S09.01: Cloud Nine: Romance in the Sky

Nine seasons of talking about romance, and no signs of quitting! We’re starting a new season, full of much of our same old nonsense, now with more nonsense, because who needs tropes when you can talk about microtropes! Today, in honor of Season Nine, we’re talking about Cloud Nine — both the WNBA star and the feeling you get when you fall in love. We’ve got a whole lot of books featuring romance in the sky — pilots, astronauts, plane crashes, astronauts and mile-high-clubs…and all of them featuring romance that won’t quit.

If you’d like to come over and talk about romances, both in the sky and on land, please join us on the Fated Mates Discord, where you’ll find a few thousand other listeners who love talking about these books we love. You also get one extra episode a month from us!

Fated States, our democratic phonebanking initiative begins next week. Learn more and register to phone bank with us at fatedmates.net/fatedstates.

Books

• The Vegas Top Gun Series by Katie Porter
• On Broken Wings by Chanel Cleeton
• Wild Card by Elsie Silver
• Beyond the Limits by Katherine Garbera
• The Last Man on Earth by Shae Sanders
• Puck Me Secretly by Odette Stone
• Crash Landing by Annie McQuaid
• Pregnant in the Italian's Palazzo
• Turbulence by Whitney G.
• The Skyland Series by Kennedy Ryan
• The Professional by Kresley Cole

Notes

• Fated States is back! We’ll be phonebanking every weekend on Saturdays starting September 19th, but the final weekend before the election, we’ll instead phonebank on Sunday Nov 1 to avoid Halloween.
• The way to find a book club is to read River Town by Peter Hessler and then go to your nearest local indie bookstore and let the bookclub reveal itself to you.
• Find out more about The Sunday Letter Project.
• Pilots have been hot since Top Gun, and not just because of the volleyball scene.
• Natasha Cloud is a baddie and she gave an irrelevant man the business for being transphobic, and Jen thinks she’s a literal hero.
• The Spanish Space Program, the Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial was created in the 1940s and was replaced by the Agencia Espacial Española in 2021. According to Wikipedia, as of 2026, there have been Four Spanish astronauts.

Sponsors

• Harpercollins, publishers of AT Qureshi’s Rider of Dragons, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, or wherever you get your books.
• Rose Prendeville, author of The Unknown Birds, available in print, ebook or audiobook from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or with your monthly subscription to Kobo Plus. Use the code FATEDBIRDS at Rose’s website to get a signed print book and 30% off!
• Isabel Sterling, author of With All My Haunted Heart, available in print, ebook or audiobook, from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or your local bookstore.
• Orbit Books, publishers of Louisa Carmody’s The Shadows that Listen, available in print, ebook or audiobook at Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, your local bookstore, or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.
• Blue Box Press, publishers of Ashley Eckstein & Samantha Chase’s Lucky 22 and David Eckstein’s Just Enough, available in print, ebook or audiobook at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books or wherever you get your books.

The Rest

• For even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2026/9/6/s0901-cloud-nine-romance-in-the-sky
• If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates.
• Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some...