One True Pairing show brief:
Pop culture, juicy romance and hilarious
conversations come together in the recently Cosmopolitan
featured One
True Pairing podcast! Join Erica Martirano and
Marissa Sangiacomo as they talk romance and revisit their favorite couples from
across TV, movies, books, and pop culture. From Prince Harry and Meghan Markle
to Ross and Rachel, this roller coaster of bad boys, break-ups, and HEAs
(Happily Ever Afters) combines love, feminism, sex, and relationships with the
gossip you love.
Episode brief:
This week Erica and
Marissa have romance author (and RITA winner for Best First Book!) Alexis
Daria back on for a full
episode. What’s a RITA? Think Oscars, but make it Romance Novels. The crew
looks at their faves in all the categories and talk a little bit about what the
RITAs mean for the romance community as a whole. Listen
here!
Romance
Awareness Month Q&A:
Can you introduce
yourselves and tell me how you got into romance?
Marissa: I’m Marissa Sangiacomo and I'm a marketing manager at St.
Martin's Press where I work on romance and commercial women's fiction. I've
loved romance novels ever since I was young and would share books with my mom. The ironic thing is that she would flag the
sex scenes with post its and tell me to skip them, which just highlighted them
for me. I was really drawn to the romances because I loved fairy tales and it
was a natural progression from fairy tales to romance for me.
Erica: I’m Erica Martiano. I’m a senior associate director of marketing
for St. Martin’s Press where I work on a variety of women’s fiction, health and
wellness, and celebrity nonfiction. But I miss working on romance desperately!
I started reading romance as a young girl stealing my mom’s historicals when she
wasn’t looking. Where Marissa, you
told your mom you were taking her books, I just took them. Sometimes while
she was reading them, which would really tick her off. I was also the type of
kid that would dog-ear pages, so not only was I taking her romance novels, she
would know I took them. But similarly my mom loved her romance books and
reading in general. I started with historicals. Dirty historicals, which is
probably why I still love dirty romances.
So what is the show
about?
Erica: One True Pairing is a podcast about love, romance, and couples.
Every other week, we chat about either an individual couple, like Prince Harry
and Meghan Markle, or about a series or universe, like the Marvel Universe. We
also have romance writers, like Laurelin Paige, Kayti McGee and of course,
Alexis Daria, on to talk about our favorite romance couples.
Marissa: And we really try to dig deep into these couples–we do a lot of
research in the couples and we try to pull out themes. Why do people love this
couple? What does our love of them say about society as a whole? We really want
to look critically at the couples, with a little bit of gossip thrown in for
good measure.
That’s great to hear
about! So, I’m interested to hear more about what you are doing for Romance
Awareness Month on the show and why?
Marissa: We've always been big fans of romance and August is Romance
Awareness Month. As a podcast that covers couples of all kinds, what better
couples to cover than the ones that started our obsession with love? We want to
help our listeners explore the genre if they never have. Our listeners tend to
skew more pop culture but we think there’s such an overlap between what we talk
about and what they can find in romance.
Erica: And if they have tried reading romance before, we want
to help them dig a little deeper and find something they haven't read before.
Step out of their comfort zone and celebrate the variety of stories you can
read.
Marissa: So every week in August we are talking with people in every
part of the romance community. We have editors and a writer and a publisher and
reviewers all coming on the show. We’re asking them questions about their work
and they will all be telling us their favorite couple from a romance novel. So
definitely stay tuned!
Just listening to the
show, you’re clearly both obsessed with couples. What do you think it is about
couples (both fiction and non-fiction) that get people talking & shipping
like you both do on the show?
Erica: I think it’s really a fantasy thing. You look at these
couples and they seem so perfect. You just want to be in their world. You want
to love them and lift them up. You want to make them even more perfect in your
brain than they ever could be in real life. That’s the fun of it!
Marissa: And I think with more fiction and romance, it's because we
like seeing ourselves in the couples a lot of times. So it's getting to imagine
yourself with this partner and what your life would be like.
Shifting a little bit,
I think an interesting thing the internet has done for romance writing is
create these shipping “subcultures” and there’s a lot of the same negative
opinions about these communities as there are about romance readers. What are
your thoughts here? Do you think these communities are normalizing romance
reading/writing or no?
