally published on Wattpad as My Brother’s Best Friend, Playmaker by Deanna Faison is available now wherever books are sold. Thank you to Wattpad books for sponsoring this episode, and thank you for supporting our advertisers. You can find out more in the show notes or head over to smartbitchestrashybooks.com under episode 637 to find out more.

Are you ready? Let’s go back to 1988. On with the podcast.

[music]

Sarah: All right, let’s talk about the ads and features of the October 1988 issue, starting with this cover. Now, we are back in the era –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: – where most of the magazine is newsprint. I wish I could show you all of the fingerprints that are all over the scanner of me turning the pages to flatbed scan this, ‘cause like I’ve said before, I don’t want to cut these and feed them through a scanner with a page feeder. But this is news-, newsprint, and it comes off on your fingers. The cover, that cover and inside the front and back are color, and then there is a legit centerfold with a heavier four-color insert. Wide, widely wasted space in this month’s centerfold. I was like, that, you spent money on this? Like, it’s all white! What the hell?

Amanda: A lot of white space, yeah.

Sarah: A lot of white space! Like, what were you doing? You could have, like – remember all the ones last month where it was like a whole bookshelf of books? They had, like, twelve –

Amanda: Yeah!

Sarah: Imagine that! You’re going to spend all that money and this is in print: put more covers on it! But whatever! What do I know? Fewer books being published back then.

We’re going to talk about the ads and features of October 1988, and this cover is something.

Amanda: Yeah! I also noticed that it says October/November?

Sarah: Yes, it’s –

Amanda: Were they only coming out with like a newsletter or the magazine every two months?

Sarah: I don’t know. This is the only one I have from 1988? But I bet later on there’s going to be like a subscription, like, offer, like, subscribe, ‘cause there’s two magazines offered from this magazine. There’s Romantic Times, and then there’s another one. When we get to that point I’ll have to look and see what they’re saying; is it six, twelve, whatever issues? But yes, this is October and November.

On the cover is a cruise, because we can’t get away from cruises. The Love Boat –

Amanda: Yep.

Sarah: – photo album with author Sylvie Summerfield and a guy dressed as Napoleon. Maybe it’s Napoleon! Yep.

Amanda: Yeah, I think so.

Sarah: Mm-hmm. But three covers. Three covers on this co-, on the cover of this magazine –

Amanda: Oh boy.

Sarah: – and when I tell you there is fuchsia, y’all, there is some fuchsia. It is –

Amanda: A lot.

Sarah: – it is very pink, and I went and found some of these covers? So on the left is Shirl Henke’s Cactus Flower. That is –

Amanda: I love that cover! With this weird little cat hanging out.

Sarah: There’s a giant, pink flower and this very, like very young-looking, like disturbingly young-looking, looks a lot like Sabrina Carpenter, actually, now that I’m looking at it –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: – woman with an off-the-shoulder, ruffled blouse and this guy who has no shirt on who’s behind her and standing up, and she’s, like, leaning her head under his chin, and then – [laughs] – on the hill is this big orange cat like, What the fuck are you people doing?

Amanda: Yeah, like, I was just enjoying my little stroll…

Sarah: I have some catnip over here; could you not shtup in my catnip? I’m a little busy.

And then on the cover is Defy the Sun by Mallory Dorn Hart, which is a very fuzzy illustration of, l think, Tudor people, maybe? Medieval, maybe. I can’t tell. And then Myra Rowe, A Splendid Yearning.

Amanda: Her tit is about to pop out.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: His, his is already popped, but she is not far behind.

Sarah: Would you describe this absolutely incredible – [laughs]

Amanda: Cheese Louise. So it looks like the two people are up against a door?

Sarah: Yeah. He’s about to, like, bang her against a door.

Amanda: Yeah, and she’s closest to the door. She has a very, she has a purple dress with a green sash that ties right under the bust, but the, the dress is either like a deep V or suppo-, like, it’s very cleavage-friendly, and…

Sarah: [Laughs] Or unfriendly, depending on what your –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: – preferences are!

Amanda: And one side is, like –

Sarah: Yep.

Amanda: – falling down already.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Amanda: She has red hair that’s swept over one shoulder and a necklace, and then he’s behind her. Hand is braced against the door. Open white shirt with a nip just –

Sarah: Dead center.

Amanda: – front and center! Yeah!

Sarah: Dead center in that V is the nipple. Like, you, it, it’s actually kind of like draws the eye to it. Like, you’re not looking at them –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: – you’re just like, Nipple. Yeah.

Amanda: Would love to do eye tracking –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: – on anyone who looks at this cover. [Laughs]

Sarah: How much attention does this nipple get? Plus she has this gorgeous lime green cloak, and he has a –

Amanda: Oh, I didn’t realize that’s a cloak! I just thought it was like –

Sarah: Decoration? No, that’s her cloak!

Amanda: Yeah, something.

Sarah: And he has got a mullet and a pornstache.

Amanda: Yeah, and there’s a, in the background is like a, sort of like a farmland. Maybe that’s a church –

Sarah: Uh-huh.

Amanda: – too, and a little –

Sarah: And a classic car.

Amanda: Yeah! A little old-time-y car!

Sarah: It’s very strange. But yeah, this is, this is going to be an adventure, because, like I said, all of this is black and white and newsprint. These covers in black and white are nowhere near as good as they are in color, and I have found many of them, and I’m very excited about that.

Amanda: Yeah. The lime green and light purple –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Amanda: – are an interesting color combo.

Sarah: Oh, it’s very ‘80s, right?

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: Like if the ‘90s is hunter green and burgundy, especially in a little border around the top of your room, this is very ‘80s. And the pink!

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: The pink of Cactus Flower is, like, it is very romance pink.

Amanda: Yes.

Sarah: So the inside cover is Catherine Linden, and when I was scanning this I thought it was Caroline Linden. I’m like, She’s not old enough to be in this magazine! [Laughs]

Amanda: I did too, ‘cause there’s a, there’s an author photo –

Sarah: …in ’88! She was probably like fourteen years old!

Amanda: I know; there was an author photo of Catherine Linden later on, and I, like –

Sarah: Yeah!

Amanda: – Wait a second! I was like, I’ve met Caroline Linden in person, and I’m like, I don’t think that’s what she looks like! And then I realized –

Sarah: It’s Catherine Linden.

Amanda: – they are not the same person!

Sarah: So Caroline Linden, if you listen, please know your branding is strong, and the fact that we see Linden on a romance cover, we think it’s you! But this is Highland –

Amanda: Yeah!

Sarah: – Highland Rose with the, the – this is actually a brilliant ad, because in the book, this is a cutaway stepback, so the front of Highland Rose has this big rose on it that’s cut like maybe a third of the way through on a big curve, and then behind that is the full illustration. This illustration is lush.

Amanda: Yeah. Lots of hair.

Sarah: This is one of those covers where I thought, Oh, when I’m a grownup, that’s what my hair’s going to do. When I become a woman, this is the big sign. I get like a – it’s like when a lion reaches maturity and he’s got a mane?

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: That’s what I thought was going to happen to me! I was going to get this hair! No. She’s got long, luscious –

Amanda: I wish!

Sarah: – wavy, auburn hair, big-ass jewels, a blue dress with lots of pleats and accents. He’s got no shirt on, he’s got striped pants –

Amanda: Yep.

Sarah: – [laughs] – and he has a mullet!

Amanda: Yep.

Sarah: Hair and a mullet, that’s what we got in this magazine.

Amanda: [Sighs] I wonder, like, what kind of witchcraft do you have to do for that kind of hair?

Sarah: Prose probably knows.

Amanda: Gosh.

