Hi! Time for Gettin’ Tropey! You may know that Tuesday (March 1st) is the release of my new book, TAYLOR MAID. It’s part of a very fun series from Dreamspinner Press called Dreamspun Desires that was the brainchild of my friend, Poppy Dennison. The idea is to take the very popular tropes and themes that have been driving romantic fiction since the beginning — particularly in the old Harlequin category romances — and enjoy them as gay romances. Tropes are by definition the figurative use of a word or expression or, more pertinently, the recurrent use of such an expression or idea. In romance, common tropes are cowboy romance, secret baby, marriage of convenience, the sheik and the Westerner, rich boy/poor girl, May/December, and on and on. We know these themes and we love them — especially when they’re presented in a new and exciting way. Star Wars is riddled with good versus evil tropes, and movies like Rocky, Hunger Games, and Die Hard, make us cheer as we watch or favorite tropes being splashed all over the screen.

That’s where Dreampun Desires comes in because it purposefully turns these tropes on their ears by making them male/male. My book, TAYLOR MAID, includes marriage of convenience, must marry or lose his inheritance, mistaken identity, and cross-dressing tropes. Not to say i don’t use tropes in my other books, but here they’re consciously played out in new ways. I hope you’ll check out TAYLOR MAID and see what i mean when i describe it as a “champagne cocktail” of a book. May the tropes be with you!