Marissa: I think it's cool to be a nerd now. I think it's cool
to follow fandoms, be obsessed with them and know everything about them. We see
that with movie and TV shows like Harry Potter and Game of Thrones. And to be
honest, I think it's always been there for romance, it's just now we can be
even more open about it because everyone else is doing it.
On the flip side of
that, there have obviously been romance book communities longer than there have
been online shipping communities. So do you think these online communities
(including podcasts like yours) have changed the overall romance industry?
Erica: I think it’s interesting--you would think that with the more
fantasy and sci-fi communities popping up online, that those kind of romances
would become more popular. But, actually, in my experience, it's the other way around.
You had paranormals that were so popular in the early 2000s and now
they’re not as popular anymore. Everybody's writing about rich billionaires with
a dirty, tawdry side who want to rescue you from the world.
Marissa: Really, romantic comedy is now the big thing.
Erica: Yeah! And that's nice because now people really crave
escapism. The world is such a dumpster fire right now, why wouldn't you want to
read a romantic comedy?
It’s almost as if
people aren’t looking to escape to another place, they’re looking to escape to
a different real-life.
Marissa: Yeah, and I think romance is stepping in to the contemporary
sphere more because people are getting their fantasy, and somewhat historical
stories, on TV more and more. But I think it all just feeds in to each other.
Someone who loves The Crown might find that they love historical
romance, they just need to find it.
As marketers, do you
focus on helping these TV and movie lovers find the crossover?
Marissa: Our job as marketers is to do that. It's to say, "If you
love Game of Thrones, you've going to love this fantasy romance
series," or, "If you love The Crown, you're going to love this
historical." It’s about getting the message out there that this romance
novel is similar to that movie or show. And I think the internet helps feed
that. You can hashtag something that's similar to both to connect them. So the
internet facilitates that connection for readers.
I love the idea of the
internet acting as this connecting factor between not only different types of
romances but different types of media. Do you think that all these new spaces
and media to find romance in is taking romance lovers away from books? Do you
think people are leaving the romance novel community in favor other media?
Marissa: I don't think other media limit romance audiences because it's
really the same audience. It's almost as if romance readers are saying, “Duh,
we've been doing this forever and now you're catching on.” And maybe
some people who have never read romance are just now finding the genre, but I
think it's less existing readers leaving romance novels and more TV and movie
lovers discovering romance. Romance readers have always been on top of it.
Erica: Pun intended. But I agree--there have been so many people
reading romance for years and now other people are coming to it and us hardcore
fans are like, “where the hell have you been?” But we’re happy to have you!
Your show comments on
pop culture couples in the same way my blog comments on romance couples. Do you
think podcasting has changed the romance commentary?
Erica: I think podcasts have made a safe space for romance readers.
Just like how My Favorite Murder created a safe space for people to talk
about true crime, podcasts like ours create a safe space for people to talk
about romance and couples they love without feeling like people are, for lack
of a better term, shitting all over their passions.
Marissa: Yeah, and you have someone in your ear who's saying things you
agree with so it feels more like a friendship where sometimes I think on the
internet it can feel aggressive and mean.
What romance are you
reading at the moment and why should we ship the couple?
Erica: I ship the book I just finished reading so hard. It’s Silver
Bastard by Joanna Wylde. Becca and Puck are awesome! He saves her from a
life of biker prostitution. She slams a pot of hot coffee over someone's head
to protect him in a bar fight. They’re wonderful and I definitely ship them.
It's such a great book.
Marissa: I'm going to go with Tara Sivec because I love her and
her new book, Kiss the Girl in the Naughty Princess Club series, is
coming out soon. It's about three ladies who start an at-home stripping
business. They are all vaguely like princesses–the main character is named
Ariel and she’s with a guy named Eric. So, Ariel and Eric, like The Little
Mermaid. It's so fun and adorable. She also has a mouth like a sailor, so I
doubly I love her.
What's coming up for the
podcast during Romance Awareness Month? What do we have to look forward to and
where can we find you?
Both: We have so much coming up. Like we said earlier, we have an
episode dropping every Wednesday in August. You can listen to those on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, or whatever podcast platform your prefer. You
can follow us on Twitter @OTP_Pod. We love interacting with our listeners so
please do tweet at us!
Thank you so much for
coming on and I’ll be sure to listen!
Marissa: Thanks for having us!
Erica: This was so fun!
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