If you’ve read any of my books, you might have noticed I have a bit of a weakness for taking a familiar romance trope and asking, “Hey, what if we did that differently?”
Take protector romance, for example. Usually, the hero is the one doing the protecting while the heroine is the one in danger. In a fair few of my books, I flip that around: the heroine is the protector. She’s the one with the skills, the competence and the instincts to keep him safe. I love playing with that dynamic because it shifts the power balance in a way that feels fresh, while still giving you all the tension and intimacy that makes a protector romance work.
Then there’s the Mafia-adjacent romance where the Mafia guy…isn’t hot. Not secretly a cinnamon roll. Not morally grey but devastatingly handsome. Not a ruthless killer who happens to have a heart of gold for one special woman. He’s actually an asshole.
And I’ve done something similar with bikers. Instead of treating the motorcycle club as a collection of dangerous-but-sexy bad boys who are all secretly perfect boyfriends, I’ve written bikers who are, frankly, problematic as hell. Some of them don’t deserve the girl. Some of them shouldn’t get the girl. And sometimes the point is precisely that the fantasy doesn’t work when you stop sanding off all the ugly edges.
These are some of my favourite books to write because I love poking at the assumptions built into romance tropes. What happens when the woman is the dangerous one? What happens when the supposedly irresistible alpha actually behaves like a dick? What happens when the bad boys really are bad boys?
The downside is that trope reversals are much harder to sell.
Readers understandably come to a book expecting the fantasy promised by its trope. If you pick up a Mafia romance, you probably want a terrifying, powerful, ridiculously attractive Mafia hero. If you’re looking for a biker romance, you probably want the leather, the motorcycles, and the dangerous men who would burn down the world for their woman. And if you’re expecting a protector romance, you aren’t necessarily looking for a heroine with the world’s largest weapons collection.
Subverting those expectations means there will always be readers who simply don’t want what I’m offering. That’s the risk.
But it’s also why I like writing them.
I’d rather make a book harder to sell by doing something that genuinely interests me than write the same fantasy slightly differently just because I know it will be easier to market. Sometimes the most fun thing you can do with a trope is break it.
And if you’re like your books both familiar and a little less conventional (but still with a guaranteed HEA!), here are a few you can try…
Protector romance…but she’s the protector:
There are bikers, but they’re not hot:
Mafia, but make it unsexy:
A genius hacker, but it’s her:
An assassin, but she loves waffles and wears a bikini:
They’re both former military, but she’s definitely in charge:
She’s a private investigator, he’s along for the ride:
He’s hot and down on his luck, so she rescues him:
A hot, wealthy, three-hundred-year-old vampire? With boobs?
Masked kidnappers who are NOT cool…
Have loved everyone of them! Keep doing your style, not someone else’s.
I don’t think I could do someone else’s!
I have read (several times) and absolutely loved each and every one of them. That’s why you are my very favorite author although I don’t get very much sleep when I pick one up to read. It’s worth it though! I have a hard time waiting for each new one to come out!
Aw, thanks for reading, and sorry about the insomnia!