Sarah: Now that we’ve talked about it, we’re going to get Instagram ads; you know that, right? You’re going to open Instagram; it’s going to be like, Do you want lusher, fuller hair? We’ll help!

Amanda: No, I, my hair is full enough.

Sarah: Always listening, Wazowski; always listening.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Page 5 of the, of the PDF. There’s an, there’s a – okay, this is a very gossipy issue, you guys. There’s so much gossip?

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: So much gossip. So a Note from the Publisher, Kathryn – this is before she was Lady of Barrow:

>> To squeeze in everything in this issue, we cut back on letters, but they will be in our big fall issue. We received a pile of mail about Sandra Brown’s explicit contemporary novel. All were read, and the author plans to respond.

Wa-, was there a blowjob? Like, what are we talking about here?

Amanda: Also, big fall issue – this is the October/November issue.

Sarah: Yeah!

Amanda: That’s fall!

Sarah: So the next one’s December, which is winter!

Amanda: Yeah! [Laughs]

Sarah: That’s weird, right?

Amanda: Okay?

Sarah: Like, wow, I, I do not have the next one so I can’t look it up, but maybe I’ll, you know, hunt old magazine listings and see if I can find it.

Our review editors are Melinda Helfer, Kathe Robin, and Diane Rubin, and our columnists are Jill Brager, Irene Dinov, Flavia Knightsbridge, Terry Ryan, Anne Sullivan, and Vita Vendresha. Flavia Knightsbridge has a column – two pages – in this magazine. Holy shit, is it dishy.

Amanda: I feel so bad, though, for Brenda Joyce’s photo here.

Sarah: [Laughs] I…and you remember, we were just talking about her. She’s the one who has a horse –

Amanda: Yeah!

Sarah: – and long blonde hair and is truly gorgeous? This picture is –

Amanda: Yeah!

Sarah: – not good.

Amanda: No! She looks like she was caught unawares. Like –

Sarah: Her eyes are wide; her mouth is open. She looks surprised and awkward, like she’s between –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: – expressions!

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: I don’t get it.

Amanda: I don’t like it.

Sarah: So here are some of the things that Flavia has to say. All right, Under the Covers by Flavia Knightsbridge, and I stand by my assertion that more than one person was writing this column, because the tone changes. The, this person had to have been very old to have been doing this as long as they did, and I never met anybody at RT who was Flavia Knightsbridge, unless maybe it was Carol Stacy, who’s been a long, who’s been doing this all this time, but I don’t think so.

>> Darlings –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: >> I’m back from California and had a wonderful time. I want to thank all the P-Flavia fans out there – that stands for Pro-Flavia, of course – who wrote to me with good stuff for this controversial and sparkling column. As for the F-Flavia group, keep suffering!

[Laughs] Amanda is cracking up!

Amanda: I –

Sarah: Keep –

Amanda: – love that.

Sarah: – suffering!

Amanda: Keep suffering!

Sarah: Fuck you! F-Flavia, keep suffering! Oh my God!

Amanda: I hope I’m ever, I hope I’m in a situation where I get to tell a person, Keep suffering.

Sarah: You want to call your mom?

Amanda: [Laughs] Keep suffering!

Sarah: Seriously! What a way to go through your life. Woof! Damn! My goodness. So then:

>> Three letters brought up something I’d been alerted to: the strong resemblance between Colleen McCullough’s latest, The Ladies of Missalonghi –

Uh-lon-zhee; I’m not sure how you say that.

>> – and an Anne Montgomery classic. A very similar plot and dialogue indeed. Earlier in the year, a New York radio show made this controversy the focus of a program.

And that’s where she stops.

Amanda: …plagiarism scandal!

Sarah: We don’t, we don’t need any details. So what they are talking about, ‘cause I had to google this, like Uh-roh? The point of contention, according to “Double Trouble: One or Two Women?” by Gillian Whitlock in Summer 2010 – so this scandal carried on:

>> The point of contention was McCullough’s novel The Ladies of Missalonghi, 1987, which allegedly plagiarized one of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s lesser known novels, The Blue Castle, originally published in 1926.

I have heard of this before because people who are fans of The Blue Castle support the idea that McCullough, like, just totally ripped it off. I will link to this article, but there’s a lot of evidence of plot description summaries – similarities – and it’s very interesting, but Flavia’s just like, Well, people wrote about it and it’s a controversy. Moving on! Like, what?!

Amanda: And also, this is before google, where you could just, like, google this shit.

Sarah: Yeah, you had to, like, well, a New York radio show? Which fucking one? And did you want to listen to it again? Too fucking bad, ‘cause it wasn’t like there was an archive that you could listen to unless you worked in, you know, media and could get a copy of the tape.

Moving on:

>> Naturally, while on the Gold Coast, I happened onto all sorts of delicious things. You should have seen Danielle Steel’s turquoise Mercedes, and the two identical ones trailing behind filled with her children. She –

Amanda: I’m sorry; now I’m googling Danielle Steel Mercedes.

Sarah: Danielle Steel blue Mercedes?

>> She has nine this year: two of his, two of hers, and five of theirs.

This is so catty.

>> Ms. Steel’s hair, by the way, is now a bright red, and her complexion will probably match when I let out of the bag her most guarded secret – her, how much money she’s getting per book. She has her publisher sworn to secrecy; it’s incredible.

But then what she does is she breaks down, Okay, how much did Barbara Taylor Bradford get? How much did Jack, Jackie Collins get? How much did Tom Clancy get? And her, she makes an educated guess.

>> My educated guess is that she’s getting at least five million per book, maybe even six million dollar advances. God and the IRS only know what the royalties for her very active twenty-one back listed titles rake in twice a year. Zillions, my dear!

Like, what, what, what are we doing here?

Amanda: Don’t blow up this lady’s bag, okay?

Sarah: What are you doing? What are you doing? So the –

Amanda: Couldn’t find anything on Danielle Steel and her blue Mercedes.

Sarah: Or her blue Mercedes! If you have seen Danielle Steel’s blue Mercedes, please reach out. We want to know.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Mention. So she, she talks about a writers conference in Seattle where everyone was really catty and mean, and the authors were all mean to each other, which, you know, accurate, but also why are you saying this? There’s – like, what is the point? And then she also talks about Sandra Brown.

>> I’ve been told of all the letters, pro and con, in our mailbox regarding Sandra Brown’s summer sizzler, and we informed her. She called to say she’s consulting with her agent and publisher about a public pronouncement.

About what? About what about what about what? I don’t understand!

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: And apparently the word pulchritude is used in this one, but I forget where, because I can’t find it, and I’m just like, Oh, I’m tired now. Now here’s a, here’s an interesting blind item, and I’m ninety-nine percent sure I know who this is:

>> Imagine my surprise when I drove through Missouri –

Which is where Branson is.

>> – and saw an interesting item in the local paper. The husband of a famous author printed his own hotline telepone [sic] number so people who heard rumors about him and her could call in. I can imagine the questions.

So wait, is she trying to say that Janet Dailey’s husband Bill set up a hotline to – [laughs] – to find out what people were saying about them?

Amanda: Weird. That’s weird behavior.

Sarah: This is a weird column.

Amanda: Well, so I mentioned at the –

Sarah: Like, what is the point of all this?

Amanda: – at the end of this column, they have this little box that is The Way We Were…Romance Past.

Sarah: I know!

Amanda: And there’s Seven Years Ago This Month, so this would be in 1981 –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: – and the, the only thing that I thought was interesting was that they mentioned Danielle Steel carries around twenty-nine pieces of Louis Vuitton luggage for book promotion.

Sarah: Why are they tracking Danielle Steel? What, what did she do?

Amanda: [Indistinct]

Sarah: Now, the irony, of course, being like, Yes, of course Danielle Steel is wealthy; have you seen her backlist and her career? Like, come on!

