April 23, 2025 • 34 mins
USA Today Bestselling Author Golden Angel joins the podcast to read a sample from A SEASON FOR TREASON! She talks about writing power dynamics in historical vs contemporary romances, how she approaches historical accuracy, and a fun research rabbit hole that inspired a subplot in this series.
00:00 Introduction to the Historical Romance Sampler Podcast
01:49 A Season for Treason
12:55 Interview with Golden Angel: Inspirations and Themes
18:03 Writing Historical Romance: Challenges and Joys
26:12 Love It or Leave It: Romance Tropes
31:54 Upcoming Releases and Where to Find Golden Angel
Find out more about Golden Angel at https://www.goldenangelromance.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:04):
Welcome to the historicalromance sampler podcast.
I'm your host, Katherine Grant, andeach week I introduce you to another
amazing historical romance author.
My guest reads a little sampleof their work, and then we move
into a free ranging interview.
If you like these episodes, don'tforget to subscribe to the historical
(00:24):
romance sampler, wherever youlisten to podcasts and follow us
on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
Now let's get into this week's episode.
I am thrilled to be joinedtoday by Golden Angel.
Golden is a USA Today bestselling author who writes heart
and bottom warming romance.
She is happily married, old enoughto know better but still too young
(00:48):
to care, and a big fan of happilyever afters, strong heroes and
heroines, and sizzling chemistry.
When she's not writing, she can be foundon the couch reading, in front of her
sewing machine making a new cosplay,hanging out with her friends, Or,
Wandering the Maryland Renaissance Fair.
Golden, I'm so glad you are here today.
(01:10):
Thank you so much for joining.
Thank you so much for having me.
I'm excited to be here.
Yes, I actually you got name checkedby one of my previous guests, Maggie
Sims, as being one of her originalinspirations for writing and publishing.
Oh goodness, she's so kind.
Yeah, so I, I already knew about you,and then once she said that, I was
(01:31):
like, well, I really wanted to talkabout, talk to Golden, so I was so
glad when you expressed interest, andyeah, I'm glad we're doing this today.
Absolutely, yeah, I love Maggie.
She is incredibly sweet, andshe's a very good author, so
I appreciate her shout out.
Yeah, so what are yougoing to read for us today?
So today I am reading from A Seasonfor Treason, which is book one of
(01:53):
my Deception and Discipline series.
I like to describe this series asBridgerton, but with spankings and spies.
So basically I wanted a debutante girlgang hunting down a traitor for the crown,
and in this first book Mary, who's our,my wallflower is, she goes unnoticed.
(02:15):
Think a little bit Penelope vibes fromthe Bridgerton series but instead of
turning it into a gossip column she andher friends have decided that this makes
her the perfect person to infiltratethe Society of Sin, which is a secret
society within society, and it's, they're,basically, they're suspicious, they
know that the traitor has some kind ofconnection to the Society of Sin, they
(02:38):
aren't sure what Mary has been introducedto the known leader Who goes by Rex,
he's actually the Marquess of Hartford.
But everyone within the societycalls him Rex because he's
the king of their society.
And he is a rake, unrepentant.
And this season he happensto be looking for a wife.
Which Mary does not realize.
(03:01):
When she starts trying to, when shestarts trying to spy on him, and
as a wallflower, she's, she's beenvery shy, she's always overlooked.
People don't even notice when she'sin the room, they just talk, and so
she's always overhearing gossip andthings that she's not supposed to.
And they feel like this makes her theperfect person, of course, to go into
the society on a masquerade night.
(03:21):
But she, Rex, is the only person.
Who notices her, andhe always notices her.
So we're actually, we're not goingto do the masquerade one, but
this happens, what I'm readingfrom happens a little bit earlier.
When she's still kind of tryingto follow him around before we get
into him catching her in his house.
(03:42):
Sounds like a great setup.
Yeah, okay.
So, this is starting fromMary's point of view.
In the dense crush of peopleattending the Richmond's Ball, Mary's
short stature became an advantage.
Aunt Elizabeth had settled in fora good gossip with her friend, Lady
Walsh, directing Thomas, (that's Mary'scousin) to promenade with Arabella
(04:03):
and Mary, so they could look overthis year's gentlemen while there
were many returning possibilities.
There were also many newcomers tothe marriage mart coming from the
country or finally rising out ofthe shadows of London, bowing to the
inevitability of finding a suitable bride.
While Thomas was certainly accomplished asa chaperone, he clearly thought Arabella
was the likelier troublemaker, focusingmost of his attention on his wife.
(04:27):
When Lord Herschel trod on her flounce,tearing it, and Arabella turned to rip
up at him, Thomas was there to stimmyher, releasing Mary's hold on his arm.
It was that easy to slip behindthe large frame of the gentleman
standing just to the side of herand disappear into the crowd.
As short as she was, neither Arabella norThomas should be able to easily spot her
once she was away from them, and thereforethey could not expect her to see them.
(04:53):
They would expect her to makeher way back to Aunt Elizabeth,
and she would, eventually.
First, though, Mary made her way upto the second floor, where there was
a gallery overlooking the ballroom.
She was far from the only personlooking down at the crowd, and she
could certainly move about more freely.
Half hidden behind one of thecolumns, she was able to see
everything and everyone below.
(05:14):
It appeared Thomas and Arabella werenow arguing, and she had to wonder
if they had even noticed her absence.
Reminding herself that it was aboon they so easily forgot her, she
kept looking for familiar faces.
Ah, there were Josie and Lily, herfriends, on the far side of the room,
standing in a circle of admirers.
Perhaps- But no, she spotted Hartfordtalking with the French delegation.
(05:37):
Seeking out her friendswould have to wait.
He was speaking with the French,and Evie had her suspicions of them.
There were quite a few pretty ladies inthe group, and Mary had to push away the
little claws of jealousy digging into herchest when Hartford smiled down at the
dark haired beauty he was speaking to.
He had looked that way at Marywhen he was bowing over her hand
and it hadn't meant a thing.
Which was good, she reminded herself.
(06:00):
She needed to stop mooning over Hartfordlike a lovesick schoolgirl just because he
made her tingle and the skin on the backof her hand still felt warm from where
his lips had pressed against her glove.
While Mary was not a complete innocentyoung miss, thanks to Evie's explanations,
since she actually was experiencedin such matters, Mary dismissed her
body's reaction as the result ofhaving a practiced rake focus on her.
(06:23):
Any other rake would likely have thesame effect if another ever chose
to target her with his attentions.
Hartford was nothing special.
He was- Mary frowned.
He was moving away from theFrench delegation and heading to
the doors of the garden, alone.
Had he arranged to meet with oneof them in a quieter, more private
space than the ballroom provided?
Perhaps he had arranged an assignation.
(06:44):
Or perhaps there was amore nefarious purpose.
Rather than waiting to see who moved afterhim, Mary decided to hurry downstairs.
She could dog his footsteps and seewho came to meet him, which would
be easier than trying to ascertainwho, if anyone, followed him.
Scurrying down the hall, she felt a littlespurt of excitement flare in her chest.
And then we're movingto Rex's point of view.
(07:07):
The din of the ballroom and cloyingperfume of the French ladies had
begun to give him a headache.
While the ladies were beautifuland flirtatious, happily hinting
at their availability for adivertissement, an affair with a
married lady was not his current aim.
His friend Lucas slipped awayas well during the conversation.
Likely headed to the card tables.
(07:27):
Rex needed a moment to collect himselfbefore he dragged his friend away from
punting himself up the river tick.
