Recently I watched a lovely romance movie called Save Haven, based on the book by bestselling romance author Nicholas Sparks. Without wishing to give away the plot, the ending of the story had a heart-warming twist that called for a belief in something beyond stark, cold reality.

I love romance stories, of course, but I don’t generally seek out those that are paranormal in nature. I’m not one for reading a love story involving vampires, for example. Yet just a touch of otherworldliness handled sensitively can really add appeal to a love story, I think – more sentiment, more mystery, more depth, more of a take-away meaning from the book.

In my own stories, I like to explore a touch of mystical rooted with culture. In Burning Embers, for example, superstition is rife and a witch doctor is keen to give Coral warnings. In a book I wrote set in Spain, I explore the culture of the gypsies and fortune tellers. And in my upcoming book, The Echoes of Love, set in Italy, I include the character Qiqiang Ping Lü, a Chinese fortune teller, whose wisdom is instrumental in the protagonist’s search for the truth.

I very much enjoy bringing an element of fate into my writing – begging that question of whether lovers are destined to be together. But I am always careful to leave interpretation up to the reader. If the reader so chooses, otherworldliness perhaps exists in the tapestry of my story. But equally, if the reader so chooses, the story is pure reality, with no hint of the beyond: just two people falling in love, and the opinions of those around them on the matter.

For me, when you write a love story focused on two lovers, two souls united in mutual love and reverence, there is magic enough in the moments they are together. Their love creates its own level of transcendence. And what I like best about seeing magic in that way is that it is attainable to us all. My readers could not fall in love with a vampire or a werewolf or a zombie or a ghost, but they could fall in love with a man in the way that I write. And I hope that, on some level, my writing can inspire readers to believe that – to believe in true love that’s earned without any magic wand.