Amanda: She puts them in all, in her blue Mercedes!

[Laughter]

Sarah: Of course she has more than one for her kids and then for her books and her luggage! What is the point of all this?

Amanda: I don’t know. I mean, like, this definitely reminds me of, like, a gossip mag! Like, you know, a celebrity gossip mag, and perhaps before the sheer number of books –

Sarah: Yep.

Amanda: – being published skyrocketed –

Sarah: Yep.

Amanda: – perhaps RT is, was trying to position themselves –

Sarah: Yes.

Amanda: – as a gossip magazine, and even in the newer editions where there –

Sarah: They set the authors up like celebrities. Let’s have a house tour! Here’s a picture. Yeah, they are really setting the authors up as celebrities within the romance world, so they are, you’re right! This is a total blend of a gossip magazine and a tabloid and a book review magazine and a celebrity magazine, except the authors are the celebrities. Which reminds me of the first RT I went to in Pittsburgh, when Kate Duffy was still alive. First of all, she’s an editor at Kensington, and they registered her with a reader badge, and she was so excited, because she was saying, At RWA, people push the, push the authors out of the way to get to the editors, and at RT they push the editors out of the way to get to the authors, and she much preferred that environment. So yeah, they were trying to make these authors into celebrities, but apparently not the – [laughs] – not Danielle Steel! Oh my God!

On page 10 – another cover to enjoy – is a full-page ad for Karen Robards’ Desire in the Sun, and there’s a cutout – like, you can see the cutout – cutout of the cover, but read the irresistible consumer sweepstakes.

Amanda: Oh, I was! It –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: – is a sweepstakes drawing.

>> The Grand Prize: A Romantic Fantasy Island Vacation for Two. Five glorious nights, six sun-drenched days in tropical Barbados; round-trip airfare; complimentary breakfasts included; accommodations courtesy of Marriott’s Sam Lord’s Castle –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: >> – a luxurious, seventy-two acre beach resort on the southeast coast of Barbados.

And then:

>> Entry forms available at your local bookstore, or print your name and address on a three by five card, mail it to Avon Books.

Blah-blah-blah, sweepstakes, one per person; entries must be received by December 1st, 1988. Who the fuck won this? And I want to know how the trip was.

Sarah: So I just found a link –

Amanda: That’s what I want to know.

Sarah: – the, Sam Lord’s Castle resort has now been bought by Wyndham and is now an all-inclusive. It is still in existence; it has clearly been remodeled; it is beautiful. I don’t think you can swim on this beach, but it is a beautiful resort.

I want to just point out how absolutely wild it is that a publisher was doing a consumer sweepstakes for a five-night trip to Barbados for the release of A book.

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: Can you imagine that happening now?

Amanda: I’ve also wonder, like, so we heard about this sweepstakes through the RT Magazine. Were they promoting this sweepstakes anywhere else? That’s what I want to know.

Sarah: Probably at bookstores, ‘cause if you can only enter at your local bookstore, I’m sure there was a bookstore promo. A whole, a whole trip!

Amanda: I know.

Sarah: I have sent you the cover. It is yellow. These people are going to melt. It, everything looks like it’s on fire.

Amanda: I hope they put sunscreen on.

Sarah: I mean, she’s blonde; she needs sunscreen.

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: He’s got a big old mullet and some big old deltoids. He’s, they’re lounging on –

Amanda: He looks like he’s been out in the sun plenty, though. He is –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Amanda: – very tan.

Sarah: He’s very bronze. They’re lying in a giant pile of yellow flowers, behind them is a yellow palm leaf, and then the sky is also yellow. Like, literally it’s about to be nuclear winter because the blast just happened on this cover.

Amanda: And there’s a ship that also blends into –

Sarah: Yeah.

Amanda: – the very yellow sky.

Sarah: Yeah, everything’s yellow, and there’s a little bit of blue behind her butt…ocean, and her dress is pink, and it’s so yellow it’s weird.

Amanda: Yep.

Sarah: So weird.

And then we move on. It’s very interesting to have this, this issue following the one we did last month, September 2015, because we were talking about how that was a scrapbook of RT Dallas.

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: This is a scrapbook of the Love Boat Cruise: Romantic Times aboard the Nordic Prince. They did another cruise, and it was very, very well written up in the FOMO marketing style. Carol Stacy, who was, I think, the publisher of this magazine the whole time, she wrote up this article, wrote up the cruise, talked about everything that happened. My favorite line:

>> If you have any thoughts or questions, call me, and I’ll tell you all that went on that wasn’t printable.

Amanda: Oh my God.

Sarah: So they had a whole bunch of authors and some readers on this cruise, and they write about it like it is, like you should be on the, you should be on this convention next year, ‘cause we had all this fun. They took all of these authors on the boat and brought them to bookstores in Bermuda. Like, they got to Bermuda and they went to bookstores; they met the mayor of Hamilton. Like, this was a very well orchestrated trip, but they went to bookstores. Can you imagine it’s 1988, you run a bookstore in Bermuda, and here comes this whole boatful of romance authors to do a signing in your store!

Amanda: I also just like looking at the fashion in these photos.

Sarah: Oh yeah! Oh yeah, lots of hats. Lots of big drapey dresses, lots of blazers, and a lot of bangs. Look how many bangs we’ve got on these women –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: – lots of bangs.

Amanda: Good for them. I love a good bang.

Sarah: Yep.

PDF page 25: this is an advertisement for the 8th Annual Booklovers Convention.

>> Cowboys, cowgirls, Indians, and Gunfighters –

Sorry.

Amanda: Yawn.

Sarah: >> – hitch up your horses and wagon and head for Phoenix in April. The Fountain Saloon is hosting our big Western shindig.

So the 8th Annual Booklovers Convention was in Phoenix, Arizona, April 26th through April 30th, sponsored by Romantic Times and Rave Reviews – which is a companion magazine – and it’s a whole hootenanny. The Fountains Resort provides suites, $81 including tax per night for two!

Amanda: And then they had, for published writers, three-hour open discussions, and what I thought was interesting was Our Genre: The Next Five Years. Authors –

Sarah: Yes!

Amanda: – editors, distributors, and booksellers evaluate the following categories: Series romance –

Sarah: Yep.

Amanda: – historicals, Indian, and Western romance –

Sarah: Yikes.

Amanda: – Sci-fi and futuristic romance, Regency, Gothic, and mystery.

Sarah: Only three of those are covered in this magazine.

Amanda: I’d love to be a fly on that wall in, in, during that discussion of what they thought, you know, the next five years of romance would be like. And also, like, I would love to know, you know, if you could go back in time and ask a romance writer or publisher in 1988 what they thought the romance landscape would look like in 2024.

Sarah: Oh my God.

Amanda: I would love, I would love that answer. But that’s not –

Sarah: I mean, in the, in the Letter to the Editor – I didn’t mention this – in the Letter from the Editor, rather, it says at the bottom:

>> How many women art there, out there are Macintosh users? I would appreciate hearing from you for a special feature. I just attended the MacWorld Convention in Boston and saw the 21st century!

The other thing about this For Published Writers, topic two is Money Matters, Contracts, Agents, Taxes, Computers, and Modems.

Amanda: Modems!

Sarah: Number three is, number three: Promotion Techniques and Commercialism with graphic artists, PR experts, reps, and editors. And number four was my favorite: Breakdown of Paperback Markets in the US featuring chain store representatives, distributors, truck stop distributors, booksellers, publishing reps with charts and maps. I want to go back in time, and I want to see the maps.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Please, please, please give me the maps! I want to know. I need to know about the maps. Like, I really do need to know, especially the truck store distributors. ‘Cause I remember editors when I started researching the, the first book, Beyond Heaving Bosoms, I remember editors like Kate Duffy and some other people that I spoke to who aren’t even in publishing anymore talking about how you would meet with the rep for this bookstore chain in Austin. That you’d…meet with a totally different rep for the same bookstore chain in Fort Worth! And then you’d meet with this truck stop guy, but he was only, like, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee; you know, yada-yada-yada. But there were so many more people to meet with. Now it’s like two guys!

