Romance writer Sarah MacLean: ‘Happiness is terrifying to tyranny’

By Brian Braiker

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Here’s a fun statistic: Romance novels make up a third of the fiction market in the United States (by some accounts even more). Generating more than $1.4 billion in annual sales, romance is the highest-earning genre of fiction.

Which means you or someone you love probably reads a lot of romance fiction. Which also means that you or someone you love has probably read a book by Sarah MacLean, a New York Times best-selling author with 19 novels and novellas under her belt.

But do not call what she writes “bodice rippers.” MacLean, a former Washington Post contributor and host of the popular romance fiction podcast “Fated Mates,” is one of the leading progressive feminist voices writing historical romance today.

“In those early books, in the books in the ’70s and ’80s, there was a fair amount of non-consent,” she says on this episode of “Brooklyn Magazine: The Podcast.”

“[In] the primordial modern day romance novel, which was written in 1972, the hero assaults the heroine four times in the first 100 pages. And he’s the hero of the book, they end up living happily ever after.”

MacLean’s work takes on the topics of classism, sexism, racism, police corruption and the normalization of sexual desire. Her novels, the next of which is the third in the “Hell’s Belles” series and is due out in August, are set in the late Georgian and early Victorian eras and star badass females who strive toward equity — and have a fondness for explosive sex … and actual explosives.

“The most valuable thing that we can do in this world right now is to live in joy and find it wherever we can,” she says.

This interview has been edited for concision and clarity. You can listen to it in its entirety in the player above or wherever you get your podcasts.

Because we like to judge a book by its cover around here, even though you have a book called “Never Judge a Lady by Her Cover,” let’s start with the covers. You do only have women on your covers. There are no bare-chested Fabios here, no big rippling ab situations. Obviously there’s a deliberate choice here. Talk about that.
I write romance novels and romance novels come with a certain level of reputation, particularly from the outside world, from people who don’t read romance and didn’t come through romance as readers. And that is Fabio, you said the magic word. Gravity defying hair. Definitely at least one person’s not wearing clothes. And there is a place and a time for those books, there’s a reason why those books look that way. We can talk about that if you want to. But while the content is very similar, my books really lean into centering women, though that’s not special to my books. Romance forever has centered women and other marginalized people in joy and in love and in happiness and hope, and those things are not as common in literature that is written for the white cis-male Christian gaze.

Which is not to say your books aren’t very hot.
I’d like to think they’re very hot.

There’s a lid for every pot, which is something that is a through-line in your work. What’s interesting is that you’re a world builder. There’s a whole Sarah MacLean universe with different series of books. There’s a casino series, “Bare Knuckle Bastards,” “Hell’s Belles.” The names are great, and you have characters that cross over from one series to the other.
It’s the Marvel universe, but make them smash.

I can’t imagine this was planned from the outset. Did it sort of unfold as you were writing? “I’m going to stick this person in this series”?
Romance is about building a world where they win in the end and so they live happily ever after, which means it lends itself to a giant universe full of people who you’ve met before or who you might someday meet and watch their happiness unfold. Great world building is the same all over literature. You talk to great science fiction writers or great mystery writers, and world building is so critical and in part what separates romance world building from these other worlds is that it really is entirely about character in a lot of ways, despite the fact that I write historicals, and so all my books are set in the 1800s in London. The series follow characters. Somebody turns up on page and then leaves the room and I think to myself, “Well, where’s that person going?” And that’s the next book or the next series, and it goes on from there.

There are whole TikToks devoted to breaking down the characters who pop up.
That is a magnificent TikTok.

One in particular is like Charlie Day in the “Always Sunny” meme where he’s completely paranoid. She’s literally got strings from one book cover to the other.
And I have used that TikTok for my own purposes as like, “What year was that? Who was she in that book?”

Oh, to fact check yourself?
Yeah. Listen, romance readers are the best and I will fight any other genre writer who claims theirs are.

@litandknits MY FOREVER FAVE. #aroguebyanyothername #romancelandia #romancetok #sarahmaclean #backlistreader #happilyeveravon #romancebooktok #booktok #deepdiveread ♬ original sound – Brittney

They must have a high standard for you. Do you ever worry about running into your “Misery” fan?
James Caan’s character actually is a Nicholas Sparks-style romance writer.