Moving steadily away from the house,seeking refuge in the high hedges of
the garden pathways, Rex sighed withrelief as the noise slowly quieted.
The night air was cool against his skin,
slowly clearing his lungs ofthe chaotic mix of scents that
had clashed in the ballroom.
(07:49):
The sensation that his cravat had createda noose around his neck slowly subsided,
as did the headache that had been growing.
Ton balls were certainly not hispreferred form of entertainment,
and his reason for attending hadonly added to his discontent.
Slowing his stride, taking the timeto look at some of the flowers under
the moonlight, and admitting tohimself he was only doing so to delay
(08:11):
his return to the ball, he becameaware that he was being followed.
At first, he thought it mightbe one of the French ladies
looking for an assignation.
But when he paused to examinea rosebush, so did his pursuer.
A lady hoping
for a tryst would hardly be so shy,but he did detect a sweep of pale
skirts when he turned his head backas if looking over his shoulder.
(08:32):
Very pale skirts.
A debutante?
Following a rake into a darkened garden?
It wasn't plausible, but very few ladieswore that pale a hue during the season.
Intrigued, Rex wandered on, turning acorner with a suitably thick rhododendron
for him to hide behind, waiting forthe lady so he could see who she was.
(08:53):
Any debutante with the audacity to followhim into the garden piqued his interest.
As long as she was not atitle or fortune hunter.
Hell, perhaps even if she was.
There was no rule saying a young ladysearching for a title or fortune would not
make an entertaining and enjoyable wife.
His eyebrows rose at the figure thatappeared next to the rhododendron,
hugging its branches as she lookedabout, trying to see where he had gone.
(09:15):
It was Miss Wilson.
Apparently, not as much a cypher asshe had appeared next to her cousin.
Perhaps he had been hasty in his judgment.
"Hello there." His voice was a low purr ashe emerged from the shadows of the bush,
looming over her from a mere foot away.
Her eyes widening, she steppedback, but she did not run, her head
tipping back up to stare at him.
(09:36):
"Looking for someone?"
"I-" She blinked.
Rallied.
Her chin came up with astubborn, feminine air.
"Lord Hartford, I seem to have lostmy way. My apologies for interrupting
your evening." Rex took a stepcloser, tilting his head down.
In the moonlight, it was hard to seewhether she paled or blushed, but
he saw the rising panic in her eyes.
(09:58):
Despite that, she held her ground,rather than retreating again,
which only intrigued him more.
"Have you?" He asked, standing closeenough that the pale blue skirts
of her dress brushed his shins.
"Have I?" She repeated.
She didn't seem to be able to look away.
Rex leaned down, his lips movingcloser and closer to hers,
(10:19):
giving her ample time to run.
Would she run, or wouldshe let him kiss her?
"Lost your way." Her eyelashesfluttered against her cheeks
and then his lips were on hers.
It started as a gentle kiss, a firm pressof his lips against hers, but when she
did not immediately jump back, Rex's owndesires, pushed him onward, his hands
(10:39):
found her hips, holding her in placeand pulling her lower body against his.
Perhaps Miss Wilson had been hamperedby her stuffy cousin's expectations
and overshadowed by Arabella'sexuberant confidence in the ballroom.
But out here, in the darkness ofthe garden, she was revealing an
adventurous and far more interestingsidee than he would have ever guessed.
(11:00):
Running his tongue along the seamof her lips, he was gratified
when she opened on a gasp.
He ruthlessly deepened thekiss, his hand sliding to her
back to cradle her against him.
She met his tongue with her own,uncertainly at first, then with growing
confidence, stirring his passions.
Satisfaction and interest welled.
Well now, perhaps tonightwas not a total loss.
(11:24):
Oooooh!
What a wonderful setup andsteamy conclusion, and I can only
imagine the steam that follows.
Ha ha ha, oh, they're a lot of fun.
It's, it's very much a cat and mouse gamebetween them because she's hunting him,
thinking that he might know somethingabout the traitor, and he's hunting her,
thinking she might make a good wife.
(11:45):
Yeah, that's really
fun.
That's a good oppositionand thing to play with.
I have a lot of questions foryou, but first we're going to take
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(12:27):
Hey, audiobook listeners!
Have you checked out the officialHistorical Romance Sampler
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Head on over to the Historical RomanceSampler link tree to learn more.
Well, I am back with Golden Angel,who just read us from, who just
read from A Season for Treason.
Which, by the way, isjust such a fun title.
I love my alliterations.
So there are a couple of thingsfrom the specific sample that you
(13:13):
read that I want to ask about.
First of all, I love the concept thatthis series is following these, these
debutants who are spies and thatthe wallflower, which is a perceived
weakness, is actually her superpower.
Can you talk about thattheme a little bit?
And do we see that for allthe other debutants as well?
Absolutely.
So basically the idea behind thisseries I had an idea for a lady spy
(13:36):
and I really wanted to write that.
And it, when I, when I started reallythinking about this series, I decided
that my lady spy, she is the nieceto the spymaster for the crown.
Her uncle and her cousins raised her.
And they want her to be like in a regulardebutante and she wants to be a spy.
So she's constantly just kind oflike budding into their business,
(13:59):
basically, and they're alwaystrying to keep her out of it.
So when she finds out that a traitorhas tried to assassinate the Duke of
York she and her cousins and uncle are,as usual, trying to keep her out of it.
She gathers up her three best friends,who are all debutantes, Takes the
information that she has and isbasically like you're going to help
me catch the traitor to the crown.
(14:19):
So she's our general.
Mary is the wallflower.
So she's like the one who blends in,the one who overhears the gossip.
Josie is the honeypot.
She's the diamond of the first water.
People, she's blonde, she'sbeautiful, she's bubbly.
Everyone assumes she has no brains.
And also when you need adistraction, she's perfect for that
because she walks into a room andeverybody's eyes go straight to her.
(14:42):
And then Lily is my blue stocking.
She's extremely intelligent, hasvery little patience for this whole
season thing, and is really onlythere because Evie asked her to be.
And she also has a lot ofcontacts on the continent.
She does like pen pals.
She loves to learn, she'sconstantly reading, and so she's
(15:02):
got all sorts of different kindsof knowledge at her fingertips.
And I think one of my favoritethings is that I did Josie's story,
which is the second book, is anoops, I married the wrong brother.
So she, she's been in love withone of Evie's cousins for years
Joseph, but Joseph falls in lovewith this debutante named Miss Bliss.
And so he ends up marrying herand Josie gets into a scandal
(15:25):
that requires her to get married.
And at first it looks like she'sgoing to have to marry Joseph,
but then his older brother
Elijah steps into the frayand says he'll marry Josie.
Which allows Joseph to marry thedebutante that he wants, Miss Bliss.
And poor Miss Bliss is kindof the typical debutante.
And so she, she gets left outof everything, first of all.
(15:48):
No one's telling her anything that'sgoing on until the danger starts
becoming too much that everyone needsto be informed that things are getting
dangerous and you need to be safe.
But her, her superpower is that she is thetypical debutante, and she really helps
them out later in one of the books becauseshe has all of the families memorized.
(16:08):
She knows who all theeligible young men are.
She knows who are the families, who thefamilies are, who they're connected to.
She keeps track of the invitations.
She keeps track of the eventsthat they're invited to.
She keeps track of who's probablygoing to show up to those events.
And that turns out to benecessary information.
So, you know, the book, and, andshe gets a book in a later series.
(16:30):
But this series, because this seriesreally centered around these four
young women who are, like, not theusual debutante, I really did want
to have that side character who camein and was like, no, but all the,
all the things that were supposedto be, those are also a superpower.