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: If it’s even two guys! It might just be one guy!

Amanda: I remember when I was in grad school and I was doing all of my, like, publishing work and I worked in publishing, the Barnes & Noble fiction buyer was –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Amanda: – just one woman who bought for –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: – every single Barnes & Noble store.

Sarah: That’s why Sue Grimshaw had all of that industrial power. She was the romance buyer for Borders. Yeah, imagine all of these book buyers and truck stop book buyers, ‘cause you know I’ve, I’ve read the demographics of truck drivers, long haul drivers? They love audiobooks, and they love romance.

Amanda: Ohhh!

Sarah: Yeah! Big romance audience among truck people. Do you remember, do, do you remember that weird app that we were doing ‘cause I had gotten a sponsorship to do it –

Amanda: It was, what, it’s like –

Sarah: – and we, we had –

Amanda: – stereo something or whatever?

Sarah: Was it Stereo?

Amanda: Maybe it was just Stereo.

Sarah: When we were doing the Stereo live calls, we had our little, remember our little avatars, and we were doing live –

Amanda: Yeah!

Sarah: – like, gatherings?

Amanda: And we had like one woman who was a trucker.

Sarah: Was a truck! She was driving; she’s like, Hey, I’m in the truck, and I’m listening to y’all, and I was like, That’s fucking cool!

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: Call us back and tell us everything!

So on page 29 of the PDF, there is a full-page article written by Dorothy Garlock, who is really fucking pissed off about all of these inaccuracies about Westerns. She talks about how there’s a lot of Westerns where white women fall in love with handsome Indian chiefs – that’s a quote – and this situation is not realistic in that time period anymore than it would have been for a Southern belle in the 1800s to fall in love with and marry a Black man. I mean, she’s not wrong, but Yikes! There’s only one example she knows of of a white woman who fell in love with an Indian – capital I, at least. She does not like all of this historical ac-, inaccuracy. A Fantasy Romance or a Story of How It Really Was? Dorothy, we’re still talking about that, so okay. My favorite part:

>> My all-time pet peeve is the scene where the hero and heroine, who have been riding their horses for days through hot, dry country suddenly realize they love each other. They are dirty, sweaty, and hungry, but they stop beside a nice flat rock and have oral sex.

[Laughs] So yeah, Dorothy Garlock does not like all of this inaccuracy in Westerns and takes a little look at what, what the fantasies were of the time. Now, it would have been interesting – obviously not appropriate for this –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: – time period in 1988 to be like, Okay, and why is that the fantasy? Have we replaced the native indigenous chief characters with aliens, maybe, perhaps, maybe?

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: I don’t know; I think so. Couldn’t tell you. Wouldn’t – I don’t know!

Page 36.

Amanda: 36.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: There is an ad –

Sarah: This is funny.

Amanda: – on the left-hand side for Sapphire Moon –

Sarah: Yep.

Amanda: – by Peggy Cross. And it has the book description, but at the bottom is a little photo of Peggy that says, I love to hear from readers, and then just has her address in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Sarah: Yep! Little picture. Yeah, and just her whole home address.

Amanda: Just her home address.

Sarah: And there’s tons of them in here, aren’t there?

Amanda: Yeah. I mean, we had, for the review sections, you pointed out that the people who reviewed each, each section would be like, Send your manuscripts to me.

Sarah: Send me your manuscripts! Yeah.

Amanda: At their home address! It wasn’t going to, like, the RT offices; it was going to their homes.

Sarah: Yeah, they were just getting them at home by the bucket.

I forgot to share something with you.

Amanda: Oh!

Sarah: I want to go back to the cover for just a second. You don’t have to scroll back to the cover.

Amanda: ‘Kay.

Sarah: When I was looking for Cactus Flower by Shirl Henke, I also found the new cover, and I wanted to show it to you.

Amanda: Oh boy. Okay, I’m going to go to the document.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: I don’t like that. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah, it’s a, it’s a photograph of a guy with a lot of hair, no shirt, and some low-slung jeans and big old gun on his belt and a cowboy hat leaning up against a horse where there’s this girl in a white cotton dress with cowgirl, cow-, cowboy boots on, and honestly, that dress, the whole pose, this could be like influencer marketing. Like, she’s going to tell you where the dress is from and where you can buy it.

Amanda: Distinct lack of cat!

Sarah: Yeah! If, how could you not put the cat in? I don’t understand.

Amanda: But I love the quote on the cover is from RT Magazine!

Sarah: I know! [Laughs] Isn’t that great?

Amanda: Oh my God.

Sarah: I have so many covers that I found in color from this, from this issue. I saved them all; I’m very excited to put them in the show notes, just like, Here’s a bunch of covers that were in this magazine. You’re going to love ‘em; they’re all incredible.

Amanda: Yeah!

Sarah: On page 38, Wary Hearts. Okay! So if you click on the link that I put in the document to Sharon Spiak art, she drew this, she illustrated this cover, and you can get a print of it! I’m pretty sure that that is the Fabs – that is the Fabio.

Amanda: She’s also selling the original, if you –

Sarah: Yeah!

Amanda: – would like to buy the original.

Sarah: Yes! I forgot how much it is.

Amanda: Nine thousand doll hairs? Let me double-check. Nine thousand, nine hundred dollars.

Sarah: That’s a lot.

Amanda: Yeah!

Sarah: But, I mean, it’s the Fabs. The thing that I love is that tiny, tiny, tiny little tuft of chest hair right in the middle of his chest that looks like a, like a vulva. That looks like a lady’s bush right there.

Amanda: Yeah, I mean the –

Sarah: That, that, that looks like – that, that is, it is triangular. Y’all, it looks like a vulva.

Amanda: The chest crease isn’t doing him any favors.

Sarah: No! It’s, it’s very weird. But yeah, it’s very lush; it’s mostly like the focal point is his jaw. It’s very jaw-heavy. He’s got long hair, and he, there’s this woman draped on a couch behind him sort of coming over his shoulder, and they’re upside-down about to kiss like in Spider-Man –

Amanda: But, like –

Sarah: – which had not…

Amanda: – I don’t know how the blood is not, like, rushing to her head. Like –

Sarah: It’s going to make her blush attractively. Don’t you remember all those heroines in historicals who would, like, pinch their cheeks for a touch of color? This is how she does it! She just hangs upside-down for a minute – [laughs] –

Amanda: Uh-uh!

Sarah: – so she has that healthy blush!

On page 43, there’s an ad for Love’s Glorious Gamble. This was a period of time when we also had a lot of riverboat romances?

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: Like, there were a lot of Mississippi riverboat guys?

>> An innocent looking for an adventure…a riverboat gambler who wants no ties…a harmless flirtation that becomes a desperate bargain…a quest for vengeance over futures lost and the wager of love’s promise on a single cut of cards…

I think this is one of those, he’s going to get revenge – yeah:

>> On the way to New Orleans, Gloria Daniel’s father loses all their money to a card game to Louis Baldwin, Mississippi River kingpin, and commits suicide.

Yikes. Sorry! Trigger warning.

>> Bent on revenge, Gloria joins forces with Sterling Caulder, a riverboat gambler with his own vendetta.

Yeah, these are riverboat vendettas. So the picture is reproduced, the cover is reproduced in black and white. I just want to take a guess from you before I show you the cover, what colors do you think, like, what is the predominant color, do you think, that is going to be on this cover?

