I have loved John Scalzi, his work, and his Big Idea column for many years. I even wrote a bunch of stuff for him along the way. But in the manner of fantasy and fairy and romance fiction, there is no real reason for going any further than stating that. There was, alas, no romance, not even a small slightly off-color pun between us.

But if he had been a jinn or an alien or a time traveler . . . the kind you can find in my stories, well then, our love affair might have made it into my newest book, THE SCARLET CIRCUS, stories and poems about fantasy (and science fictional) love.

The Big Idea

When the book in case is a book of short stories and poems, it is hard to find just a single thing that is a favorite. So forgive me for citing three things.

First: My favorite short story in the collection has to be “Ghost of An Affair.” Three things you need to know: I wrote and published this story in 2000, when I had been widowed for six years. So there was that amongst the things that made the story. A woman who falls in love with a ghost. I was to mourn my husband for another ten years before an old friend—acquaintance really, as we had dated for two months in college, mostly talking about poetry, as we were both writers and both adored Emily Dickinson. But we drifted apart, and he met his wife-to-be and I met my husband-to come.

My Favorite Thing

Dear Readers:

Writing romance fiction takes a certain skill base, as does writing fantasy fiction. I am well practiced in the latter, a latecomer to the former.

I didn’t mean to write a bunch of fantasy/romance short stories. It just sort of happened. I thought that I was writing fantasy . . . but my long period of widowhood (seventeen years of bad dates) supplied the romance that was lacking in my life in a fantastic sort of way.

The Booked Unicorn

I think there are two basic kinds of fantasy love stories: straight-ahead romance (all sex withheld ’till marriage) and truly sexy stories, all faucets and facets and laced pieces open wide.

But within those two rather large spaces, there is room for a bunch of other kinds of romantic tales: western romances, mystery romances, historical romances, LGBTQIA+ romances, magical romances, fairy-tale romances, romances with animals of all sorts, hip or hippy romances, upper-class romances, cross-continents romances, cross-religions romances, cross-sexualities romances, polymorphous romances, and on and on and on.

Fantasy Cafe