This comes with that.
A particular kind of knowledgeand it comes with a particular
skill set that is also valuable.
(16:50):
So yeah, I mean, this, this reallywas a series very much centered around
the women, the power that women couldhave, even in a society that, by and
large, didn't give them much power.
They really had to you workwithin confines, like work within
boundaries work within confinesthat were set on them by society.
(17:11):
And especially at the level of rank thatthey held, they were even more confined.
And so these four step outof it and fight against it.
And Miss bliss is there in themiddle of it going, well, I
also have something to offer.
So
I love that.
I love that.
It's balancing out the like, pickme, I'm not like other girls.
(17:32):
Like actually, all kindsof girls are great.
Yeah, and they make such and theymake a great group of friends.
That was the other thing is I reallyI love writing groups of friends.
I love writing groups of supportive women.
And the fact that I could write awhole series about a girl group that's
just trying desperately to hunt downa traitor to the crown but they keep
(17:53):
getting caught in scandals that requirethem to get married to men who like
to spank them is just like that's.
That's everything.
Well, and so for the spy intriguepart of it, is that at all based
on like actual historical events?
Because I know there were someassassination attempts and
assassinations during the Regency period.
(18:16):
It is not at all based on any kindof, and I, I'm actually very careful.
I don't put the date, like, I don't putthe year that any of this is happening.
I try to keep context clueskind of as vague as possible.
You know, I'll, I'll mention thingsthat have happened in the past, I'll
mention inventions, stuff like that.
You know, and it, it, some people ask meif it's Regency, some people ask me if
(18:41):
it's Victorian, I always just say yes.
I'm like, it's whatever you want it to be.
In my head, personally, I do thinkit veers more towards Victorian, and
you'll occasionally hear referenceto the Queen and you'll occasionally
hear, like, one, one of the thingsthat happens in this is that we do have
Lily's Book the third one she ends upwith a with a very intelligent man,
(19:04):
who's an inventor, and he hasinvented a steam powered sex
machine Which didn't exist.
I mean they did but they had a tendencyto blow up That's a little problematic
Like I saw I spent a whole afternoonlike researching, but there were,
you know, with the technology of thetime, there were some issues with
(19:25):
like the boiler and the release ofsteam and having it in such a small.
All right.
So tell me more about thisresearch, like journey.
Is it, is this stuff, are therelike museums or specific research?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There's museums, there's books,there's a lot of online articles.
(19:46):
I mean, we have, in, in several museums,I actually visited one in Amsterdam,
of course that was a museum of sex, andthey had displays, and you can see a
lot of pictures of displays of, like,the machine, not the machines, like,
but the, the steam powered ones, but,like, actual machines that were used,
that were mostly hand crank becauseThat, that's what didn't blow up.
(20:08):
There's, there's a varietyof, of sex, historical sex
toys and articles about them.
There's videos, there's a wonderfulhistorian She goes by Kinky History,
and I know she's on both YouTubeand TikTok, and she's just fabulous.
She always has, like, really greatvideos on all sorts of, like, historical
naughty things that I just adore.
(20:29):
But yeah, I mean, I had heard of them, butI I'd heard that steampower sex machines
were, like, a thing, and I was reallyexcited about it, so I went to research
them and found out that actually theyweren't really a thing, because they did
tend to explode, and that was, you know,Something that didn't seem to be overcome.
So I decided that for my purposes Myhero was a very, very good inventor,
(20:50):
and he figured out a way around it.
Unfortunately, his designs andmachine were lost to time, so
that's why we don't have him today.
Yeah, you know, you neverknow what got lost to time.
He kept it for personal use, youknow, like, and then his children,
when they inherited, were probablylike, oh god, get rid of it.
All right, well, one thing I want toask is you know, you write across a
broad variety of romance, Subgenres.
(21:13):
Contemporary, paranormal, historical.
When you write historical,what brings you back to it?
And maybe what does it offer youthat the other genres don't offer?
So I, I actually wanted tomajor in history when I was
in college for a little bit.
I love history.
I read history non fiction books for fun.
(21:36):
There are specific time periodsthat I get really invested in.
To the lesser extent, regency but Iread a ton and you know once I found
out that there was historical romanceI started reading a ton of that, you
know and it kind of, you know Partof the reason I do genre hop so much
(21:57):
is because I have trouble writing inthe same world, two books in a row.
It's like, I finish abook and stuff changes.
I have outlines, I don't completelypants it, as we say, you know.
I usually have an outline, I havea plot, I know what's gonna happen.
But as I'm writing, things change.
So a lot of the time what Ireally need is after I finish
(22:21):
a
book in my contemporary series, whileI'm writing that book, a lot of the
time, I'm thinking about the historical,which is the next thing I'll be writing.
And then, because when Ifinished that contemporary
book, things will have changed.
And I'm going to need to think throughthose changes and how that's going to
change the next contemporary book, andso I'll do that while I'm writing my
(22:41):
next historical so basically insteadof taking like breaks to do all this
thinking, I'm just working on somethingelse that i've already thought about.
And that's a reallyclever way to handle that.
Yeah, and the really nice thingabout going back and forth between the
contemporary and the historical is theway that it allows me, especially since
I write kinky books, the way that itallows me to play with the power dynamics.
(23:03):
My contemporaries by necessityare very consent driven.
They're very they are BDSM inthat, you know, there's safe words,
there's, you know, Explicit consent.
There's clubs.
There's, you know, stuff like that.
With my historicals, I get to play alittle bit more with power dynamics
in a way that I just don't get to withcontemporary because of the time period,
(23:26):
and in some ways, having those constraintsabout, around what the women can and
can't do makes me be more creative becauseit's not, I can't just be like, oh yeah,
and then she got on a horse astride androde to where she wanted to go without a
companion, you know, like she's she's gotto work around all these things, which
(23:47):
makes it a little bit more challenging.
It also makes it.
It makes it kind of fun because Idon't have to follow the rules
of explicit consent so much.
And I, you know, what I approveof in real life is very different
from what I approve of in fiction.
But when I'm writing contemporary, it'salmost like I'm writing more real life.
(24:08):
And so I have a much bigger problemwriting anything where the consent is a
little bit more dubious, where the thingsthat some of my historical heroes would
do if I put them in a contemporary, I'dbe like, no, you cannot, not allowed,
not in this day and age but when I'mwriting historical, for some reason it's
fine, because I know that, like, it's adifferent, it's a different era, there
(24:31):
are different expectations of the men.
And so I'm able to kind of letgo of my modern sensibilities
of like, no, that's not okay.
And just be like, and justenjoy the fantasy of it.
And that, that's really, I think,what keeps drawing me back to it.
And I, even there, like, myhistoricals have gotten I say
more consent-y as I've gone along.
(24:54):
My oldest series, which is thedomestic discipline quartet.
It's very much like she does somethingnaughty, she gets thrown over his knee.
By the time we get to the deception anddiscipline series it's much more, you
know, he's crooking his finger and saying,come here and put yourself over my knee.
And actually in the last book, Evie,my, my bossy lady spy, at one point,
(25:18):
he's giving her a spanking becauseshe did something and she, you know,
he asks, says something to her, youknow, like asking, well, why do you
think you're getting the spanking?
And she looks at him, this is oneof my favorite lines that I've ever
written, which is why I can remember it.
She looks at him and she goes, "I'mnot letting you spank me because
I think I deserve it. I'm lettingyou spank me because I like it."
(25:41):
Oh, yeah, that's great.