Amanda: My guess is, I’m thinking like, like a turquoise or a teal. I’m thinking like blues –

Sarah: Ooh.

Amanda: – and greens.

Sarah: River, boat, they’re, they’re against the shore; there’s, there’s a swan freaking out in the background. All right, here you go!

Amanda: Yeah, for me, I think the gamble is whether or not a swan is going to emerge from her boobs. That’s the gamble.

Sarah: Well, it is in fact, it is in fact emerging from her boobs on this cover, and everything is purple and peach.

Amanda: Oh wow. Not where I thought it was going. Also –

Sarah: No, me neither.

Amanda: – the only riverboat piece of media that I have ever consumed in my entire life –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: – because of my parents, is the old film, starring Jodie Foster and gross Mel Gibson, Maverick.

Sarah: Ohhh, Maverick, yeah.

Amanda: That’s the extent of my riverboat media exposure.

Sarah: That’s the extent of it? Okay.

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: So page 51 of the PDF is one of the centerfold pages, and there’s a bunch of book covers. These are all from Pageant.

>> Look for these now and forever authors: Maura Seger, Dallas Schulze, Shirley Larson, Kathleen Eagle, and Rita Clay Estrada

And then some books from Billie Green – Always Amy, which we talked about –

Amanda: Yep.

Sarah: – Helen Mittermeyer and Golden Touch. So there’s the cover for Always Amy: purple, off-the-shoulder gown, some guy nuzzling her ear. And then there’s Golden Touch. I have a copy of this one so you can see it in large, a larger size. Obviously it’s going to be in the visual aids. These people are going to aerobics class.

Amanda: Yeah. Like, they’re in South Beach or the Florida Everglades.

Sarah: It’s on fire; everything’s orange.

Amanda: Yeah, they’re in the Everglades is my guess.

Sarah: He’s wearing a blue tank top and short-shorts, and she’s wearing an orange tank top and short-shorts, and the, and the title line in the ad is:

>> Passion pays dividends in the world of high finance!

Why are they in aerobics – [laughs] – why are they in aerobics clothes in the Florida, like, in the Everglades…

Amanda: Nothing about this says –

Sarah: …in this?

Amanda: I’m sorry, okay, this is – okay, this is a description:

>> He was –

Sarah: [Indistinct]

Amanda: >> He was a Wall Street legend –

Sarah: Wait, what?

Amanda: Yeah, he was –

Sarah: Not dressed like that he wasn’t! [Laughs]

Amanda: He was a Wall Street legend – the man with the golden touch.

Sarah: Must be – oh my God.

Amanda: >> Venus had heard the stories about Eli Weldon-Tate, but nothing could have prepared her for the man himself. Strong, decisive, formidable, Eli gave his life to his legend as he swept Venus off her feet. But Venus Wayne –

Sarah: Oh my…

Amanda: >> – had to be careful. She’d lost so much – her business, her partner, her home. She couldn’t afford to lose her heart too, but with each caress, with each heady kiss and tender touch, Eli was winning her over, and Eli Weldon-Tate was a man who played for keeps.

Sarah: What the hell is happening? [Laughs] Oh my God! Why are they in aerobics clothes in the swamp?

Amanda: Like, I want to know where is this set?

Sarah: [Laughs] Miami?

Amanda: I like –

Sarah: That’s not Miami.

Amanda: No.

Sarah: Oh my God!

Amanda: Where –

Sarah: I can’t wait to put this in the visual aids and put this all over social media! This cover is –

Amanda: Golden Touch!

Sarah: It’s just unhinged. [Laughs]

Amanda: …Golden Touch, Florida? It seems, like with the palm trees, my guess is either Florida or, like, California, but –

Sarah: Maybe.

Amanda: – I don’t know. So I googled it, and it says:

>> Venus Wayne, a free-spirited redhead working as a messenger, is roller-skating through a lobby concourse when she –

Sarah: Okay.

Amanda: >> – when she crashes into corporate president Eli Weldon Tate.

Sarah: [Laughs] Why aren’t there roller skates on the cover? I ask you!

Amanda: Common terms and phrases: Florida –

Sarah: ‘Kay.

Amanda: – Orlando –

Sarah: What?!

Amanda: I think it’s in Florida, guys! Alligator?

Sarah: Yep. They are in the swamp.

Amanda: But yeah, it looks like it is set in Florida.

Sarah: Amazing.

Amanda: There we go.

Sarah: They will be able to focus on their future together. Wow.

Amanda: We got to the bottom of this mystery.

Sarah: It is Florida, that’s where they are, and apparently they’re doing aerobics in the swamp. No roller skates, though! How could you not have roller skates?

Amanda: I would have put roller skates on the cover; that sounds cool.

Sarah: I mean, are you, are you kidding? With all these, like, big hair and dresses? I’d be like, roller skates; that’s going to make you stand out.

And then if you look at the next page, An Exquisite Deception by Elizabeth Douglas? This cover is in color, and there’s like a whole bunch of guys in her hair! There’s like a whole little vignette scene, but it’s in her hair. Like, Hello, lady, there’s people in your hair!

Amanda: In fairness, I have a lot of hair, and on the weekends I just keep it up in a bun, and when I take it out, like, yeah –

Sarah: …like, Borrowers in there?

Amanda: If I take it out like Monday morning, right, and I shake it out, I would not surprise, be surprised if these little Musketeers just came filtering out.

Sarah: I don’t have a good scan of it or a good Google Image of it. I’ll have to, like, maybe I’ll find a copy or I’ll screen-grab the image from the magazine and put it in the visual aids, but I’m, she’s got people in her hair, like, Borrowers up in there.

Amanda: I’m, I’m not one to judge.

Sarah: [Laughs] On page 63 of the PDF is Series Romance Tidbits compiled by Melinda Helfer. There’s a little picture of Jayne Krentz with her hair parted down the middle; she’s very young in this picture.

Amanda: It’s very, it’s a very 1970s –

Sarah: Yes, it’s very Love Story. Yeah. So Melinda writes:

>> A hot topic of conversation was the current state of romance covers and future trends.

A perennial question. Okay, hold onto your butt.

>> Booksellers relayed growing reader dissatisfaction with historical romance covers that all look alike.

[Laughs] Listen, nothing’s going to change. Greetings from the future; we have the same problem, different genre. But it’s, it’s all the same. Incredible, right?

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: So I have a, I have a little soapbox.

Amanda: Yes.

Sarah: Soapbox here; are you ready?

Amanda: I saw some notes about the soapbox.

Sarah: Okay, page 64 of the PDF in the bottom corner:

>> In Memoriam: Mary Burchell. RT is sad to announce the passing away of Mary Burchell, or Burchell, age eighty-six. She was a Mills and Boon author for fifty years and wrote over a hundred novels. Mary never married, preferring to live with her sister outside of London. She traveled extensively until the past few years and had a great zest for life. Mary Burchell loved her readers, and they returned her affection with equal warmth. She will be missed.

I, hold the fuck on. This is some bullshit. This is some weak-sauce bullshit-ass crap. Okay. First of all, she died in 1986, so you’re late. Number two. I have two links to share with you. The first one is Clothes in Books. Mary Burchell’s real name is Ida Cook, and if you look in the document, I put a picture of Ida and her sister, these bad-ass ladies. See this picture of them? She’s got like a stole and some flapper dresses. Okay. Ida and her sister Louise, first of all, they are righteous among the gentiles by Yad Veshem. They bought a bunch of pattern books, and they made their own clothes. They made everything they’re wearing in this picture. They were extremely talented seamstresses, and they bought the very latest fashions because they were obsessed with opera. You might remember this story.

