I don’t think I ever consciously decided that romantasy was going to become my favorite genre.
It just sort of happened.
Give me a fantasy world I can completely disappear into, characters I get way too attached to, some kind of ancient mystery, and a romance that takes forever to actually happen, and I’m happy.
Throw in a morally gray fae king and apparently I’ll write an entire book about it.
So, what actually makes something romantasy?
The obvious answer is that it combines fantasy and romance, but that doesn’t really explain why so many of us love these books.
For me, the romance has to matter, but I also want there to be a story outside of it.
I want to wonder what happened hundreds of years ago. I want places with histories of their own. I want magic that has rules I don’t completely understand yet. I want characters who don’t have all the answers.
And I definitely want secrets.
Lots of secrets.
I blame the fae.
I’ve always loved the idea of the fae because you can do so much with them.
They can be beautiful and terrifying at the same time. They can live for centuries, which means they carry histories and grudges that humans couldn’t possibly understand. Their rules don’t have to be ours.
And then, of course, there are the fae kings.
When I created Caelen Duskryn for A Crown of Thorned Fate, I didn’t want to make him secretly sweet underneath everything.
He isn’t.
Caelen can be arrogant, ruthless and absolutely terrifying when he wants to be. He has ruled the Thorn Court for centuries. He has made difficult decisions and done things Elara doesn’t always agree with.
And he’s perfectly capable of defending himself. He doesn’t need me to convince you he’s actually a good guy.
Then I put a mortal healer in his path who isn’t particularly impressed by any of that.
That was much more fun.
And yes, I love enemies to lovers.
Especially when they have a legitimate reason to dislike each other.
Elara and Caelen don’t meet and immediately decide the other is attractive and therefore everything is fine.
Actually, Caelen drags her into his kingdom.
Not exactly the beginning of a healthy relationship.
😂
Elara doesn’t trust him. Caelen knows things he isn’t telling her. They argue. They push each other. They get under each other’s skin.
And somewhere in the middle of all of that, things begin to change.
Slowly.
Because I am absolutely a slow-burn romance person.
I want the little moments to matter before anything big happens. A look that lasts a second too long. Someone noticing something they shouldn’t care enough to notice. That first moment when you realize one of them is completely screwed, even though they haven’t figured it out yet.
That is the good stuff.
But I need more than the romance.
This was really important to me when I wrote A Crown of Thorned Fate.
Yes, it’s a fae romantasy. Elara and Caelen’s relationship is a huge part of the book.
But there is a much bigger story happening around them.
Something is wrong in the realms.
There are pieces of history that don’t quite fit together. Stories have been passed down for so long that no one really knows where the truth ends and the legend begins.
And Elara herself has questions she doesn’t even know she should be asking yet.
That’s the kind of fantasy romance I love to read, so it’s the kind I wanted to write.
I want to finish a book and realize that something I barely noticed 300 pages ago actually mattered.
I want to suspect everyone.
I want to think I know where the story is going and then discover I was completely wrong.
And while all of that is happening, yes, I also want to be yelling at two fictional people to PLEASE JUST KISS ALREADY.
Of course, we also have the tropes.
I’m not going to pretend tropes don’t influence me because they absolutely do.
Tell me a book has enemies to lovers, forced proximity, fated mates, only one bed, touch her and die, a morally gray fae king and a slow burn?
You have my attention.
Those are all things you’ll find in A Crown of Thorned Fate.
There’s also a sentient castle, because giving a castle opinions was something I needed in my life.
And there are a few things I’m deliberately leaving off that list.
You’ll understand eventually.
Maybe that’s why romantasy works so well.
It doesn’t make us choose.
We can have the romance and the magic.
The dangerous king and the woman who refuses to be intimidated by him.
The kissing and the ancient mystery.
The spice and the worldbuilding.
We can fall in love with the characters while trying to figure out what the hell is actually happening to their world.
That’s what I wanted when I started writing A Crown of Thorned Fate.
I wanted to write the kind of book I would stay up way too late reading.
And somehow that turned into the first book of The Solaryn Series.
A Crown of Thorned Fate releases October 13, 2026.
If you like fae romance, enemies to lovers, morally gray men, slow burns, fated mates, hidden magic and stories where you probably shouldn’t assume you know the whole truth yet…
You might like this one.
🥀
K.C. Hawthorne