And he kills off the main character.
Which I will never do, that is my vow to you readers. Which is why he doesn’t write romance. Point of fact, romance readers are so cool and part of the reason is, we have spent an entire life as readers being judged for what we read. And so, when we find our community and we find other people who see the value and the joy in our books, all we want to do is hang out and talk about books, which is basically all I do when I’m not writing, is hang out and talk about books.

I read a stat recently that a third of the books sold in mass market paperback form were romance novels. More than a third. It’s a vital piece of the publishing ecosystem.
Billions of dollars, the largest segment of the paperback market. And it is really interesting, because back in the day when it started in the ’70s and ’80s, those books that everybody thinks of as like, “Oh, my mom read those books,” or, “My grandma read those books.” Those books were moving literal millions of copies in print run. These were not one-offs, this was not just the juggernaut of the year, the Taylor Jenkins read book or whatever, that was a common print run, a million copies.

No internet to compete with, no streamers to compete with.
Sure. I should say the print runs now are massive too, but they’re not a million copies. But what’s really interesting about the genre is that we were there for people who were not being served by other genres, by media in general. Throughout literature, women and marginalized people were put on the page to suffer. Certainly if a woman had sex, forget it, she was definitely going to die.

I was going to get to this point, because what I do love about the worlds that you build is that you’ve got neurodivergent leads, you’ve got fat-positive characters, trans characters, lady explosives experts. Talk about your current series “Hell’s Belles,” which my ladyfriend describes as “full-blown feminist, badass Victorian ladies ensemble.”
I’m currently writing a series called “Hell’s Belles,” which is set in Victorian London and the heroines, it’s four, it’s a girl gang. There are four books planned in the series and “Knockout” is out August 22nd. And each one follows one of the members of essentially a vigilante girl gang who are just bringing down bad guys, people in power. The one that comes out in August is a full-on indictment of policing in the world, but there is such value in writing historical, For me, the research part really does inform so much of the badass work of the books. Because we struggle so much, especially white people, struggle a lot with looking back on history and saying, “Oh, we were not the only ones there. History is not white.”

When we think about Victorian London for example, there were so many different kinds of people. There were queer people living out loud in Victorian London. Obviously people of color were there from all over the world, thanks in large part to colonialism, the boats going both ways so to speak. And so, being able to write a really big, bold world that is also historically accurate is really important to me. The Belles are actually based on an existing, real life girl gang called the Forty Elephants, which was the largest shoplifting ring ever in the history of the United Kingdom.

I was just reading about them, they spanned generations.
Generations, hundreds of years. The final queen of the Forty Elephants died in the ’30s. She was buried in a $3,000 dress that they stole from Harrods.

That’s badass. Where’s the movie?
Right? Where’s the movie?! They were amazing. One of the first, the lioness of the queens of the diamonds, was arrested in the 1870s for falsifying papers to work in a munitions factory because she was planning to steal explosives and blow shit up. This is history and we don’t talk enough about it. And so what’s fun about writing historical romance is, I can talk about these things, I can put them on page, point to history and say, “This actually existed.” My author’s notes are extensive. And then also, [I] show these women and other people in power and happiness, which is so subversive. The most valuable thing that we can do in this world right now is to live in joy and find it wherever we can.

It must be galling to you that we’re living through this moment right now where the right has become so extremely toxic, disingenuous, reactionary. You’ve got clamping down on sexual freedom, denial of trans people’s rights, book bannings.
I live in a lot of privilege. I live in Brooklyn. I am a woman. I do not have other marginalized identities. And so, I would say all of those things are impacting other people in a very different way than they impact me. But yeah, I’m furious and we all should be. I’ve been furious for many, many years, as you can tell through my books. But currently, obviously book bans which are deeply impacting kids and communities of color, queer kids, queer communities, authors who are working really hard to put their own stories on page. Our work as people who walk through the world with the kind of privilege that we do walk through the world as editors of magazines and writers who are lucky enough to have wide readerships, is to stand up and say, these things are unacceptable.

You use your platform.
Book bans are definitely coming for romance next, but they’ve been here for years and we all need to speak up now long before they come for the books that we love.