Ida and Louise were obsessed with the opera, like completely obsessed, so they made the most cutting edge clothes that they could of the time in the ‘20s, and they spent all of their money and made lots and lots of contacts in New York. They saved up their money; they went over to New York; they got a hotel; they reached out to all the contacts who had tickets to the opera for them, because they had been corresponding. They went to the opera, and in one of, one of the memoirs Ida Cook wrote that they were the best dressed people in the entire fucking theatre because their, their clothing was the absolute edge of new fashion. They were setting the trends; they were so very clever.

Well, what happened was they got, they were fans of opera the way Swifties are for Taylor.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: They traveled all over the world to go to the opera! My grandmother was like this, so I can relate. They would travel all over Europe, and they made friends with opera singers. They were, they were superfans, but one of the opera singers was a Ukrainian woman who was like, Do you know what’s happening with Jews right now in World War II? Do you know about this? and they’re like, No, what are you talking about? So they find out that the Holocaust is happening. Ida and Louise would go and meet with people in countries. They were ostensibly there to see the opera, but then they would just happen to, you know, hang out with this family, and this family would give them all of their jewelry and all of their furs, and they would wear them, and they would cross back over the border wearing all of these family’s jewelry and furs, and the, you know, they would get stopped by the Nazis and by border patrol for different countries, and they’d be like, What the fuck are you doing? Well, we’re just two daffy old ladies, and we went to the opera. Let us tell you all about it! We went to the opera and it was amazing, and this is our best clothes! You can’t go to the opera not wearing your best clothes! What are you talking about? Oh my goodness, no! We’re not, we just, we need to go home. We’re so tired from all of the opera, and they’re like, Okay, ladies, go through.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: So they would bring all the valuables into England, and then when those families managed to get to England, they could sell that stuff and have money to get the fuck out. So they saved sixty-two families by masquerading as daffy old opera ladies wearing other families’ wealth to get them out of the country.

Amanda: I also, I’m, I’m looking at her Wikipedia.

Sarah: It’s fucking bad ass!

Amanda: Yeah, and it’s like, one of the people that they rescued was a famous opera, like, lecturer, and –

Sarah: Mm-hmm!

Amanda: – The Telegraph wrote an article on this person that they saved: the refugee who taught Prince Charles to love opera.

Sarah: Most of their efforts were funded by Mary Burchell’s books. So she was writing romance novels and using them to help refugees get out of the Holocaust in the ‘30s and the ‘40s. And she wrote to the Romantic Novelists Association newsletter – this is in Wikipedia:

>> I concede that a bad romantic novel is embarrassing and indefensible. So is a bad so-called realistic novel. And it is usually pretentious into the bargain, which is insufferable. But a good romantic novel is a heart-warming thing, which strikes a responsive chord in those who are happy and offers a certain lifting of the spirits to those who are not.

So this, this is a weak-sauce, piece-of-shit memorial, and I’m bothered about it. So I will link to the clothes and books at BlogSpot entry about Mary Burchell. The, the, there are pictures of the patterns and of the pattern magazines that they were using? It was all MAB’s Fashions. I love this shit. I just think it’s so interesting how clever women are, and this is the memorial in the magazine? No, no, no, no, no! So yeah, that’s my soapbox. Thank you very much for indulging me; I appreciate it.

Amanda: Also weird that they’re posting about it two years.

Sarah: Well, they have to be careful, ‘cause remember later on they posted somebody was dead when they weren’t! [Laughs]

Amanda: That’s fair. Maybe they just wanted to be really sure.

Sarah: Got to be really – well, you know, we, we got to wait a couple, we had to make sure. But yeah! Like, she wrote a hundred novels and she had a great zest for life and traveled extensively. Yes! By, like, rescuing people by wearing their shit and fooling border guards and Nazis. For God’s sake! Anyway. So yeah, that’s, that’s Mary Burchell. She was a badass, and so was her sister.

On PDF, or excuse me, magazine page 67 – sometimes I make mistakes – no, that’s not it! Where the fuck am I – what am I talking about?

Amanda: You said elbow.

Sarah: I have a note – I have a note that says elbows. Does Sarah know what she’s talking about? No.

Amanda: Is it Lady of the Island by Jennifer Greene on PDF 67?

Sarah: Maybe? This is so embarrassing. I mean, come –

Amanda: There’s a lot of joints in that cover.

Sarah: Oh, I beg your pardon: it was 66; it’s a typo. PDF page 66.

Amanda: ‘Kay.

Sarah: There’s a full-page ad with ads for Crime of the Heart by Cheryl Reavis, Kathleen Korbel’s Princess and the Pea –

Amanda: Now I get the elbows, yeah. [Laughs]

Sarah: – and then three – [laughs] – three Silhouette Desire covers, and it’s just elbows! This is elbow over here, and it’s, every cover is just elbows. Everyone’s elbows are dead center! It’s so funny!

Amanda: And they’re all sharply bent.

Sarah: Oh, like, it’s, these are elbows that you, you need to notice these elbows. I mean, even in Crime of the Heart: elbow.

Amanda: Elbow.

Sarah: Elbows. See, my note was correct! Those are elbows. [Laughs] Elbows.

PDF page – this is so funny. Please, please tell everybody about this.

Amanda: So on page 85, there’s an ad for Listen to Love.

>> No time for romance? You can Listen to Love Anytime, Anywhere…

Sarah: How is Audible not using this right now?

Amanda: >> At last, full-length romance fiction on audio cassette.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: But –

Sarah: Incredible.

Amanda: – the thing is, is the, there’s, like, clip art, and so there’s a woman running with a Walkman –

Sarah: Sure.

Amanda: – and there’s a woman cooking next to a boombox. There’s a woman in her car, and there’s a woman in her bathtub, and right next to the bathtub is a stereo, presumably with her Listen –

Sarah: She’s going to die.

Amanda: Yeah, with her Listen to Love cassette in there.

Sarah: It’s, it’s going to fall right in the tub and she’s fucked. [Laughs]

>> Listen to Love proudly presents contemporary romance on audio cassette –

Which is great, because the only contemporary romance in this magazine is one contemporary novel called Aspen and then series.

>> – with historicals, Gothics, all your favorites soon to follow. Send a stamp for a free catalog. Take ten percent off your first romance from Listen to Love.

Amanda: I would love to know what the catalog looked like.

Sarah: I am sure that you cannot find this, because if you google Listen to Love, you’re not going to find anything. Like, there’s going to be no record of this on the internet.

Amanda: No. But following that is like a full-page article on Listen to Love, and the woman who created it.

Sarah: Ahhh! Interesting! Well, here’s a pioneer of audiobooks. There’s also – oh, gross! The picture at the top! Ew!

Amanda: I know. I know.

Sarah: Ew!

Amanda: [Laughs] I’m hoping that’s her husband, maybe, and not just some, like, creep? But.

Sarah: Rosemary Tobin, president, is pictured at the top in a flowered blouse with long hair, and her hand is up, and there’s a guy with glasses and a beard kissing her hand? And it says, Rosemary Tobin enjoying the fruits of romance. Okay, ew, gross. But this is pretty great:

>> It came to me in a flash in 1983. One day I was stalking the halls of National Public Radio, brooding to myself, wondering how I could stay in audio and use my training but somehow make a living and have a lot more fun than I was having at the moment. I was on the overnight shift of one of the daily shows, and it was killing me! Midnight to eight.

And then when she wanted to go out to eat after work, and all she could get was breakfast!

Amanda: Oh no! Not breakfast!

Sarah: Then the idea of – yeah, breakfast –

>> Then the idea popped into my mind: Listen to Love, romance fiction on audio cassette.

Yeah! She just decided, I’m going to do audiobooks, ‘cause working in radio overnight sucks. She’s not wrong!