Yeah.
And I was just like, it's so her.
And I mean, all of my heroines enjoytheir spankings to a degree, but in
the, in the first series that I everwrote, they certainly don't know that
the first time it happens to them.
And there are more, like,disciplinary, right?
Disciplinary spankingsand stuff like that.
(26:02):
And then by the time we get todeception and discipline, it's
much more about, like, you're beingpunished, but is it really a punishment?
Like
Yeah.
All right, I think it's timeto play Love It or Leave It.
[Musical Interlude]
All right, Love It or Leave It.
Protagonists meet in thefirst 10 percent of the novel.
(26:23):
I do love it.
When it takes too long for people to meet.
It, it drives me a little nutsand actually I prefer it if the,
if the protagonists meet likeseveral books before their book.
Oh, okay.
I love it.
I like, I like that real slow burn.
Even when I write different series,but they're all in the set in the same
(26:45):
world, like my Deception and Disciplineseries, Mary and Rex actually appear
in the series prior to that, whichyou don't have to read, you know, if
you don't want to, but they appear inlike the third book of that series.
And so they, I got to know them over acouple books before writing their book.
So yeah.
And then if I'm starting like mynew series that I'm starting where
(27:05):
they didn't meet in previous books,I didn't have a setup for them.
I still made it.
My upcoming book is the Duke'sIndecent Scandal and the hero and
heroine, it's a brother's best friend.
Because I wanted them to havemet before the book even started.
That is how wedded I am to that.
I love that.
(27:25):
Okay, love it or leave it.
Dual point of view narration.
Love it.
I, that's mostly what I write.
I will very occasionally writefrom one point of view, but mostly
I like to go back and forth.
Love it or leave it, third person,
past tense?
It's almost exclusively what I write in.
So I love it.
I occasionally write something else.
(27:46):
Sometimes I'll write first person.
I usually write past tense.
I have a few books I think where itwas first person present, but there
has to be a pretty good reason for it.
Like I, my comfort zoneis third person past.
Love it or leave it, the thirdact breakup or dark moment?
Mostly leave it.
I have what I like to call gray moments.
(28:09):
Oh.
I don't really like breakups.
It's usually some kind of hurdlethat needs to be resolved.
And you know, the dark momentisn't so much a, Oh God, how
can they ever get over this?
But a, but more of, well, sometimes it is.
But it, you know, it, it tends tobe more of like emotionally dark.
(28:29):
In that, they don't know howto get past this hurdle that
has come up in front of them.
But you know, one of the reasons I liketo say that my books are like heart and
bottom warming is because I do like aheavy emphasis on the heart warming.
I don't love angst a little bit.
You know, you want to, you wantto know that they're earning
their happily ever after.
(28:50):
But I prefer books where you feelreally good while you're reading it.
And it's like, you get to that momentand you're like, okay, this is hard.
This is hard, but I believethey can make it through.
So I don't really like like a dark,dark moment, but a gray moment.
There's something that needs tobe overcome, and if they can get
(29:10):
their act together, they'll be ableto do it, overcome it together.
I like that.
Okay, love it or leave it,always end with an epilogue?
Love it.
Yeah, I love epilogues.
This is partly because my booksare so connected, I think.
I usually write the epiloguefrom the point of view of the
characters of the next book.
Because I do, I will say, I don't liketo do epilogues where it's like the
(29:33):
characters from that book and oh we'regetting a little hint of them in the
future, that's not really my thing.
So like when you get to the end ofa season for treason, The epilogue,
I believe, is from Josie's point ofview because she's the next book,
and she, so we're seeing a littlebit of, like, her problems and, like,
what's coming up in the next book andthat's how I like to do my epilogues.
(29:55):
All right.
Love it or leave it?
Always share researchin the author's note.
I love it when other authors do it.
I actually rarely do it myself.
Mostly because like I said, like Ijust, I don't know where a lot of my
knowledge comes from at this pointbecause I've spent my entire life
reading historical nonfiction for fun.
So like if I'm just sitting therereading history books and like I'm
(30:17):
watching things and I don't alwayswrite down, you know, it's kind of
just all in my head in a jumble.
I rarely have to lookthings up at this point.
And when I do, I'm usually just likelooking online real quick to make sure
that what I think is true is true.
Like, I'm just looking for confirmation.
So for the most part, I don't putresearch And with the exception of
explaining in a season for smugglers thatyes, I know that steam, steam powered
(30:41):
sex machines blow up and that theydidn't actually work and I don't care.
I put it in the book anyway.
And here's a link.
Yes.
So that's like the one time thatI'm like, yes, I did the research.
I understand.
I don't care.
That was my author's note.
I love it.
And are there any other romance rulesthat I didn't ask about that you break
(31:02):
or Maybe just push the boundaries on?
Oh, I always love to play with theromance rules and expectations.
You know, like.
doing a group of debutantes that arehunting down a traitor to the crown.
Like, I understand howridiculous that sounds.
And the series that followedthat was Femdom Histrom.
(31:23):
So, it's the ladies in charge andlike it, it, which is the desire
and discipline series, which, youknow, many people would have told
me, I think, do not write, Fem Dom
historical romance but the,the books do really well.
People seem to really like them.
And I, I think there is more of a callfor it too, but yeah, I think one of
(31:44):
the fun things about being so immersedin historical romance is kind of
knowing the rules so that I can playwith them so that I can break them.
Yeah, I love that.
Okay, and speaking of, The Duke'sIndecent Scandal is coming out April 29th.
Yes, and that is, it's the firstbook of the Indecent Dukes series.
(32:06):
And that, you know, so that's anotherway, I I don't normally write all
Dukes this, this series is gonna be allDukes, but the way that I had to make
it work in my head, because I know, I'mlike, there's, this is an unfathomable,
there's seven Dukes who are young andhandsome and all in need of brides.
This is ridiculous.
How do I set this up?
(32:26):
So in a previous book in a differentseries, I set up the, I, the fact that,
like, seven dukes had, or actually,a whole group, I think a total was
eight dukes had been died in a huntinglodge gunpowder explosion and fire.
So now heirs are in need of wivesand heirs because they're, they
(32:47):
became dukes all at once, muchsooner than they expected to.
Wow.
That's a creative way.
Yeah, that's very creative.
So, and that's how I made it work inmy head, because I, I do, you know,
I do have that like, how, there,there are a lot of dukes just running
around that are young and handsomeall at the same time in historical
(33:08):
romances, and that's how I fixed it.
Yeah.
So.
Alright, so A Duke's IndecentScandal comes out April 29th.
A Season for Treason, which iswhat we heard today, is already
out, so listeners can go read it.
Where can our listeners find youand your books on the interwebs?
So my website, which has all ofmy books listed out on it, is www.
(33:34):
goldenangelromance.
com.
And it will also prompt you to sign up formy newsletter, which will give you free
books and bonus scenes if you sign up.
I am on most social media, however,I'm not active on most of them.
I am, you are most likely toactually be able to like find
me to interact with on Facebook.
Where I'm on there is Golden Angel, butspecifically in my Facebook group, which
(33:58):
is called the Golden Angel Legion Lair.
And we have a lot of fun in there.
active group.
People like sharing memes, sharingother books, asking questions.
It's a very kink friendly group.
We've had people ask about the lifestyle,getting into it, stuff like that.
And then I am also the other placethat I'm mostly active is TikTok.
(34:18):
That's great.
Well, I'm going to put a link to yourwebsite in the show notes, so listeners,
you can just click on through andI know there's a call out to that
Facebook group on your website too.
