A Guise of the Sea Release Week: To Trope or Not to Trope
I am #teamtrope. Always and forever. They’re gimmicky and catchy for a reason—they work!
I tend to always go similar routes in my writing. I am a heavy romance reader and I love the best of the tropes. So of course, I added a few favorites to my book A Guise of the Sea.
One of my all time favorites—there’s only one bed/forced proximity. I absolutely go feral for a book when I know the main duo have been lusting after each other and suddenly they find themselves in a inconvenient situation where the hotel/inn/tavern is all out of rooms except for one and there is only the one bed. Or, in the case of forced proximity, the pair must live together in close quarters for their safety. ABSOLUTELY FERAL. In Guise, well, majority of the time they’re living on a ship together and of course my female main character Emme must stay in the captain’s cabin with my main male character Locke—and of course there is a lot of slow burn tension because of this.
I also absolutely adore the marriage of convenience trope. I don’t know where this stems from. Maybe because in 2023 this seems implausible now so it is romanticized now? Locke and Emme do eventually enter a marriage of convenience. But of course, there’s more to the story beyond that.
Another trope I love is found family. Sometimes there are characters who write themselves; who are so vibrant in your mind that it’s just plain easy. For Guise, that character is William. I actually had to cut a lot of his parts because he wasn’t a main character but he jumps off of the pages along with his friendship with Emme and their sense of found family.
Lastly, a trope that is fun but I don’t want to give to much away that occurs in Guise is: he’s not really dead. And yes, that will shake up the whole gang.
Bookboxes for A Guise of the Sea are still available at An Unexpected Bookshop
