I love a touch of fantasy in the stories I read and in the ones I write but I’m not a fan of true fantasy stories that take the genre to lengths it’s never been before.

I think I like that fantasy element because I believe there’s an element of fantasy in any romance, real or in the pages of a book.

So I chose to put a bit of fantasy in my current romance trilogy, Wilderness Women. In each book, the heroine has a connection with the forest that may — or may not — be beyond that of mere mortals.

In the first book, The Pathfinder, Anna finds a lost boy because of that connection. In the book I’m writing now, Laurie is an artist who paints the wilderness in all it’s seasons and uses the knowledge she gains from her work to save her life and that of a stranger who is stranded with her in her wilderness vacation cabin with no food or fuel for  heat.

Would I be able to do the same if I was in the forest? Not at all and that’s what makes it a fantasy. It’s possible but not probable and that’s also what makes for a good story.