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: Amazing. Yeah! Audiobooks, 1988, were a new thing.

Amanda: And then further, on page 88, there’s this bulletin board for booksellers, and it’s like a call to carry RT in their stores, but apparently Kathryn Falk had another magazine –

Sarah: Yeah!

Amanda: – called Rave Reviews?

Sarah: I didn’t know that until I saw this. Yeah!

Amanda: And if you scroll farther on, there’s like another ad for Rave Reviews magazine on 98? So you can see what it looked like, but, and that page, it says:

>> The bi-monthly magazine for readers and writers of popular fiction and nonfiction. Over one hundred reviews of current and forthcoming popular titles, including historicals, mysteries, romances, thrillers, fantasy, and science fiction.

But yeah, I had no clue that they had a second magazine for, I guess, I mean, they include romance in Rave Reviews anyway, but additional genres as well, which, if you look at later editions of RT, they also cover; like, in later editions of RT, they include contemporary fiction; they include –

Sarah: Science fiction.

Amanda: – fantasy and sci-fi; they include mysteries and thrillers. So.

Sarah: Probably they folded it into one.

Amanda: Yeah. I didn’t know there was another magazine as well. And that one – is it the same price? I’m looking at it. Yeah, they’re the same price.

Sarah: To answer our earlier question as to why this is October/November, $11.95 for one year of Romantic Times, six issues; $11.95 for one way, one year of Rave Reviews, six issues. So yeah, this was clearly a six-issue magazine. My guess is that they folded them into one, because I remember a lot of authors talking about, when they wrote science fiction and fantasy, that RT was one of the few magazines that would review them and talk about their books, and so later RTs that I would go to, like, John Scalzi was there and Jim Butcher was there. Like, a lot of writers who are outside the romance genre were doing the signing, because their fans would go, because the magazine would talk about their books when very few other publications would.

Page 96 is the Classifieds; 97 of the PDF, 96 of the magazine. The Classifieds are a wild one.

Amanda: And they display their advertising rates!

Sarah: I know! A full-page ad is six hundred dollars, half a page is three twenty-five, one-third horizontal’s two fifty, one-third vertical’s two twenty-five, and one-sixth is one twenty-five. It doesn’t say how much it is to do the cover and the inset, but I’m guessing that was mostly publishers paying that. Maybe.

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: I don’t know. I noticed a couple of classifieds that they don’t have any more in the, in the later issues of the magazine?

>> Women’s amusements catalog! Thousands of gift handicrafts, holiday recipes, folklore, children’s pastime, home business opportunities, feminine wisdom, and more. Send long SASE –

Self-addressed stamped envelope

>> – for catalog to Mrs. Betz Household in Eureka, California!

[Laughs] What the hell is that?

Amanda: Is it just some woman?

Sarah: And she’s just going to send you pictures of a bunch of stuff?

Amanda: I, just to picture, like, feminine wisdom?

Sarah: Right?

[Laughter]

Amanda: I, I just picture it just, it’s a postcard that just says Keep Suffering.

Sarah: [Laughs] Oh, that’s Flavia Knightsbridge’s feminine wisdom. You should keep suffering!

Amanda: Keep suffering.

Sarah: And then we get to the back cover. So the inside back cover is Connie Mason’s Desert Ecstasy, and in the scan it’s very, very pale, but I just, I will show you, Amanda, in, in, like, in the – ooh, I don’t want to hurt this magazine; it’s so old.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: In the magazine itself, it is just as pale. Like, that’s not a bad scan; that’s what it looks like…

Amanda: I would be pissed!

Sarah: Like, you’re paying for the color! Why, why would you make this washed-out thing? So it’s Leisure Books Desert Ecstasy, kismet, by Connie Mason. I want to show you what this cover looks like, ‘cause this is, this is terrible! But this cover is something.

Amanda: Oh no!

Sarah: So we got a white guy in a Middle Eastern-style headdress with like a beaded band and a long sheet and a blue tunic and a horse and a blonde lady in, like – [laughs] – a strapless bikini and a long skirt.

Amanda: This was…I mean, it’s a very pale cover?

Sarah: Yeah.

Amanda: Which explains why –

Sarah: It didn’t reproduce well.

Amanda: No.

Sarah: And this is like a two-color ad; it’s just the purple. Why don’t you read the description of this book to, ‘cause it’s just –

Amanda: Oh boy, oh boy. Okay.

>> Exquisitely beautiful, Lady Christa Horton was a helpless prisoner in an exotic land, destined –

Oh no.

[Laughter]

Amanda: >> – destined for white slavery in the bey’s harem, until fate left her at the mercy of a different master, the man they called the Desert Hawk. Dark and ruthless, he took what he wanted, and he wanted Christa.

Sarah: Oh boy.

Amanda: >> Sweeping her into the desert dawn, he stripped away her defenses, seduced her yearning body, and –

Sarah: Oy!

Amanda: >> – convinced her beyond all doubt that destiny itself had willed their searing love.

I hate that! I hated all of that!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: Ew! [Laughs]

Sarah: Yikes! If this were a drinking game, we would be unconscious at this time. Like, if you had to drink for every offensive trope, we would be unconscious.

Amanda: It’s sad that people can’t see the grimacing that we do during these recordings.

Sarah: Oh, I, I should just start pasting the video of these at some point, just to –

Amanda: Just a –

Sarah: – like, here’s the – do you want to watch us make faces on Zoom? Because it’s like, Oh God! Yike-ies.

And finally, the back cover is Firestorm by Brenda Joyce, who’s author photo –

Amanda: Is that Tawny Kitaen? What…looking at?

Sarah: [Laughs] Look at all this hair!

Amanda: I know!

Sarah: Again, this is the hair that I thought, you know, people would have when they grow up. A November –

Amanda: Is this a Whitesnake video? What is this?

Sarah: Yes! Pretty much. A November Avon Ribbon Romance.

>> He was darkness and danger. She was sunlight and splendor.

All right, so, you know, grumpy/sunshine.

>> Brett D’Archand was the abandoned bastard son of an old California family who swore he needed no one. Storm was the cherished tomboy daughter –

With that hair? And that outfit? Really?

>> – who swore –

Buh-buh-buh-buh-buh.

>> Daughter of loving parents sent to San Francisco for a coming out.

Okay, but that means something different! [Laughs] She’s coming out in San Francisco, but it means something very different!

Amanda: What a twist that would’ve been, huh?

Sarah: Yeah, really. I wasn’t expecting that.

>> Never would she capitulate to the dark and arrogant rake!

Everybody drink.

>> Caught in each other’s arms, they were forced by scandal to wed. Storm vowed to attain an annulment, and Brett swore he didn’t give a damn, but it was too late, for from the moment they exchanged vows, their blazing passion became their all-consuming destiny.

The thing about so many of the expressions on these covers, particularly this one, is that they make sex look so unpleasant! They look like they’re miserable!

Amanda: It looks like borderline painful!

Sarah: Right? They just look like they’re miserable. I mean, I have the full cover. I’ll, I’ll share it with you right now.

Amanda: Yeah, I was just googling. I was like, show me the whole cover.

Sarah: I got the whole cover here. She’s wearing a, she’s wearing the blouse from Seinfeld.

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: The puffy blouse from Seinfeld. Her hair is very dry and split ends; needs some keratin. Very big skirt. He’s also got a fluffy blouse on and a mullet, but it looks like he’s blowing a bug off her chin?

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: And he just looks, it just looks so uncomfortable and unpleasant. Like, so many of these covers make sex look so unpleasant!

Amanda: Yes.

Sarah: It’s wild, right?

So what did you think of this issue? It was, it was quite a time capsule. What did you think?

Amanda: The reviews themselves? Boring.

