When it comes to writing a romance series, there's many elements that need to come together. Most of them are fairly obvious. There needs to be great characters, fantastic stories with lots of love and pining and banter and tension, some defining similarity between all the stories, whether it's taking place in the same place, or the same group of people, whether they are family, friends, coworkers, on the same team, something like that.
But one of the elements I see forgotten most often is the setting. The location where the stories take place is just as important as any of part of the story. Setting gives the reader a place they want to return to for multiple books. A place to escape to when they want to check out from the real world. And as the world gets more and more crazy, having that escape is more and more essential to all of us.
Not focusing on location is a missed opportunity for any author. Building that world in your story allows you to create depth, complexity, excitement, and conflict that might not be there otherwise.
When I approach writing a series, I try to think of the setting as another character. A character I can grow, expand, explore. A character I can use to show the different facets of any of the other characters, just like how your heroine might react differently to her big brother than her best friend does. Wink, wink. A character I can use to increase the conflict and tension when it’s needed, or add levity. Whatever the story needs.
The more real and vibrant the location feels, the more the world is grounded for readers, and the more they can escape into your world and away from their own troubles. A place nothing like the world they live in.
But one of my all-time favorite parts about creating a locations is that I get to make up the rules. I can create a world where anything and everything is possible. I can write a small town that holds massive Christmas Ball that is attended by everyone in town. That isn’t happening in my town, or any I know, but it can happen in the ones I create. When I’m in charge, anything can happen.
And if in one mysterious small town, the town’s inhabitants can find love through mysterious letters that grant the opportunity to explore their deepest desires, I can do that. And that’s exactly what happens in Snowedin, VT. A small town where everyone knows everyone's business and fantasies come true, because I want them to.
In each of these Snowedin fantasies, a mysterious letter arrives for the characters that allows them to enjoy a night of fantasy with someone, or multiple someone’s depending on the fantasy, that wants to explore the same desires they do. And in my world, every fantasy always ends in true love.
If this sounds like the perfect way to spend a day, you should check out my Snowedin fantasies series. The first book, Reunion Makes Three, is currently on sale for only $0.99 at bookstrand.com.
Buy Link: http://www.bookstrand.com/reunion-makes-three
Blurb: Beth Lewis has always had a fantasy to be with two men who also want each other. For her birthday, her sister gifts her with a subscription to Fantasies Fulfilled, an exclusive online service to help connect people with the same desires. After losing her job and her fiancé, she deserves a little fun and to live out a dream that's been tempting her since high school.
Since his reunion invitation arrived, Dell Harrison hasn't been able to stop thinking about his high school sweetheart, Beth. When he and his live-in boyfriend Marcos Vitagliano receive a mysterious invitation to participate in the exclusive Fantasies Fulfilled services, they decide to add a woman to their dynamic duo. What Dell couldn’t have guessed is that the woman they connect with is the same woman who's haunted him since graduation.
Will Marcos be able to accept Beth in their bed and their lives? Or will adding an old flame to their couple turn their duo into a crowd?
