NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben talks unicorns and dragons with bookstore owner Starlin Marot. Fantasy romance novels are her best - and only - sellers.

Transcript

DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN, HOST:

Walk into a typical bookstore, and you'll find the usual sections - fiction, travel, history, self-help. But at Bad Girl Books, a romantasy-only bookstore in Oxford, England, the categories are different. There's monster smut, dragons, fairies. There's even a section titled Unhinged. Bad Girl Books is entirely dedicated to the increasingly popular genre mashup of romance and fantasy. Starlin Marot is the owner, and she joins us now. Welcome, Starlin.

STARLIN MAROT: Hi. Thank you so much for having me.

KURTZLEBEN: So I need to start with the most important question, which is - what exactly qualifies a book as monster smut?

MAROT: Monster smut is actually one of the more niche categories. It just happens to be very popular, so I have a whole dedicated section for it. Essentially, imagine, like, "Beauty And The Beast." But sometimes he stays in his beast form, and sometimes he transforms back and forth. That is pretty much the definition of monster smut.

KURTZLEBEN: I'm being lighthearted here. But I really do want to talk about the smut of it all because...

MAROT: (Laughter).

KURTZLEBEN: Listen, plenty of romantasy fans talk about how these books are not all sex. And indeed, they are not. But fans also do talk to each other about how spicy any given book is. I'm curious. How would you describe the role that sex plays in romantasy books?

MAROT: I think it does play a part in the sense that it is a safe space to explore body autonomy, women kind of being in control, being the writers of these stories. And especially in the explicit content, you see it from their perspective and kind of their desires.

So I think it's very different to what we're used to seeing in fantasy, especially, which is very male-dominated - things like "Game Of Thrones." There's lots of explicit content, but you don't really see this judgment and stigma around things that are created by men, which I find really interesting. But it garners a lot of attention in this genre, in particular, considering it's not even very high ratio of spice in these books. You have to work for it. You have to read, like, 400 pages, and then maybe you'll get a kiss.

(LAUGHTER)

KURTZLEBEN: When did you decide that this could be an entire bookstore?

MAROT: So I started the business as just pop-up events because I wanted to meet the community and meet local people who are also interested in these books and just have a space where we could go in a nonjudgmental environment. 'Cause I also found, like, some bookshops - I felt kind of embarrassed to talk about romantasy or ask for, like, spicy book recommendations. Like, some booksellers would just kind of look at me (laughter). So I think it was really important to me to make somewhere that, like, I would have felt safe as a reader.

KURTZLEBEN: Tell me how you landed on the name Bad Girl Books. Were there other candidates for store names?

MAROT: (Laughter) Yeah. There were a few other candidates, actually. I think Bad Girl Books was always my favorite. It was important that it didn't feel too gendered, and I think that was the one thing that was holding me back from using Bad Girl Books. But I kind of realized that anyone can be a bad girl. It doesn't matter what gender you are. So I kind of just went with it. And I think I wanted something that felt, like, tongue-in-cheek and was a bit cheeky in the sense that a lot of people look down on these books and call them, you know, bad books. Like, they're not real books. So I kind of wanted to embrace that and tell people it's OK to read bad books and, like, just kind of have a bit of fun with it.

KURTZLEBEN: Oxford, where you're located - it's associated with a lot of big names in literature, like C. S. Lewis, Tolkien, Oscar Wilde. Is there a large romantasy community there?

MAROT: Yeah. It's huge. I'm actually also surprised at how far people are willing to travel to come here. I have people driving from Wales and Manchester. And some people took the ferry from the Isle of Wight, which is about a four-hour journey.

(LAUGHTER)

MAROT: It's just a huge community that is super positive and supportive, and I think they recognize the kind of atmosphere and thing that I'm trying to create that I wanted as a reader. And it's kind of hard to get it, to be honest. So...

KURTZLEBEN: OK. Final question. If I'm interested in dipping my toe into the world of romantasy, where should I start? What books would you suggest?

MAROT: Honestly, I'd recommend "A Court Of Thorns And Roses" by Sarah J. Maas. I think most people will know at least one person who has read that book.

KURTZLEBEN: Oh, it's a big one. Yeah.

(LAUGHTER)

MAROT: Yeah. That was my first book into this genre, and it's, like, the gateway drug for all romantasy.

KURTZLEBEN: All right. I'll get on that.

MAROT: (Laughter).

KURTZLEBEN: That is Starlin Marot. Her bookstore is called Bad Girl Books. Thank you so much for joining us.

MAROT: Thank you so much. I had such a fun time.

(SOUNDBITE OF QUANTIC'S "TRANSATLANTIC")

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