Pregnant Males

Do you follow THE ORVILLE? This TV series begins as an affectionate parody of STAR TREK (even the uniforms look similar) but—as far as I can tell from reading about it and watching the first few episodes—gradually becomes more serious. One alien officer, who lives on board with his mate, belongs to an all-male species. In the second episode, he lays an egg, which hatches in the third episode. I'm not sure why he refuses to take a break from brooding the egg; doesn't his mate help? And what about an artificial incubator? Anyway, the baby turns out to be female, a rare abnormality in this species, for which the standard remedy is an immediate sex-change operation. The serious ramifications of this problem mesh incongruously with the premise of an all-male, oviparous species, which the writers apparently introduced in accordance with what the TV Tropes site calls "the Rule of Funny." In fact, an all-male species that reproduces by itself couldn't exist. The sex that produces ova is, by definition, female. To lay eggs, people of the species portrayed in THE ORVILLE would have to be either female (reproducing by parthenogenesis) or hermaphroditic. Members of an all-male species would have to breed with females of some closely related species (as some all-female types of fish can be fertilized by males of different but not too dissimilar species).

The vintage sitcom MORK AND MINDY gets away with the pregnant alien male motif by presenting it in a funny context with no attempt at a biological rationale. Mork not only becomes pregnant, he gives birth to a "baby" who looks like an old man and, conforming to the life cycle of Mork's species, ages backward.

Octavia Butler described her classic work "Bloodchild" as her "pregnant man story." Technically, the human men don't get pregnant, though. They serve as hosts for the eggs of the centipede-like aliens who've allowed the Terran colonists to settle on their planet. When the larvae hatch, the mother removes them from the host's body before they start to eat their way out—usually.

The TV program ALIEN NATION offers a serious portrayal of how a seahorse-like humanoid male pregnancy could work. The Newcomer aliens have three sexes, including a variant type of male who penetrates the female to catalyze her fertility in some unspecified process before the father inseminates her in the "usual" way. The embryo begins to develop in the female's uterus. Part-way through the pregnancy, the fetus is transferred (in a pool of water) from the female to the male, where it grows in a pouch on the man's abdomen. The baby comes out when the pouch splits open in the course of labor.

Here's a page of speculation about how a single-sex species (female) could work in terms of Earth biology:

Single-Sex Species

In Joanna Russ's classic story "When It Changed," members of the all-female population reproduce by combining ova from two different women.

In isogamy, displayed by some life-forms such as algae and fungi, all gametes have the same size and morphology and so can be considered of the "same sex," which can't technically be labeled either male or female:

Isogamy

Some Earth organisms switch reproductive methods in alternate generations between sexual and asexual reproduction (e.g., budding).

The heroine of Megan Lindholm's CLOVEN HOOVES falls in love with a satyr she thinks of as Pan. This highly unusual novel starts out as, apparently, fantasy, in which at first we can't even be sure the paranormal encounters are happening outside the heroine's mind. Eventually, however, the story becomes SF, when the satyr reveals that he belongs to an all-male species whose members reproduce by implanting clones of themselves into human women through sexual intercourse. Thus, when the heroine gives birth to her satyr baby son, he isn't biologically related to her at all.

The occasional birth of females among the alien race on THE ORVILLE suggests a possibility for the evolution of their alleged all-male species. Maybe they once reproduced alternately sexually (through ordinary mating between male and female) and asexually (by cloning). Maybe some genetic disorder caused the conception of females to cease except in rare cases. Asexual reproduction became the only remaining viable means of perpetuating the species and came to be considered the only normal way. So when the male character in that series lays an egg, he's producing a clone of himself.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Monsters in the Modern World

A recent question on Quora asked how well vampires would be able to survive in the modern world. My reaction was along the line of "better than ever." In DRACULA, Bram Stoker envisions how the Count uses "nineteenth-century up-to-date" conveniences to move to the modern, technologically advanced environment of England from his "ruined castle in a forgotten land" (as Van Helsing describes it). Many urban fantasy novels imagine how vampires and other traditional "monsters" might fit into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