So everyone will be able to find it.
Yay.
Thank you so much.
Yeah.
Well, thank you so much.
This has been such a blast.
Thank you for coming on.
Oh, of course.
Thank you so much for having me.
It was so nice to beable to chat with you.
(34:39):
That's it for this week!
Don't forget to subscribe to theHistorical Romance Sampler wherever
you listen, and follow us onInstagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
Until next week, happy reading!
Welcome to the historicalromance sampler podcast.
I'm your host, Katherine Grant, andeach week I introduce you to another
amazing historical romance author.
My guest reads a little sampleof their work, and then we move
into a free ranging interview.
If you like these episodes, don'tforget to subscribe to the historical
(00:24):
romance sampler, wherever youlisten to podcasts and follow us
on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
Now let's get into this week's episode.
I am thrilled to be joinedtoday by Golden Angel.
Golden is a USA Today bestselling author who writes heart
and bottom warming romance.
She is happily married, old enoughto know better but still too young
(00:48):
to care, and a big fan of happilyever afters, strong heroes and
heroines, and sizzling chemistry.
When she's not writing, she can be foundon the couch reading, in front of her
sewing machine making a new cosplay,hanging out with her friends, Or,
Wandering the Maryland Renaissance Fair.
Golden, I'm so glad you are here today.
(01:10):
Thank you so much for joining.
Thank you so much for having me.
I'm excited to be here.
Yes, I actually you got name checkedby one of my previous guests, Maggie
Sims, as being one of her originalinspirations for writing and publishing.
Oh goodness, she's so kind.
Yeah, so I, I already knew about you,and then once she said that, I was
(01:31):
like, well, I really wanted to talkabout, talk to Golden, so I was so
glad when you expressed interest, andyeah, I'm glad we're doing this today.
Absolutely, yeah, I love Maggie.
She is incredibly sweet, andshe's a very good author, so
I appreciate her shout out.
Yeah, so what are yougoing to read for us today?
So today I am reading from A Seasonfor Treason, which is book one of
(01:53):
my Deception and Discipline series.
I like to describe this series asBridgerton, but with spankings and spies.
So basically I wanted a debutante girlgang hunting down a traitor for the crown,
and in this first book Mary, who's our,my wallflower is, she goes unnoticed.
(02:15):
Think a little bit Penelope vibes fromthe Bridgerton series but instead of
turning it into a gossip column she andher friends have decided that this makes
her the perfect person to infiltratethe Society of Sin, which is a secret
society within society, and it's, they're,basically, they're suspicious, they
know that the traitor has some kind ofconnection to the Society of Sin, they
(02:38):
aren't sure what Mary has been introducedto the known leader Who goes by Rex,
he's actually the Marquess of Hartford.
But everyone within the societycalls him Rex because he's
the king of their society.
And he is a rake, unrepentant.
And this season he happensto be looking for a wife.
Which Mary does not realize.
(03:01):
When she starts trying to, when shestarts trying to spy on him, and
as a wallflower, she's, she's beenvery shy, she's always overlooked.
People don't even notice when she'sin the room, they just talk, and so
she's always overhearing gossip andthings that she's not supposed to.
And they feel like this makes her theperfect person, of course, to go into
the society on a masquerade night.
(03:21):
But she, Rex, is the only person.
Who notices her, andhe always notices her.
So we're actually, we're not goingto do the masquerade one, but
this happens, what I'm readingfrom happens a little bit earlier.
When she's still kind of tryingto follow him around before we get
into him catching her in his house.
(03:42):
Sounds like a great setup.
Yeah, okay.
So, this is starting fromMary's point of view.
In the dense crush of peopleattending the Richmond's Ball, Mary's
short stature became an advantage.
Aunt Elizabeth had settled in fora good gossip with her friend, Lady
Walsh, directing Thomas, (that's Mary'scousin) to promenade with Arabella
(04:03):
and Mary, so they could look overthis year's gentlemen while there
were many returning possibilities.
There were also many newcomers tothe marriage mart coming from the
country or finally rising out ofthe shadows of London, bowing to the
inevitability of finding a suitable bride.
While Thomas was certainly accomplished asa chaperone, he clearly thought Arabella
was the likelier troublemaker, focusingmost of his attention on his wife.
(04:27):
When Lord Herschel trod on her flounce,tearing it, and Arabella turned to rip
up at him, Thomas was there to stimmyher, releasing Mary's hold on his arm.
It was that easy to slip behindthe large frame of the gentleman
standing just to the side of herand disappear into the crowd.
As short as she was, neither Arabella norThomas should be able to easily spot her
once she was away from them, and thereforethey could not expect her to see them.
(04:53):
They would expect her to makeher way back to Aunt Elizabeth,
and she would, eventually.
First, though, Mary made her way upto the second floor, where there was
a gallery overlooking the ballroom.
She was far from the only personlooking down at the crowd, and she
could certainly move about more freely.
Half hidden behind one of thecolumns, she was able to see
everything and everyone below.
(05:14):
It appeared Thomas and Arabella werenow arguing, and she had to wonder
if they had even noticed her absence.
Reminding herself that it was aboon they so easily forgot her, she
kept looking for familiar faces.
Ah, there were Josie and Lily, herfriends, on the far side of the room,
standing in a circle of admirers.
Perhaps- But no, she spotted Hartfordtalking with the French delegation.
(05:37):
Seeking out her friendswould have to wait.
He was speaking with the French,and Evie had her suspicions of them.
There were quite a few pretty ladies inthe group, and Mary had to push away the
little claws of jealousy digging into herchest when Hartford smiled down at the
dark haired beauty he was speaking to.
He had looked that way at Marywhen he was bowing over her hand
and it hadn't meant a thing.
Which was good, she reminded herself.
(06:00):
She needed to stop mooning over Hartfordlike a lovesick schoolgirl just because he
made her tingle and the skin on the backof her hand still felt warm from where
his lips had pressed against her glove.
While Mary was not a complete innocentyoung miss, thanks to Evie's explanations,
since she actually was experiencedin such matters, Mary dismissed her
body's reaction as the result ofhaving a practiced rake focus on her.
(06:23):
Any other rake would likely have thesame effect if another ever chose
to target her with his attentions.
Hartford was nothing special.
He was- Mary frowned.
He was moving away from theFrench delegation and heading to
the doors of the garden, alone.
Had he arranged to meet with oneof them in a quieter, more private
space than the ballroom provided?
Perhaps he had arranged an assignation.
(06:44):
Or perhaps there was amore nefarious purpose.
Rather than waiting to see who moved afterhim, Mary decided to hurry downstairs.
She could dog his footsteps and seewho came to meet him, which would
be easier than trying to ascertainwho, if anyone, followed him.
Scurrying down the hall, she felt a littlespurt of excitement flare in her chest.
And then we're movingto Rex's point of view.
(07:07):
The din of the ballroom and cloyingperfume of the French ladies had
begun to give him a headache.
While the ladies were beautifuland flirtatious, happily hinting
at their availability for adivertissement, an affair with a
married lady was not his current aim.
His friend Lucas slipped awayas well during the conversation.
Likely headed to the card tables.
(07:27):
Rex needed a moment to collect himselfbefore he dragged his friend away from
punting himself up the river tick.
Moving steadily away from the house,seeking refuge in the high hedges of
the garden pathways, Rex sighed withrelief as the noise slowly quieted.
The night air was cool against his skin,
slowly clearing his lungs ofthe chaotic mix of scents that
had clashed in the ballroom.
(07:49):
The sensation that his cravat had createda noose around his neck slowly subsided,
as did the headache that had been growing.