It’s interesting that you say you’re angry and that you can see it in your books. But your books are also about joy, to your point, and fulfillment. You were sort of dancing around this when you were talking about writing historical romance, which is such an interesting choice, because you only write in historical romance. You don’t write books that are set in contemporary times. Talk about the liberties that writing in the Regency Era gives you that, say writing a contemporary romance might not. For example, you indict policing. I would imagine if you brought your anger and you’re talking about policing and you set it in contemporary times that maybe it would come off as bitter or preachy. I’m totally projecting here, but what liberties do historical settings give you?
Historical romance is more closely aligned to fantasy in a lot of ways. And there are very basic ways where it is. For example, all of my heroes bathe. Everyone has nice teeth.

And how many dukes were there living in the Regency Era? There clearly weren’t two million of them running around.
Listen. In romance, every other person is a duke. Everyone has a castle. It’s great. So what I would say is, there is a certain amount of fantasy that I’m able to inject into the stories, but with intent. One of the biggest criticisms from outside of the world is like, “These are so unrealistic.” There are a lot of ways that I question that largely in that, ultimately having a partner who shares your common vision for the future and lives with you in partnership and in joy and in happiness and also in sexual gratification. And it should not be an unrealistic expectation for someone.

The hero of my next book begins the book as a detective inspector at Scotland Yard, which is brand new as an organization. It is the first organization of its kind globally, which is a group of people, all men who were policing, who were solving crime, arguably “solving crime.” But it had all the problems that policing has. It was their bedrock to the institution. So it’s very difficult for me to write a book about a Scotland Yard detective without talking about the fact that we have a problem with policing in the world.

You hit the nail on the head when you ask the question: I am able to take a lot of liberties in the sense that I can write you the fantasy where all these people live happily ever after. And I can tell you this story and you can watch this man essentially have the revelation about what Scotland Yard is and how it is impacting the communities most in need around him. But also, I can sort of roll it up in a rollicking story about an explosives expert and a series of abortion clinics being bombed.

And hot sex.
Yeah. And hot sex. You can either face it head on and accept and see what I’m saying, or you can watch a different story and everything else kind of comes to you quietly through osmosis. And obviously, my readership is a particular political ilk. I mean by now, 19 books in, people know what they’re going to get when they open my books. But I do think that the work of all literature and all art is to guide people to live our best selves. Genre fiction — romance, mystery, thrillers, sci-fi, YA — is doing that every time we set pen to paper. We are working to tell a story about characters who ultimately by the end of the book are living their best life. That is not to say that we are all telling the same political story that I’m telling, but the goal of all genre is to show characters in triumph, which means the arc of their story is toward being better, whatever that means. For me, that’s a very clear political arc as well. But that’s the work we’re all doing over here in the genre pool.

What I like is that you are a very vocal defender of the literary merits of the romance novel. You went to Smith, you have an advanced degree from Harvard. But was the academic community slow to accept you as a serious person?
I’m not sure they accept me as a serious person now. The academic community absolutely looks down on romance and on genre in general. But romance is a different kind of beast because of patriarchy. Because there is a certain sense that the female gaze, the gaze of BIPOC and queer people in general is somehow less valuable. And that is particularly true when you think about happiness. When we talk about book banning or gender-affirming healthcare or family immigration, all the kind of big picture things that we’re talking about every day here. Racism, history, the true history of the United States and the world. What we are asking for is for people to be able to live their happiness, whatever path that takes. As long as you are not harming someone else, you should be able to access your own joy and live a path of joy.

When the world prohibits those paths or does all the things that that conservatives are doing around the country right now, they’re limiting happiness. So my question is, why is “happily ever after” so demeaned in literature when it is literally the goal? It is the thing that people are desperate to prevent for so many of us? There are lots of reasons for that. Love is ubiquitous and we see it everywhere and we see it used to sell chewing gum and car insurance and, I don’t know, beard oil. But the reality is that there is something really valuable about love and that is seeing our value, seeing our value in ourselves through the eyes of other people. And it is incredibly subversive to be able to say, “I love myself and I believe I’m worthy of love.” And that’s what romance does.