To begin with, a contemporary vampire who wants to relocate can buy a plane ticket instead of having to endure a lengthy ocean voyage, with the risks of exposure in being confined to a limited space for days or weeks with a small group of oblivious human companions. An even more fundamental consideration is that, in contrast to past times and places when tight-knit communities were suspicious of strangers and people with eccentric habits, nowadays in any first-world country a vampire could blend in as just one of many representatives of diverse ethnic groups and lifestyles. For much of European and American history, failure to attend church would be seen as peculiar or downright suspicious; nowadays that behavior wouldn't raise an eyebrow. If he or she has a severe reaction to sunlight (like the undead in movies and many modern novels, although not in nineteenth-century fiction or most folklore) or simply prefers a nocturnal existence, stores and businesses with extended hours are plentiful in any decent-sized city. The Internet, of course, makes it easy to obtain most products and services without leaving home. If the vampire needs to earn money, numerous night-shift jobs are available. Never being seen eating could be attributed to allergies or some other dietary restriction. ("I'm on a liquid protein regimen.") What about nourishment? Blood banks (with, presumably, bribeable employees who could supply newly expired blood) offer an obvious source. Also, it wouldn't be hard to find potential donors with romantic notions about vampires, who would happily give blood under the impression that the alleged vampire is simply playing a role.

Computers and the Internet, in my opinion, would make transition from one lifetime to the next easier rather than harder. A competent hacker can create a new identity with supporting data planted on all the relevant websites. In the TV series FOREVER KNIGHT, one vampire makes a career of performing that very service. The issue of possible exposure by old photographs was raised on Quora, a problem that I believe is much exaggerated. What would you think if you saw a century-old photo that closely resembled a contemporary acquaintance? Would you instantly jump to the conclusion that the person must be immortal? No, most likely you would think, "What an amazing family resemblance." My husband's brother looks remarkably like a picture we have of their father in late middle age, and nobody wonders whether my brother-in-law is really his father under a new identity. :)

Werewolves could also benefit from modern conveniences. With rapid transit, on full-moon nights a werewolf could quickly travel to an isolated region where he or she could roam and hunt animal prey. If he or she suffers from the affliction of being unable to control the change or behave rationally when transformed, an electronic lock on a timer could keep the werewolf safely confined in a reinforced room during the critical period—no need to involve a fallible human helper. In case of a craving for raw meat, any big city has butcher shops where fresh meat of all kinds can be bought, then consumed in the privacy of the home. Or maybe a discerning werewolf would order exotic cuts online (venison? buffalo?). Interesting side note: Poul Anderson wrote a couple of stories about werewolves who stay rational in wolf form but need moonlight to transform. They carry flashlights that simulate moonlight, so that they can change shape by shining the artificial moonlight on themselves.

Would the Internet and social media make contact with friendly extraterrestrials easier or harder to adjust to? The news of their arrival, with visual recordings, would be transmitted around the world instantly. On the other hand, given the ease of faking photos and videos, would much of the public think it's a hoax at first? How long would it take for governments and mainstream news media to convince most of their constituents that the landing really happened? Considering we still have believers in a flat Earth and disbelievers in the moon landings, some people might never accept the existence of aliens.

Vampires on FOREVER KNIGHT worried about photographs, because they could alter human memories by hypnosis, but memory erasure didn't stick if the victims had physical evidence to reinforce their awareness of the truth. One might think social media would pose a serious danger to the anonymity of vampires, werewolves, and other monsters. Again, I think the risk isn't that high, because audiences have solid reasons to be cynical about visual "proof." Anybody who isn't already predisposed to believe in the supernatural would probably dismiss pictures or videos as staged, photoshopped, or both. If vampires WANTED to come out in public (as in the Sookie Stackhouse series and its TV adaptation, TRUE BLOOD), they might have as much trouble getting the world to believe in them, at first, as visiting aliens would.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

The Plausibility of Modern Legends

I subscribe to the magazine SKEPTICAL INQUIRER, which I highly recommend to fans and writers of SF and fantasy. Its coverage of myths, legends, and hoaxes offers lots of story seeds and can help authors ensure that their characters respond rationally to incredible events rather than acting overly gullible. The latest issue contains a review of a new book about the Loch Ness Monster. I would like to believe in the monster (alas, the only mark of its presence we saw on our one-hour Loch Ness cruise during a tour of Scotland was a steep hill where Nessie was supposed to have slid down into the lake). Everything I've read about it, though, seems to support the position that the reported sightings in modern times comprise a combination of mistaken perceptions and deliberate photographic hoaxes. That a breeding population of large animals could survive in a confined area with no physical evidence being found after decades of searching does seem unlikely. (If the monster weren't a natural animal but an intelligent, magical creature, as in Jean Lorrah's Nessie series, that would be a different matter.)

Bigfoot (which I'd also love to believe in) seems more plausible. If Sasquatches existed, they'd be a small breeding population of a near-extinct species of primate, a very few individuals living in a vast tract of millions of acres of forest in the Pacific Northwest. There's nothing inherently unlikely about their existence being real but unproven, since they would have a strong motivation to remain hidden.