Ton balls were certainly not hispreferred form of entertainment,
and his reason for attending hadonly added to his discontent.
Slowing his stride, taking the timeto look at some of the flowers under
the moonlight, and admitting tohimself he was only doing so to delay
(08:11):
his return to the ball, he becameaware that he was being followed.
At first, he thought it mightbe one of the French ladies
looking for an assignation.
But when he paused to examinea rosebush, so did his pursuer.
A lady hoping
for a tryst would hardly be so shy,but he did detect a sweep of pale
skirts when he turned his head backas if looking over his shoulder.
(08:32):
Very pale skirts.
A debutante?
Following a rake into a darkened garden?
It wasn't plausible, but very few ladieswore that pale a hue during the season.
Intrigued, Rex wandered on, turning acorner with a suitably thick rhododendron
for him to hide behind, waiting forthe lady so he could see who she was.
(08:53):
Any debutante with the audacity to followhim into the garden piqued his interest.
As long as she was not atitle or fortune hunter.
Hell, perhaps even if she was.
There was no rule saying a young ladysearching for a title or fortune would not
make an entertaining and enjoyable wife.
His eyebrows rose at the figure thatappeared next to the rhododendron,
hugging its branches as she lookedabout, trying to see where he had gone.
(09:15):
It was Miss Wilson.
Apparently, not as much a cypher asshe had appeared next to her cousin.
Perhaps he had been hasty in his judgment.
"Hello there." His voice was a low purr ashe emerged from the shadows of the bush,
looming over her from a mere foot away.
Her eyes widening, she steppedback, but she did not run, her head
tipping back up to stare at him.
(09:36):
"Looking for someone?"
"I-" She blinked.
Rallied.
Her chin came up with astubborn, feminine air.
"Lord Hartford, I seem to have lostmy way. My apologies for interrupting
your evening." Rex took a stepcloser, tilting his head down.
In the moonlight, it was hard to seewhether she paled or blushed, but
he saw the rising panic in her eyes.
(09:58):
Despite that, she held her ground,rather than retreating again,
which only intrigued him more.
"Have you?" He asked, standing closeenough that the pale blue skirts
of her dress brushed his shins.
"Have I?" She repeated.
She didn't seem to be able to look away.
Rex leaned down, his lips movingcloser and closer to hers,
(10:19):
giving her ample time to run.
Would she run, or wouldshe let him kiss her?
"Lost your way." Her eyelashesfluttered against her cheeks
and then his lips were on hers.
It started as a gentle kiss, a firm pressof his lips against hers, but when she
did not immediately jump back, Rex's owndesires, pushed him onward, his hands
(10:39):
found her hips, holding her in placeand pulling her lower body against his.
Perhaps Miss Wilson had been hamperedby her stuffy cousin's expectations
and overshadowed by Arabella'sexuberant confidence in the ballroom.
But out here, in the darkness ofthe garden, she was revealing an
adventurous and far more interestingsidee than he would have ever guessed.
(11:00):
Running his tongue along the seamof her lips, he was gratified
when she opened on a gasp.
He ruthlessly deepened thekiss, his hand sliding to her
back to cradle her against him.
She met his tongue with her own,uncertainly at first, then with growing
confidence, stirring his passions.
Satisfaction and interest welled.
Well now, perhaps tonightwas not a total loss.
(11:24):
Oooooh!
What a wonderful setup andsteamy conclusion, and I can only
imagine the steam that follows.
Ha ha ha, oh, they're a lot of fun.
It's, it's very much a cat and mouse gamebetween them because she's hunting him,
thinking that he might know somethingabout the traitor, and he's hunting her,
thinking she might make a good wife.
(11:45):
Yeah, that's really
fun.
That's a good oppositionand thing to play with.
I have a lot of questions foryou, but first we're going to take
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Head on over to the Historical RomanceSampler link tree to learn more.
Well, I am back with Golden Angel,who just read us from, who just
read from A Season for Treason.
Which, by the way, isjust such a fun title.
I love my alliterations.
So there are a couple of thingsfrom the specific sample that you
(13:13):
read that I want to ask about.
First of all, I love the concept thatthis series is following these, these
debutants who are spies and thatthe wallflower, which is a perceived
weakness, is actually her superpower.
Can you talk about thattheme a little bit?
And do we see that for allthe other debutants as well?
Absolutely.
So basically the idea behind thisseries I had an idea for a lady spy
(13:36):
and I really wanted to write that.
And it, when I, when I started reallythinking about this series, I decided
that my lady spy, she is the nieceto the spymaster for the crown.
Her uncle and her cousins raised her.
And they want her to be like in a regulardebutante and she wants to be a spy.
So she's constantly just kind oflike budding into their business,
(13:59):
basically, and they're alwaystrying to keep her out of it.
So when she finds out that a traitorhas tried to assassinate the Duke of
York she and her cousins and uncle are,as usual, trying to keep her out of it.
She gathers up her three best friends,who are all debutantes, Takes the
information that she has and isbasically like you're going to help
me catch the traitor to the crown.
(14:19):
So she's our general.
Mary is the wallflower.
So she's like the one who blends in,the one who overhears the gossip.
Josie is the honeypot.
She's the diamond of the first water.
People, she's blonde, she'sbeautiful, she's bubbly.
Everyone assumes she has no brains.
And also when you need adistraction, she's perfect for that
because she walks into a room andeverybody's eyes go straight to her.
(14:42):
And then Lily is my blue stocking.
She's extremely intelligent, hasvery little patience for this whole
season thing, and is really onlythere because Evie asked her to be.
And she also has a lot ofcontacts on the continent.
She does like pen pals.
She loves to learn, she'sconstantly reading, and so she's
(15:02):
got all sorts of different kindsof knowledge at her fingertips.
And I think one of my favoritethings is that I did Josie's story,
which is the second book, is anoops, I married the wrong brother.
So she, she's been in love withone of Evie's cousins for years
Joseph, but Joseph falls in lovewith this debutante named Miss Bliss.
And so he ends up marrying herand Josie gets into a scandal
(15:25):
that requires her to get married.
And at first it looks like she'sgoing to have to marry Joseph,
but then his older brother
Elijah steps into the frayand says he'll marry Josie.
Which allows Joseph to marry thedebutante that he wants, Miss Bliss.
And poor Miss Bliss is kindof the typical debutante.
And so she, she gets left outof everything, first of all.
(15:48):
No one's telling her anything that'sgoing on until the danger starts
becoming too much that everyone needsto be informed that things are getting
dangerous and you need to be safe.
But her, her superpower is that she is thetypical debutante, and she really helps
them out later in one of the books becauseshe has all of the families memorized.
(16:08):
She knows who all theeligible young men are.
She knows who are the families, who thefamilies are, who they're connected to.
She keeps track of the invitations.
She keeps track of the eventsthat they're invited to.
She keeps track of who's probablygoing to show up to those events.
And that turns out to benecessary information.
So, you know, the book, and, andshe gets a book in a later series.
(16:30):
But this series, because this seriesreally centered around these four
young women who are, like, not theusual debutante, I really did want
to have that side character who camein and was like, no, but all the,
all the things that were supposedto be, those are also a superpower.
This comes with that.
A particular kind of knowledgeand it comes with a particular
skill set that is also valuable.
(16:50):
So yeah, I mean, this, this reallywas a series very much centered around
the women, the power that women couldhave, even in a society that, by and
large, didn't give them much power.
They really had to you workwithin confines, like work within
boundaries work within confinesthat were set on them by society.