Everything you said sounds so, on the surface, incontrovertible or undeniable. What’s wrong with finding your true sense of self and happiness as long as you’re not hurting anyone?
Well, because happiness is power. Imagine if you can say, “I’m able to live in happiness. I am choosing happily ever after,” however that looks. I mean obviously, [in] romance, there is romance involved in it. There is love, there is another person or a few other people involved in the happiness. But there are people who live their happiness without romance and that is totally fine. But happiness is terrifying to the outside world, because I can’t control you if you are satisfied and happy in your path. You control yourself all of a sudden, it’s autonomy, which is terrifying. Terrifying to tyranny.

What was your romance novel gateway drug? I can’t imagine you first picked up a romance novel with these thoughts in mind.
No, 10-year-old Sarah, nascent feminist who went romance and then bell hooks. [Laughs.] I was 10 or 11, I was very young and I picked up a historical romance, which now looking back is not a historical romance I would recommend to most 10-year-olds.

Uh-oh, what was it?
It was Jude Deveraux’s “The Black Lion.” And the hero is in his 30s and it’s medieval, and the heroine is literally 17. That’s a very classic historical romance. Fabio was not on the cover of that one, but you could imagine it being that way. I was in a particularly difficult time. I was the youngest child of a family that was sort of in chaos. And what romance provided me, what that book provided me, was a view of, in this case, a very young person, a girl who found her own path and found her own voice. Which is the story of every romance I’ve ever loved. It is the story of every one of my romances. I often say, “My heroines would be fine alone. They are happy together and satisfied together, but they would be fine alone.” That is the story that compelled me through romance.

You mentioned earlier, [and] people can probably hear it, I’m an evangelist about the quality of the literature in the best of romance. Part of the reason why is because romance is so much about character work. There is no story, you can’t make a person fall in love, if you don’t really peel back every layer. You’re not looking at all of it, warts and all, and showing them in love with warts and all. And the level of character work that the best of romance does rivals the character work in any media.

Can you shout out some that are not by you?
Yeah, of course. The greatest romance ever written is a book called “Lord of Scoundrels,” by a woman named Loretta Chase. It is absolute perfection in terms of both storytelling and character. It’s set in the Regency Era, so the 1830s in France and in London, and it is stunning. It is a stunning piece of literature. And is a great story, it’s a bop. And that’s the other thing, these books, you tear through them. I say all the time, if it takes you longer than six hours to read one of my books, I’ve done it wrong. You should not be able to put it down.

For all this talk about righteous feminism identity and self-fulfillingness, it’s also sexy. There is sex in here too, it’s not just politics and character.
There’s sex in here. There’s plot. There is a story, there’s always an external story that is firing on all cylinders in those that are the best. “Fated Mates,” my podcast, began as a read along for a series of paranormal romances. So if you are a “True Blood” fan or into vampires and other creepy crawlies, this one’s for you. It’s called “Immortals After Dark.” And there’s a book in it called “Dark Needs at Night’s Edge.” That is about a ghost and a vampire, and he’s an addict, he’s drying out. And it sounds bananas when I tell you this, when I say this at a cocktail party among Brooklyn literati, they’re like, “What are you talking about?” But then, five days later I get a text message that’s like, “I read that book and it was mind-blowingly fun.” And that’s part of it. Enjoy yourselves. Life is short, the sky is currently burning and it’s okay for you to have fun when you’re reading.

I like that you said the word “bananas,” because some of these books and the paranormal stuff, some of them are just plain bonkers and I don’t know if they attempt to one up each other, but it almost feels like there’s a sense of value placed on how bananas a story can get.
There’s a reason why I always lead with joy when I talk about romance, and that is because sometimes that’s what we want, we just want to have fun reading. And it’s okay for you to have fun reading. Listen, my favorite romances across the board are wild, they’re wild. They have wild, crazy plots that you would never live this life, but it’s really fun to watch.

I mentioned a couple of the names of your books, they’re great. Starting with the first one, “Nine Rules to Break While Romancing a Rake.” I’ve read that you keep a list of crazy romance novel titles on your phone. Do you care to share any that definitely won’t see the light of day?
Yeah, I have a lot. So, that book, the story behind “Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake,” which is my first adult romance novel, is that I sent it to my agent and my agent said, “Okay, well we need to put a title in the subject line of this email that will get people to open it.” And we came up with that and we thought it was just hilarious. And it did, it sold very quickly. And I remember about a month later saying to my editor, “Well, what will the title actually be?” And she was like, “I don’t understand, the title is what it is.” And then I was sort of stuck in this.

