FORCED MATE --what's the book about

A reader on the Amazon Romance discussion thread (about what Readers wish Authors would put on their websites... good thread!), asked me why there is no unbiased information about what FORCED MATE is about.

In a small, but not unbiased, way, I'd like to rectify the omission.

FORCED MATE is a chess term (all my titles are chess terms). Basically, the Black King and the White King race to make a pawn their Queen. It seemed a great metaphor for a romance where two powerful world leaders want the same girl.

Persephone is abducted (from Earth) by Hades (dark god of the Underworld) ... and kicks his butt.

My heroine, Djinni-vera (Jinny) Persephone, is psychic and a mind reader, and an intergalactic warrior in training who is being kept hidden on Earth until the time is right for her to marry her betrothed, the White "King".

The "Black" King (I am using my inverted commas deliberately) sees a picture of the heroine, and decides --much as Hades did-- that he has to have her. He also wants to make her happy --in some versions of the myth, Hades also was willing to go to great lengths to please Persephone and he turned his underworld into a dark version of Earth for her, but with a double bed.

Since the "Black" King has never had to woo a woman to get her into his bed before, he's a bit out of his depth. He consults unreliable sources, such as old, pirated James Bond movies, and Romance novels, and an embittered English mercenary, and tries almost every stock "Romance" situation, and is astonished and baffled --and annoyed-- when his romance is not an instant, outrageous success.

Of course, the White "King" does not take the abduction of the perfect pawn Princess like a gentleman and a sportsman. He objects. He wants her back. He does not give up gracefully.

This is a complex romance with many levels and layers. It's full of puns, miniature spoofs, good jokes (and bad jokes!), bathroom humour (I-tell-your-alcohol level toilets), political intrigue, one explicit consensual sex (think of England) scene, and a whole starshipload of interesting characters with their own ideas of what is really important and whose side they are on.

Some commentators have said this book is about the ultimate hunk.
Others have said it is about the heroine and her relationships with other females. Others have said it is about the humor.

For me, it was the book of my heart.

Rowena Cherrry
alien romance

1. FORCED MATE (paperback, also e-book)
2. MATING NET (prequel, short story, e-book only)
3. INSUFFICIENT MATING MATERIAL(paperback, sequel/spin off... story of Djetth (Jeff) and Martia-Djulia (Marsh)

Coming in 2008: KNIGHT'S FORK

I beg pardon for the self-serving post. Today, I mean to finish KF (before it is 3 months late)

Homesick and Flying Under False Colours

I'm writing my fourth, fifth, and sixth alien romances at the moment, with the greatest emphasis on the fourth, but with some awareness for the fact that I can't kill off the alien beefcake.

At some point, I'd like to explore homesickness, either as something a human abductee suffers, or else as an issue that an alien has to deal with. It's not something one grows out of... or is it? I'd love to know other bloggers' experiences.

The first time I was away from home, as a schoolgirl, for a sleepover at a friend's home, I remember being miserable. As time went on, I had to be away from home for longer and longer periods: a long weekend camping trip or two and a couple of fortnight-long residential courses for the Duke of Edinburgh's award; university term times; boarding school holidays when I taught in Dorset.

Over the subsequent years, my life became exciting and glamorous. I fell in love and set up a household of my own... and moved house three times within Germany, not counting months in hotels between moves, and a couple of times in the USA. My own final nesting place in an adopted land isn't what I think of as "home".

I'm not going "home" for the summer this year, for several very good reasons, some of them logistical. (The logistics of intergalactic space travel would also be a difficulty in my books... on a much grander scale than my own which have not a little to do with multiple food allergies and current restrictions on the food and drink that one may take through security.)

Suddenly, vague yearnings to make contact with friends I've hardly thought about, except to send a Christmas card to... maybe... have prompted time-consuming mini-quests to get back in touch, and I've realized that I am homesick. I think, but I'm not sure, that part of the problem is that I don't have the choice this year. Either that, or I'm getting sentimental in my second half-century.

I contacted my old college, Homerton, Cambridge, and discovered that I am "a lost sheep" as far as the Keeper of the Rolls is -or was- concerned. Funnily enough, the fund-raisers never lost touch with me.

I've joined Facebook.com . Today someone wondered aloud --because we write on a wall, like twittering at Twitters.com-- how many of the people on the "London" network did not actually live in London at all. I felt like I was flying under false colours by lurking, so I declared myself.

As for my writing, "homesickness" is quite a challenge. For instance, FORCED MATE was (and is) a futuristic take on the classical myth of Persephone who was swept up into Hades's chariot and carried off to his dark world.

Since Forced Mate is a romance, the heroine had to live happily ever after, so I couldn't deal with the pomegranate seeds and her homesickness, and the eventual joint custody ruling by Zeus so Persephone spent half the year with her dh and the other half with her mother.

I think I know which future heroine may end up being homesick.