The main characters are, of course, what any good romance is all about. Meeting them, getting to know them, falling in love alongside them, feeling their tenderness, their despair and their joy—it’s why we adore romance.

The main characters of Seducing the Sorcerer are Fenn, a tough, middle-aged, working-class cynic with a heart of gold, and Morgrim, a scheming court sorcerer in a long black robe. Neither one is perfect. Neither one is a typical romance hero. They’re fallible, complex men; world-weary, experienced, trying hard to cling onto hope. Neither one of them expects to fall in love.

Much of Seducing the Sorcerer takes place in the cavernous rooms in Morgrim’s rain-swept tower, perched on a tall finger of rock high above the ocean. Of course, every sorcerer deserves a lair, and a tower is a time-honoured symbol of personal and political power, not to mention the phallic implications! But there were other reasons to give Morgrim that particular home, because the setting, particularly in a fantasy novel, shouldn’t only be cool and fun to read about. It should also support the themes of the book and say something deeper about the world the characters live in.

Morgrim’s tower is safe because it’s so high up, but the possibility of falling, both literally and metaphorically, is ever-present. One wrong move and you’re done for. And that’s because the characters in Seducing the Sorcerer are living their lives on a knife’s edge: the possibility of failure is very real and ever-present and it would be catastrophic. And the setting reflects that.

It also rains a lot in this story. That’s a vital part of the setting too. It isn’t raining everywhere though, but only over Morgrim’s tower. In fact, the rest of the land is suffering from a drought. People say the drought is Morgrim’s fault. They say he’s stolen all the rainclouds with sorcery. They say he’s done it to hold the country to ransom, to force the young queen to marry him.

But of course, not everything is as it seems, as Fenn is about to find out…