Guest Author Bella Street

OF TROPES, SYMBOLISM, AND FREE STUFF

Thank you Sarah for having me here today!

One of my favorite things about writing is the use of tropes, or common themes, in stories. I know some will cry cliché, but what makes a cliché such is that everyone can relate to it. The same idea applies to tropes. The trick is to give it a little twist and make it one's own.

One of my favorite tropes is 'fish out of water'. Seeing characters grapple with a new unfamiliar world, while falling in love, natch, is just a fun story to write. And time-travel makes it oh-so easy.

In my first novel Kiss Me, I'm Irish, a girl from regency-era Cornwall is fast-forwarded to modern-day Tennessee—from a life of relative privilege and comfort to having to depend on a starving artist and his thieving sister. The ideal environment for a romance, right? Of course!

In my latest series, Apocalypse Babes, the main characters are sent into the past, to a year before they were born, but in a time maybe not as unfamiliar to them as they thought. In Book One, The Z Word, Seffy Carter and her longtime friends Gareth, Addison and Lani, share a past dysfunctional and dark enough to keep them bound together under do-over identities. But rends develop in their relationships from the flesh-eating pressures of ending up in 1980, in a Montana desert, surrounded by zombies wearing dated disco duds.

So not only is there time travel, but zombies! Zombies are a great trope symbolizing the fact that one can't out-run not only death, but secrets as well. Add magical pink velour (the 'twist') and you got yourself a novel series! Er, at least, I do.

Perhaps the best trope of all is that people like free stuff. In honor of that common desire, The Z Word is free at Smashwords. And if you want to review it, blog about it, rant or tweet about The Z Word, you also can enter my contest! The grand prize is a Juicy Couture tracksuit (*Legal: publisher cannot confirm magical properties or the lack thereof of said tracksuit), with second and third prizes of Pink perfume by Victoria's Secret and an Amazon gift card, and other free stuff as well. Check out Apocalypse Babes for details and rules.

So indulge your desire to connect with themes common to humanity (reading, zombies, free stuff) while being amazed at the twists (what's the author been sniffing??), and enter for that thrill of maybe winning something cool and/or free.

Visit the author at www.bellastreetwrites.com. Read her blog at www.bellastreetwrites.blogspot.com, send her Tweets @BellaStreet. Don't forget Face Book! And please read The Z Word. It won't cost you a thing and maybe then the zombies won't get you*.

*But they probably will.