Romy Sommer

Waking up in Vegas is complete! I collected my official winner's certificate on 27th November, which was just as well since this last weekend was manic and not another word got written. The best thing of all about this NaNo is that, though I wrote fairly slowly and didn't achieve the lofty word counts of some of my friends and team-mates, this first draft is quite a clean draft. Since I did a fair amount of planning in October, and then broke the cardinal rule of Nano by editing a little as I went along, the first 30k words are in good shape, and the task of editing that last 20k is not nearly as daunting as it could be. I cannot thank my Team Khara team mates and all the lovely people at Savvy Authors enough. They not only inspired me to keep going, but they made this NaNo the most fun I've had writing in a long time. Well done to all of you who finished NaNoWriMo 2012, and for those who didn't, I hope you at least have more words than you started the mon...

I'm guesting over at the RNA blog today. Please stop by and say "hello". We're half way through Nanowrimo and I've reached the halfway point in Waking up in Vegas . I'd love to be further along, but really, what with a day job and kids, I should apreciate how far I've come in such a short time! The best thing for me about #Nanowrimo 2012 is the help I got up front from the Entangled Press editors. Having a clear idea of the story, the characters, and their conflicts and motivations before I even started has not only prevented me from going wildly off track as I have in previous years, but it's also kept my interest and motivation up. Because I know where I'm going, I'm not staring at a blank page and freaking out. I'd like to thank my team-mates on the Entangled Smackdown. You ladies motivate me, and I won't let you down. Also, to all the ROSA Bootcampers - your friendly support of each other is so inspiring, and some of thos...

Since this has become a discussion among both the Entangled Smackdown and Minxy groups, I thought today I'd clear up the difference between tropes and archetypes. A trope is a concept, while an archetype relates more to character. So as an example, 'Reformed Rake' might be the trope, while 'Bad Boy' would be the archetype. A cop or sheik might be an archetype, but their story could be any from the lengthy list of tropes , for example, Boy Next Door or Stranded. And this is exactly why I think the romance genre will never be boring or formulaic. There are endless combinations of characters, settings, conflicts and tropes, so every story is different from the one before. Add in the author's own voice and no two stories are ever really the same. However, just as a trope can head into cliché territory if not handled properly, so weak writing can turn an archetype into a stereotype. The line between the two is thin, but very clear. An archetype is a universa...

What's a Trope?  Here's my quick definition and the extensive list of romance tropes I've compiled. Leave a comment to suggest any I may have missed.