Then you’ve got books like “A Scot in the Dark,” “The Rogue Not Taken.” It’s hilarious.
Oh listen, “Scot,” it’s just a mine of brilliant and completely useless titles for me, but I’m looking at the list right now because I’m very happy to share. But things like, “It’s Getting Scot in Here.” [Laughs.] “A View to a Kilt.” “Be Still My Beating Scot,” which didn’t feel right. My favorite: “Full of Hot Laird.” But this is the thing. People roll their eyes, and it’s the same as the covers. They roll their eyes at the titles, they roll their eyes at the covers, they roll their eyes at the plots and they miss that the titles, the covers, the plots are all there to kind of hide the pill in the peanut butter in a lot of ways.

So you’re like the horny Howard Zinn?
[Laughs.] Well, I mean you could say it.

Your first book though was a young adult novel, “The Season.” You only did one, I guess. But even that is set in the Regency period.
I did one. “Twilight” had happened, I worked in publishing and I thought, “This is wild.” I have an ed degree. And I was always really interested in young adults, young adult literature, adolescents in general. And I thought, “I could do this. I could write one of these.” And I’d spent my whole life reading romances, so it was obvious I was going to write a romance. So I wrote a YA romance called “The Season,” and I loved every minute of it and I still love when young people come to it. But ultimately when I was finished with it I thought, “I want to be able to tell a different kind of story.” YA stories are about coming of age. Romance is more about coming into your path, and that was more interesting to me in general. So I left YA for romance and I haven’t looked back. I’ve written a couple of short way things for friends and in anthologies, but who’s to say, maybe someday I’ll go back?

Are there romance novel tropes that you want to call out that you just hate? Don’t use this turn of phrase, “heaving bosoms,” whatever it is?
I had dinner a few weeks ago with somebody who kept referring to them — and was really kind and clearly trying to show that they were not judgmental of the genre — as “bodice rippers.” That’s not great. That’s not what we do. I’m not here to give everybody a history lesson on romance novels, but I will give them this history lesson.

Please do.
In those early books, in the books in the ’70s and ’80s, there was a fair amount of non-consent in the books. [In] the primordial modern day romance novel, which was written in 1972, the hero assaults the heroine four times in the first 100 pages. And he’s the hero of the book, they end up living happily ever after. And there is a reason why those books had that kind of experience in them. And that is because in the 1970s in the United States, there was not a ton of protection for women in terms of assault.

There is not a lot now.
There’s not as much as I would like there to be today for women. But for example, there was no such thing as marital rape in 1972. In 1972, married women could not have their own bank accounts. There are so many ways that patriarchy limited the way women could operate in the world. And so, it is plausible to suggest that these things were on page and named on page and addressed on page, because this was the safe space for women and others to have those conversations without turning to people in their real life, in their day-to-day life. There is a reason, I don’t think that it is a coincidence that romance came up alongside the second wave women’s movement. Romance for many, many years was very second wave. It is now becoming more intersectional.

Is that the “Bridgerton” effect or do you roll your eyes at the success of something like “Bridgerton?” And why aren’t there more “Bridgerton”‘s out there?
I have the same question. I have a lot of series, if anybody out there is looking! Intersectionality and romance has been here for a long time, but there are more and more writers now who are thinking intersectionally about how they’re writing their books. Myself included. My books at the very beginning of my career were very white and cis and het, and now they are not. They are much more diverse in terms of the world building. Because when you know better, you do better. And so that’s what we are doing. Romance is a really fascinating genre because it is in a constant dialogue. It is very domestic, because it’s character work, because it’s about subversion and all of the things that I’ve been talking about. What we end up doing is, we’re a constant reflection of the society that we’re writing in. Also, we write very quickly. I write slow and I write a book a year.