(17:11):
And especially at the level of rank thatthey held, they were even more confined.
And so these four step outof it and fight against it.
And Miss bliss is there in themiddle of it going, well, I
also have something to offer.
So
I love that.
I love that.
It's balancing out the like, pickme, I'm not like other girls.
(17:32):
Like actually, all kindsof girls are great.
Yeah, and they make such and theymake a great group of friends.
That was the other thing is I reallyI love writing groups of friends.
I love writing groups of supportive women.
And the fact that I could write awhole series about a girl group that's
just trying desperately to hunt downa traitor to the crown but they keep
(17:53):
getting caught in scandals that requirethem to get married to men who like
to spank them is just like that's.
That's everything.
Well, and so for the spy intriguepart of it, is that at all based
on like actual historical events?
Because I know there were someassassination attempts and
assassinations during the Regency period.
(18:16):
It is not at all based on any kindof, and I, I'm actually very careful.
I don't put the date, like, I don't putthe year that any of this is happening.
I try to keep context clueskind of as vague as possible.
You know, I'll, I'll mention thingsthat have happened in the past, I'll
mention inventions, stuff like that.
You know, and it, it, some people ask meif it's Regency, some people ask me if
(18:41):
it's Victorian, I always just say yes.
I'm like, it's whatever you want it to be.
In my head, personally, I do thinkit veers more towards Victorian, and
you'll occasionally hear referenceto the Queen and you'll occasionally
hear, like, one, one of the thingsthat happens in this is that we do have
Lily's Book the third one she ends upwith a with a very intelligent man,
(19:04):
who's an inventor, and he hasinvented a steam powered sex
machine Which didn't exist.
I mean they did but they had a tendencyto blow up That's a little problematic
Like I saw I spent a whole afternoonlike researching, but there were,
you know, with the technology of thetime, there were some issues with
(19:25):
like the boiler and the release ofsteam and having it in such a small.
All right.
So tell me more about thisresearch, like journey.
Is it, is this stuff, are therelike museums or specific research?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There's museums, there's books,there's a lot of online articles.
(19:46):
I mean, we have, in, in several museums,I actually visited one in Amsterdam,
of course that was a museum of sex, andthey had displays, and you can see a
lot of pictures of displays of, like,the machine, not the machines, like,
but the, the steam powered ones, but,like, actual machines that were used,
that were mostly hand crank becauseThat, that's what didn't blow up.
(20:08):
There's, there's a varietyof, of sex, historical sex
toys and articles about them.
There's videos, there's a wonderfulhistorian She goes by Kinky History,
and I know she's on both YouTubeand TikTok, and she's just fabulous.
She always has, like, really greatvideos on all sorts of, like, historical
naughty things that I just adore.
(20:29):
But yeah, I mean, I had heard of them, butI I'd heard that steampower sex machines
were, like, a thing, and I was reallyexcited about it, so I went to research
them and found out that actually theyweren't really a thing, because they did
tend to explode, and that was, you know,Something that didn't seem to be overcome.
So I decided that for my purposes Myhero was a very, very good inventor,
(20:50):
and he figured out a way around it.
Unfortunately, his designs andmachine were lost to time, so
that's why we don't have him today.
Yeah, you know, you neverknow what got lost to time.
He kept it for personal use, youknow, like, and then his children,
when they inherited, were probablylike, oh god, get rid of it.
All right, well, one thing I want toask is you know, you write across a
broad variety of romance, Subgenres.
(21:13):
Contemporary, paranormal, historical.
When you write historical,what brings you back to it?
And maybe what does it offer youthat the other genres don't offer?
So I, I actually wanted tomajor in history when I was
in college for a little bit.
I love history.
I read history non fiction books for fun.
(21:36):
There are specific time periodsthat I get really invested in.
To the lesser extent, regency but Iread a ton and you know once I found
out that there was historical romanceI started reading a ton of that, you
know and it kind of, you know Partof the reason I do genre hop so much
(21:57):
is because I have trouble writing inthe same world, two books in a row.
It's like, I finish abook and stuff changes.
I have outlines, I don't completelypants it, as we say, you know.
I usually have an outline, I havea plot, I know what's gonna happen.
But as I'm writing, things change.
So a lot of the time what Ireally need is after I finish
(22:21):
a
book in my contemporary series, whileI'm writing that book, a lot of the
time, I'm thinking about the historical,which is the next thing I'll be writing.
And then, because when Ifinished that contemporary
book, things will have changed.
And I'm going to need to think throughthose changes and how that's going to
change the next contemporary book, andso I'll do that while I'm writing my
(22:41):
next historical so basically insteadof taking like breaks to do all this
thinking, I'm just working on somethingelse that i've already thought about.
And that's a reallyclever way to handle that.
Yeah, and the really nice thingabout going back and forth between the
contemporary and the historical is theway that it allows me, especially since
I write kinky books, the way that itallows me to play with the power dynamics.
(23:03):
My contemporaries by necessityare very consent driven.
They're very they are BDSM inthat, you know, there's safe words,
there's, you know, Explicit consent.
There's clubs.
There's, you know, stuff like that.
With my historicals, I get to play alittle bit more with power dynamics
in a way that I just don't get to withcontemporary because of the time period,
(23:26):
and in some ways, having those constraintsabout, around what the women can and
can't do makes me be more creative becauseit's not, I can't just be like, oh yeah,
and then she got on a horse astride androde to where she wanted to go without a
companion, you know, like she's she's gotto work around all these things, which
(23:47):
makes it a little bit more challenging.
It also makes it.
It makes it kind of fun because Idon't have to follow the rules
of explicit consent so much.
And I, you know, what I approveof in real life is very different
from what I approve of in fiction.
But when I'm writing contemporary, it'salmost like I'm writing more real life.
(24:08):
And so I have a much bigger problemwriting anything where the consent is a
little bit more dubious, where the thingsthat some of my historical heroes would
do if I put them in a contemporary, I'dbe like, no, you cannot, not allowed,
not in this day and age but when I'mwriting historical, for some reason it's
fine, because I know that, like, it's adifferent, it's a different era, there
(24:31):
are different expectations of the men.
And so I'm able to kind of letgo of my modern sensibilities
of like, no, that's not okay.
And just be like, and justenjoy the fantasy of it.
And that, that's really, I think,what keeps drawing me back to it.
And I, even there, like, myhistoricals have gotten I say
more consent-y as I've gone along.
(24:54):
My oldest series, which is thedomestic discipline quartet.
It's very much like she does somethingnaughty, she gets thrown over his knee.
By the time we get to the deception anddiscipline series it's much more, you
know, he's crooking his finger and saying,come here and put yourself over my knee.
And actually in the last book, Evie,my, my bossy lady spy, at one point,
(25:18):
he's giving her a spanking becauseshe did something and she, you know,
he asks, says something to her, youknow, like asking, well, why do you
think you're getting the spanking?
And she looks at him, this is oneof my favorite lines that I've ever
written, which is why I can remember it.
She looks at him and she goes, "I'mnot letting you spank me because
I think I deserve it. I'm lettingyou spank me because I like it."
(25:41):
Oh, yeah, that's great.
Yeah.
And I was just like, it's so her.
And I mean, all of my heroines enjoytheir spankings to a degree, but in
the, in the first series that I everwrote, they certainly don't know that
the first time it happens to them.
And there are more, like,disciplinary, right?
Disciplinary spankingsand stuff like that.
(26:02):
And then by the time we get todeception and discipline, it's
much more about, like, you're beingpunished, but is it really a punishment?
