I SEE THE SHELVES at supermarkets and on Amazon filled with romance.

The titles are titillating.

• Enemies and Playmates
• Surviving Passion
• Lust in the Outback
• Handcuffed to a Sheik

I see shelves at supermarkets and on Amazon filled with fantasies.

The titles are titillating.

• Bloodcurse
• A Magician’s Lover
• Circle of Sorcerers
• To Kill a Warlock

In both genres, I am reminded of the man who said he read Playboy Magazine for the same reason he read National Geographic.

“Both,” he said, “are filled with strange, foreign, and exotic locations I will never be able to visit.”

That’s the way I feel about romance and fantasy novels.

Some are really good reads.

Some have really great writing.

Most are packed with a bunch of really intriguing stories.

It’s just that I read those passionate, romantic scenes, and I’m thinking, “That ain’t never gonna happen.”

And I read about the Vampire on the trail of a Warlock who’s the offspring of a monster and a demon, and the demon, I surmise, looked a lot like Rita Hayworth on a good hair day, and I’m thinking, “That ain’t never gonna happen.”

But it does.

It happens every day between the pages of literature: good literature, bad literature, and well-read literature.

I’m not for sure I even know the difference anymore.

Romance is escape fiction.

But I can’t picture myself as the tall, muscular, swashbuckling Musketeer riding to the rescue in a shirt that hasn’t been buttoned a single time in the past seventy-five pages.

Fantasy is escape fiction.

But I can’t picture myself wandering down the same street with a hip Zombie in ragged, purple hair, trying to free himself from a centuries-old curse and forever in love with a beautiful Vampire who has come from deep the netherworld, which, I figure, lies somewhere between Valdosta, Georgia, and Moab, Alabama.

I love fiction.

I love all kinds of fiction.

But reading fiction is like taking a vacation.

If I don’t believe I’ll ever get there, I don’t bother to go.

Conspiracy of Lies is book two of my Ambrose Lincoln series. It has no vampires or zombies and only a kiss or two of romance.