But I have friends, my friend Adriana Herrera, who is a New Yorker, she writes three, four books a year. We are very quick. And so, the genre itself is constantly shifting in dialogue with the world around us. And so, as a genre, we are reflecting a very particular kind of aspect of the world. And that is the internal hopes, fears, joys, pleasures of everyone around us. We’re seeing romance really shift in terms of the way that it represents the world. Yes, sex, but also friendship, partnership. We’re seeing more and more books where characters don’t marry, where characters don’t have children. We’re seeing polyamorous romance, we’re seeing romance that reflects the real diversity of who we are as a culture.

Human experience. There’s the old expression that every generation thinks they’re the ones that invented sex, but this stuff has obviously going on for a long time.
Listen, if you are on Twitter, you should follow Whores of Yore, if this is something that you’re interested in, it’s just fascinating.

Word of the Day: “Behindativeness” pic.twitter.com/gpsNA55YWW

— Whores of Yore (@WhoresofYore) April 28, 2023

I love Whores of Yore, they’re on Instagram too. They do little vocabulary lessons of old slang for either body parts or sex acts. It’s very fun.
Oh yeah, nothing is new.

Nothing is new. Right. And it’s interesting that you talk about that speed, because, in some ways, it’s one of the rare literary forms that can be falling within the news cycle as they’re being published. It must be hard to keep up with all the evolving trends because there are so many of them.
I learned very early in my career not to chase the trend because I don’t write fast enough for it. So, by the time I get my whatever the thing is that’s popular right now, by the time I get mine out, it’s passed, it’s in the rear-view mirror. So, I’m very lucky that I have readers who are willing to go on whatever journey I just happen to be interested in taking them on that day.

There is no Chicago manual of style or AP Guide to sex writing that I know of. I’m guessing blowjob is one word, hand job is two words. How do you make the call on things like this when you run into a conundrum like, “Well, how… Do I hyphenate this?” Or is that your editor’s job?
Well, I have very skilled and unflinching copy editors. So, proofreaders. No, listen, writing sex is really, really difficult. It’s the hardest part of the job. And that is why when you read bad sex, it’s really bad. It’s really, really bad. It is not fun.

There’s a whole award for bad sex writing. There’s like the bad sex writing awards.
Yes. And it is well-deserved often. When people hear you say, “I write romance novels,” that is the instant thing they think about like, “Oh my gosh, what is she writing? What’s the sex?” And there is often a sense that the sex writing is enjoyable in some way. Anyone who is a writer out there listening knows, writing’s not enjoyable in any way at any time. And so, there’s that. But also I would say, no one ever says to thriller writers like, “Oh, you must really love writing the murder scenes.” There’s just something about the way we as a culture tackle sex that is so uncomfortable for people in a way that it really shouldn’t be considering we’re all the product of it.

All of it’s ridiculous. Did I read correctly that your mother worked for MI6, the British spy agency?
Yes, you did. When my mother and father met, my mother was working for MI6 and my father was working for the Italian government. So, that was a funny story. And then she left and moved to the United States, and I grew up in Lincoln, Rhode Island, which is the farthest thing from a mom working for MI6 you can imagine.

So, has she told you any stories? Does she have any James Bond moments or is that just wishful thinking?
She was a woman who worked for the ACLU in Rhode Island by the time she was my mom. I was in history class and I came home and I was doing history homework and it was something to do with some kind of famous espionage, I can’t even remember what it was. And I said, “Oh, it’d be really cool to be a spy.” I will never forget this, she was ironing in the kitchen and she looked at me and she said, “Actually, there’s a lot of paperwork.” And I burst out laughing ’cause my mom is not a person who tells jokes like that, that’s not my mom’s sense of humor. And I was like, “Mom, that’s so funny.” She was like, “That was my job.”

I called my dad at work. I made him get out of a meeting and I was like, “Mom said she worked for MI6.” And my dad was like, “Yeah, can we talk about this when I get home?” And that was it. That was how I discovered it.And that’s all she’ll really say is, “It was kind of boring.” And she was stationed in Paris in the ’60s, in the early ’60s and they gave her a clothing budget so that she could go to posh parties. That’s what she talks about, the clothing budget.

Someday you’ll get the story, the real story, out of her.
Someday.

Check out this episode of “Brooklyn Magazine: The Podcast” for more. Subscribe and listen wherever you get your podcasts.