Sarah: Totally boring.

Amanda: There wasn’t a book in there, I think for either of us. The googling of covers in color?

Sarah: Googling the covers to find out what they actually look like?

Amanda: That was the highlight here. And it’s a shame that this is in black and white, because the covers, I think, are the most interesting part of this issue.

Sarah: Oh yeah. I really wonder if part of what happened when you got this magazine was that you got it at the bookstore, and then you went shopping for the books –

Amanda: Ooh!

Sarah: – that were in the magazine? Or if you, like, would take the magazine and then go and find these books and be like, Ooh, this is the one. I mean, you can, if you’re familiar with romance that you know, like, I can look at a cover in black and white and be like, Ooh, I bet that’s really good in color! Books at this time were so different and looked very specific. Like, they had a very, very identifiable aesthetic.

Amanda: I think we’ve talked about it before, about these covers with, like, the embossing and the giant dresses and the hair. The –

Sarah: And the hologram!

Amanda: And the hologram! They felt, like, luxurious.

Sarah: They were also borderline explicit! Like, there’s always a body part showing. One of the – do you remember on the, the magazine putting online, there was that interactive thing that showed the way that romance novels co-, changed over time from this –

Amanda: Yes! Yeah.

Sarah: Yeah, and there was a, there was a, one of the things that the writer talks about is how few people are undressed on covers anymore. It used to be that everybody was like half-naked, clothes are coming off. How many of the covers have the shirt unbuttoned and still tucked in? It is my favorite thing. But people are not naked on covers anymore; there’s not a lot of body parts showing like you’re about to, you know, go to Bone Town.

Amanda: And even if they are spicy, like, we do still have some shirtless, headless, you know, photography covers –

Sarah: Vava-, Vavangels, yeah.

Amanda: Vavangels. But –

Sarah: We, we have some beef chip, beefcake – or, they’re looking at their crotches –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: – or they’re sniffing their armpits, yeah.

Amanda: But I’m thinking of, like, Christina Lauren’s Bastard series? The first book –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: – is, like, a black and white of a man in a suit.

Sarah: Yep.

Amanda: And those books are explicit.

Sarah: Oh yes. And that was around the time that we started getting the close-up image of a, of a dude accessory, inspired by Fifty Shades of Grey…

Amanda: Yeah, a tie, a cufflink, whatever.

Sarah: Cufflinks, some of those sock garters, a collar stay, you know –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: – a keychain, whatever, some jewelry. Jewelry in a martini glass was a big one.

Amanda: Yeah. A fancy glass and some pearls.

Sarah: Yes. A string of pearls! Gosh, I wonder what that meant!

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: I’m not sure!

Amanda: It’s funny how many HaBOs we’ve had with explicit strings of pearl scenes –

Sarah: Right?

Amanda: – and it’s so funny that the comments will be like, What about this one? And then there’s this one, and Was it this one? And it’s like a dozen books with very similar strand of pearl scenes, and at the end, like, the HaBO asker is like, Still no! It’s none of these!

Sarah: [Laughs] It’s wild how there’s a very specific look for romance. Even right now there’s a very specific look for romance. Fan- –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: Rrromantasy is, you know, close-up of a big old flower and some swords and maybe some dripping stuff.

Amanda: Yeah, a sword or a crown and flowers.

Sarah: Yep. Contemporary, angsty romances are single-color photographs of also flowers, possibly bugs.

Amanda: An ex-, an exploding flower. There’s, like, petals everywhere.

Sarah: Exploding flowers; they’ve been dipped in –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: – liquid nitrogen and they’ve exploded. And then historicals are, are moving towards illustrated and sans serif font, which is so funny when you look at it compared to the –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: – type treatments that these covers had? Now, because of the Bridgerton re-coverings, a lot of the historicals have sans serif, and they look like, what did you say, the, the, the December Lorraine Heath, you’re like, That font makes it look slight, looks like a romantic suspense!

Amanda: A romantic suspense book!

Sarah: Yeah.

Amanda: Yeah!

Sarah: Yep. Covers are wild!

Amanda: Yeah, I mean, like, illustrated covers are where we’re at right now, and I think –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: – publishers really have to be distinct –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: – in art style. Like –

Sarah: For sure.

Amanda: – for me, like, Suzanne Allain’s new historicals, the art style is very interesting. I think her new one coming out is The Wrong Lady Meets Lord Right? But the art style is very interesting that I don’t see on other covers, but you do get covers where it’s like, Oh my God, this is the same art style as –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: – this one and that one and –

Sarah: Yeah, The Ladies Rewrite the Rules, The Wrong Lady Meets Lord Right: they’re historical image cutouts against a single color. And then you have Leni Kauffman doing Don’t Want You Like a Best Friend –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: – that kind of thing, and that was, those are Leni Kauffman illustrations, and like you said in the last episode, the attention to cover models has now shifted to cover illustrators, where cover illustrators –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: – have a distinctive style, and we’re following the artists. Where it used to be –

Amanda: Yeah, like –

Sarah: – we recognized the models.

Amanda: I can clock a Leni Kauffman illustration –

Sarah: Oh yeah, twenty feet.

Amanda: – pretty easily.

Sarah: Twenty feet, absolutely.

I, I missed an ad that I just accidentally scrolled to, so before we close –

Amanda: Okay.

Sarah: – I just want to say –

Amanda: Okay.

Sarah: – magazine page 72 –

Amanda: Walking on Sunshine? Is it that one?

Sarah: Yes.

Amanda: Okay. PDF 74.

Sarah: >> What made the summer of ’88 sizzle? a. The greenhouse effect, b. Diminishing ozone, c. Changes in ocean currents, d. Meteorologist Lauren Prescott’s heated battle to dethrone the king of television forecasters Sam Sweeney.

>> They could predict the weather, but they couldn’t control the heat.

Okay, so we got a global warming, ozone layer, ocean current ad –

Amanda: [Laughs] Climate crisis, everyone!

Sarah: The climate crisis ad in 1988.

Amanda: Just wait thirty years!

Sarah: No, more than that! 2024 –

Amanda: Thirty –

Sarah: – to 1988.

Amanda: Thirty-six years!

Sarah: Thirty-six years, yep. Thirty-six years, almost forty years later. Wow.

[outro]

Sarah: And that is the end of our trip back to 1988. Whoo! Those were some, those, those were some covers. I cannot wait to show you the visual aids. There should be a link in the show notes; you can also go to smartbitchestrashybooks.com. There will be a link very close to the top of the page with all of the covers, and I went and found most if not all of them.

I also want to say that on Facebook, Ezrah of I Heart Romance commented that they read the Ruth Ryan Langan book that we discussed in the reviews episode when they first started reading historicals at age eleven.

>> This was actually one of my faves until I reread this a few years ago and found issues. LOL. I still have fond memories of this book, and I reviewed it again.

I’m going to link to Ezrah’s review in the show notes as well, because looking back on some of these books now is truly an experience.

I will also have links to all of the books that we mentioned, and again, seriously, I cannot stress this enough, do not miss the visual aids. They’re just, they’re just glorious! It’s just, every cover is another of Ooh! Oh! Ooh! Fuchsia, yes! Fuchsia, giant flower, cat freaking out, very phallic horse? They’re all in there.

As always, I end with a terrible joke, and I would never leave you hanging. Are you ready?

What happens when you yell into a colander?

What happens when you yell into a colander?

You strain your voice.

[Laughs] I, I should get a colander and then just talk through it into the microphone; that would sound very strange.

On behalf of everyone here, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a wonderful weekend, and we’ll see you back here next week.

Smart Podcast, Trashy Books is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. You can find outstanding podcasts to subscribe to at frolic.media/podcasts.

[cheerful music]