Romancing the Threshold

Some doors close so quietly we forget our own hand was on them. Rebecca Nelson, a literature student and bookseller who helps run a romance book club, sat down to talk about what readers are looking for when they reach for romance. What unfolded was the story of her own crossing, a woman who had quietly written herself off and then, at midlife, began opening the doors again. A conversation about r...

The smallest things tend to carry the most: a fairy tale, a love story, a cup of tea made with real attention. Vanessa sits down with writer and fairy tale scholar Kelly Jarvis, whose debut novel, Sea and Stars (out July 7th), is a gothic retelling of Beauty and the Beast set between the Isle of Skye and the old whaling town of Mystic, Connecticut. Together they wander through why this one tale ke...

Karla Sorensen writes contemporary romance set in the world of professional football, and inside her pages she's quietly doing something extraordinary: rendering grief with the care of someone who's apprenticed to it, drawing men from the inside of their armor, and writing women with their own sovereignty intact. In this conversation, we talk about how characters arrive (and refuse to leave), what...

Content note: This episode touches briefly on a sexual assault scene from a romance novel as the entry point for our somatic conversation. The scene itself isn't described in detail. Please listen with care. What if the body of the reader is the third character in every romance novel — the one nobody talks about? In this episode, Vanessa sits down with Alan Massetti, somatic experiencing practitio...

There are five aspects of the self that culture teaches women to hide — and romance novels have been quietly reopening every single one. In this solo episode, I name them: body, rage, pleasure, instinct, and sovereignty. Five Forbidden Doors, each one guarded by the stories we've been told to dismiss. Drawing on my depth psychology training, my own reading, and responses from real romance readers,...

Almost twenty years ago, a dream about a wedding made me abandon my thesis on Saturn and depression and write instead about the healing power of romantic comedies. That thesis became a spell — I lived everything I wrote, and more than a year later, I met my husband. Then I forgot about it for nearly two decades. After my mother died and 131 romance novels pulled me through a cave year of grief, th...

Sharon Lynn Fisher writes cozy gothic romances set in Victorian England: stories full of tea, herbs, cottage witchcraft, and heroines who can't stop asking questions. In this conversation, we talk about what happens when curiosity meets inherited darkness, why the "small magic" of domestic ritual might be doing more than it appears, and the question Sharon's been sitting with: does writing quiet s...

When AI arrived, most people chose a side — fear or adoration. Cassie Alexander chose a third way: curiosity. Romance author, nurse, monster-romance pioneer — she's spent her career writing about the thing the world decided doesn't count. In this conversation, she and Vanessa explore what it means to stay in relationship with something you can't fully know, what working with AI reveals about how y...

In this episode of Romancing the Threshold , Vanessa sits down with author Layla Fae for a conversation that moves through creativity, desire, monster romance, and the unexpected ways we meet change in a world that feels increasingly strange. They talk about Layla’s origin story with the monster in Legend , the cultural expectations placed on women even as we gain more autonomy, and the quiet rebe...

While systems grip their dying world, we're midwifing what's being born through every story we love. In this solo episode, I weave together childhood under dictatorship, the ancient myth of Proteus, and how we're already part of the WYRD network—everyone who's ever let a story rearrange their molecules. From my inner Jason Bourne fantasies to recognizing romance novels as medicine, I explore how t...

In this intimate conversation, Vanessa sits with her friend Jessiemarie to explore an unexpected threshold space: the adult retail shop. Drawing from her experience helping customers navigate their most vulnerable desires, Jessiemarie reveals how these deliberately unsexy, fluorescent-lit spaces become impromptu confessionals where strangers voice what they've never admitted—even to themselves. To...

Celtic shaman and author Jane Burns illuminates how threshold spaces—those uncomfortable in-between times we rush through—are actually portals of creative power where the ancient Celts knew magic lived. In this rich conversation, Jane reveals the reciprocal nature of spiritual relationships: ancestors and helping spirits seek partnership, not worship, and both worlds have genuine stakes in our col...

A solo episode closing out a transformative year. After cataloging 50 monsters across 125 romance novels, seven creatures emerged as threshold guides through grief and reclamation. These aren't just steamy reads but medicine for anyone exhausted from being the emotional regulator, the perpetually useful one. At its heart: the Beauty and the Beast truth that we need witnessing without performance—m...

Rune reader and elder Ingrid Kincaid explores how every threshold demands sacrifice and why the stories we tell about change shape our experience of it. We discuss the gift of the liminal space, why resistance to change closes our curiosity, and why we need elders to step forward (not aside) to translate ancient wisdom for modern crossings. For anyone wanting to meet life's transitions as sacred e...

When an avalanche buries your world, what gets revealed? Author Ella Larson joins me to explore how her Hidden Folk series teaches us to meet catastrophic change with curiosity rather than with the tension of 'white knuckling it.' We discuss why love is a choice that transforms us from separate entities into something larger, how "in-between" spaces are fertile ground for becoming, and why being t...

In this anniversary‑week episode, my husband Jason steps into my world of romance novels—book boyfriends, monster lovers, and all. Far from his usual orbit of music and design, he shares his grounded take on desire and trust, and reflects on his own threshold moments. Together we explore what it means to walk to the edge of fear, fantasy, and intimacy—and how crossing into each other’s worlds can...

In this episode of Romancing the Threshold , I’m joined by astrologer and storyteller Brian Clark to explore the threshold as both pause and passage — a place of shedding, becoming, and crossing into the unknown. Together we speak of descent and darkness as the womb of beginnings, of rituals and beauty as companions for change, and of curiosity and imagination as lanterns that guide us through lif...

In this first episode of Romancing the Threshold , I invite you into the charged space of the in‑between—the moment before the door opens. I share the inspiration behind the podcast, how it becomes the hearth where On Liminality and The Healing Power of Fluff meet, and why this unfolding feels like a romance in the making. Get full access to Vanessa Couto at vanessacouto.substack.com/subscribe