Like
Yeah.
All right, I think it's timeto play Love It or Leave It.
[Musical Interlude]
All right, Love It or Leave It.
Protagonists meet in thefirst 10 percent of the novel.
(26:23):
I do love it.
When it takes too long for people to meet.
It, it drives me a little nutsand actually I prefer it if the,
if the protagonists meet likeseveral books before their book.
Oh, okay.
I love it.
I like, I like that real slow burn.
Even when I write different series,but they're all in the set in the same
(26:45):
world, like my Deception and Disciplineseries, Mary and Rex actually appear
in the series prior to that, whichyou don't have to read, you know, if
you don't want to, but they appear inlike the third book of that series.
And so they, I got to know them over acouple books before writing their book.
So yeah.
And then if I'm starting like mynew series that I'm starting where
(27:05):
they didn't meet in previous books,I didn't have a setup for them.
I still made it.
My upcoming book is the Duke'sIndecent Scandal and the hero and
heroine, it's a brother's best friend.
Because I wanted them to havemet before the book even started.
That is how wedded I am to that.
I love that.
(27:25):
Okay, love it or leave it.
Dual point of view narration.
Love it.
I, that's mostly what I write.
I will very occasionally writefrom one point of view, but mostly
I like to go back and forth.
Love it or leave it, third person,
past tense?
It's almost exclusively what I write in.
So I love it.
I occasionally write something else.
(27:46):
Sometimes I'll write first person.
I usually write past tense.
I have a few books I think where itwas first person present, but there
has to be a pretty good reason for it.
Like I, my comfort zoneis third person past.
Love it or leave it, the thirdact breakup or dark moment?
Mostly leave it.
I have what I like to call gray moments.
(28:09):
Oh.
I don't really like breakups.
It's usually some kind of hurdlethat needs to be resolved.
And you know, the dark momentisn't so much a, Oh God, how
can they ever get over this?
But a, but more of, well, sometimes it is.
But it, you know, it, it tends tobe more of like emotionally dark.
(28:29):
In that, they don't know howto get past this hurdle that
has come up in front of them.
But you know, one of the reasons I liketo say that my books are like heart and
bottom warming is because I do like aheavy emphasis on the heart warming.
I don't love angst a little bit.
You know, you want to, you wantto know that they're earning
their happily ever after.
(28:50):
But I prefer books where you feelreally good while you're reading it.
And it's like, you get to that momentand you're like, okay, this is hard.
This is hard, but I believethey can make it through.
So I don't really like like a dark,dark moment, but a gray moment.
There's something that needs tobe overcome, and if they can get
(29:10):
their act together, they'll be ableto do it, overcome it together.
I like that.
Okay, love it or leave it,always end with an epilogue?
Love it.
Yeah, I love epilogues.
This is partly because my booksare so connected, I think.
I usually write the epiloguefrom the point of view of the
characters of the next book.
Because I do, I will say, I don't liketo do epilogues where it's like the
(29:33):
characters from that book and oh we'regetting a little hint of them in the
future, that's not really my thing.
So like when you get to the end ofa season for treason, The epilogue,
I believe, is from Josie's point ofview because she's the next book,
and she, so we're seeing a littlebit of, like, her problems and, like,
what's coming up in the next book andthat's how I like to do my epilogues.
(29:55):
All right.
Love it or leave it?
Always share researchin the author's note.
I love it when other authors do it.
I actually rarely do it myself.
Mostly because like I said, like Ijust, I don't know where a lot of my
knowledge comes from at this pointbecause I've spent my entire life
reading historical nonfiction for fun.
So like if I'm just sitting therereading history books and like I'm
(30:17):
watching things and I don't alwayswrite down, you know, it's kind of
just all in my head in a jumble.
I rarely have to lookthings up at this point.
And when I do, I'm usually just likelooking online real quick to make sure
that what I think is true is true.
Like, I'm just looking for confirmation.
So for the most part, I don't putresearch And with the exception of
explaining in a season for smugglers thatyes, I know that steam, steam powered
(30:41):
sex machines blow up and that theydidn't actually work and I don't care.
I put it in the book anyway.
And here's a link.
Yes.
So that's like the one time thatI'm like, yes, I did the research.
I understand.
I don't care.
That was my author's note.
I love it.
And are there any other romance rulesthat I didn't ask about that you break
(31:02):
or Maybe just push the boundaries on?
Oh, I always love to play with theromance rules and expectations.
You know, like.
doing a group of debutantes that arehunting down a traitor to the crown.
Like, I understand howridiculous that sounds.
And the series that followedthat was Femdom Histrom.
(31:23):
So, it's the ladies in charge andlike it, it, which is the desire
and discipline series, which, youknow, many people would have told
me, I think, do not write, Fem Dom
historical romance but the,the books do really well.
People seem to really like them.
And I, I think there is more of a callfor it too, but yeah, I think one of
(31:44):
the fun things about being so immersedin historical romance is kind of
knowing the rules so that I can playwith them so that I can break them.
Yeah, I love that.
Okay, and speaking of, The Duke'sIndecent Scandal is coming out April 29th.
Yes, and that is, it's the firstbook of the Indecent Dukes series.
(32:06):
And that, you know, so that's anotherway, I I don't normally write all
Dukes this, this series is gonna be allDukes, but the way that I had to make
it work in my head, because I know, I'mlike, there's, this is an unfathomable,
there's seven Dukes who are young andhandsome and all in need of brides.
This is ridiculous.
How do I set this up?
(32:26):
So in a previous book in a differentseries, I set up the, I, the fact that,
like, seven dukes had, or actually,a whole group, I think a total was
eight dukes had been died in a huntinglodge gunpowder explosion and fire.
So now heirs are in need of wivesand heirs because they're, they
(32:47):
became dukes all at once, muchsooner than they expected to.
Wow.
That's a creative way.
Yeah, that's very creative.
So, and that's how I made it work inmy head, because I, I do, you know,
I do have that like, how, there,there are a lot of dukes just running
around that are young and handsomeall at the same time in historical
(33:08):
romances, and that's how I fixed it.
Yeah.
So.
Alright, so A Duke's IndecentScandal comes out April 29th.
A Season for Treason, which iswhat we heard today, is already
out, so listeners can go read it.
Where can our listeners find youand your books on the interwebs?
So my website, which has all ofmy books listed out on it, is www.
(33:34):
goldenangelromance.
com.
And it will also prompt you to sign up formy newsletter, which will give you free
books and bonus scenes if you sign up.
I am on most social media, however,I'm not active on most of them.
I am, you are most likely toactually be able to like find
me to interact with on Facebook.
Where I'm on there is Golden Angel, butspecifically in my Facebook group, which
(33:58):
is called the Golden Angel Legion Lair.
And we have a lot of fun in there.
active group.
People like sharing memes, sharingother books, asking questions.
It's a very kink friendly group.
We've had people ask about the lifestyle,getting into it, stuff like that.
And then I am also the other placethat I'm mostly active is TikTok.
(34:18):
That's great.
Well, I'm going to put a link to yourwebsite in the show notes, so listeners,
you can just click on through andI know there's a call out to that
Facebook group on your website too.
So everyone will be able to find it.
Yay.
Thank you so much.
Yeah.
Well, thank you so much.
This has been such a blast.
Thank you for coming on.
Oh, of course.
Thank you so much for having me.
It was so nice to beable to chat with you.
(34:39):
That's it for this week!
Don't forget to subscribe to theHistorical Romance Sampler wherever
you listen, and follow us onInstagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
Until next week, happy reading!
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