An hour after this post goes live (so 9pm New York time, Friday 20 July), Cindy S Pape and I will be hosting the hour-long weekly #steampunkchat on Twitter. As always you can have your #steampunkchat hashtag automatically included in your tweets by following the chat in the Steampunk Chat Tweetchat room.

The theme of this week’s chat is Steampunk tropes, stereotypes and cliches. Lots of good stuff in there.

In the world of romance reading, writing and reviewing, we often talk about tropes; the old secretary falls in love with the boss, or the baby surprise, or Cinderella gets her prince. But what are the tropes in steampunk?

I’m thinking there’ll be an unwilling hero. There’ll definitely be grand adventure — thanks to Neither Here Nor There for reminding me of this obvious, and therefore, overlookable, point.

Science saves the day is another trope. Or is it? Is science sometimes the villain?

There’ll be dirigibles and high tea (well, in my steampunk world there is always food!). There’ll be corsets and weird guns. Magic might sneak in — and purists might object to it 🙂

Steampunk is so free at the moment, it may be and become anything. But has anything become overdone and cliched? *whisper* could it be goggles?

Anyway, come and join the chat!