On the other hand, while I certainly believe life exists elsewhere in the universe, I reluctantly disbelieve all UFO "evidence" I've read about. Sightings and photographs have been convincingly debunked. As for the personal narratives of face-to-face contact and abductions, they sound like attempts at writing science fiction by people who don't know much of anything about science fiction. They don't make sense in terms of motivation. If aliens advanced enough to travel here from other stars wanted to make contact with us, maybe to pass on their wisdom and save us from extinction, wouldn't they reveal themselves openly to people in a position to change the world? Would beings of superior intelligence and unimaginably powerful technology make contact with an alien planet by grabbing random inhabitants whose reports are certain to be disbelieved? And if the aliens wanted to observe us without being noticed, they'd surely have the ability to do so.

Now, maybe they're observing us and don't care about remaining unseen. Maybe they're gradually accustoming us to their presence, like Jane Goodall with the chimpanzees. In that case, though, the alleged abductions don't make sense; the events as reported couldn't be telling the aliens anything about us they don't already know.

Slightly more plausible motivations: Earth is under galactic quarantine; visits to our solar system are forbidden under the alien equivalent of the Prime Directive. The briefly, ambiguously glimpsed craft in the sighting reports aren't supposed to be here. They're interstellar smugglers or other shady characters taking refuge from pursuit in a forbidden zone. As for the abductions, if they actually happened, I can think of only one credible explanation—the aliens are just messing with our heads. Either the rogue visitors are playing random pranks in a spirit of cruel fun, or extraterrestrial scientists are conducting psychological experiments on us inferior beings to find out how our culture will interpret this irrational behavior on the part of superior entities.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Becoming Alien

At ICFA, I picked up an old issue of ANALOG from the freebie table. It included a review of BECOMING ALIEN (1988), by Rebecca Ore. Thanks to the miracle of the Internet, it was easy to find secondhand copies of this paperback. It's an unusual, thought-provoking first contact story.

As the novel begins, the narrator, Tom, lives with his drug-manufacturing older brother, Warren, in rural Virginia. When a spaceship crashes nearby, Tom rescues the sole survivor, with his brother's grudging consent. The alien, whom Tom calls "Alpha," is essentially a quasi-humanoid, marsupial bat who lives mostly on blood and milk. (There's no vampire activity in the book, though.) Although unable to learn each other's languages, the two of them become friends of a sort and develop a crude form of communication. Unfortunately, Warren remains suspicious of Alpha and fearful that the alien's people will show up. He eventually shoots and more-or-less accidentally kills Alpha. When Tom is eighteen, the aliens do land in search of their lost comrades. By then, Warren has been imprisoned for drug-dealing and, because he raves about aliens, declared criminally insane. Learning that the dead ET wanted Tom to take his place as a cadet at their Federation's Academy, to be trained as a translator and diplomat, the visitors offer Tom that position. The alternative is to have his memory wiped, since civilized beings (unlike the people of Earth) don't kill sapients. Having nothing left for him at home, he agrees to go. At this point, about one-sixth of the way through the book, the real adventure begins.

In addition to the species evolved from bats, Tom finds himself surrounded mainly by birdlike and bearlike people. He also meets a few races outwardly similar to Earth humans. To all of them, he's a "primitive" and probably a xenophobe, judging from the way aliens are depicted in Earth media. As the title of the novel implies, in this environment HE is the alien. He discovers that to be considered civilized, he has to learn Karst, the lingua franca of the Federation. If he refuses or proves incapable, he'll be confined to a reservation with other primitives. So of course he accepts the surgical implants that enable him to learn the language. The process is fast but not automatic or instantaneous; he still has to study, a detail that feels more realistic than the universal translator or instant language mastery often seen in film and fiction. He finds it very disturbing when, early in the procedure, his ability to speak English has to be suppressed for a while. Although we're given almost no Karst vocabulary, the text conveys the impression of an alien language by showing alternate or parenthetical translations for many of the words in sentences that represent Karst dialogue.

Tom gets a new name, Red Clay, and has to learn new customs and body language. Among the bat people, for instance, nodding signifies anger. Beyond cultural variations like those he might find on Earth, different species perceive the universe through different senses, such as the bat people's perception of ultrasound and polarized light. Also, the bat folk bond by singing into each other's throats. Tom's thrill at traveling among the stars and meeting exotic creatures is soon overshadowed by the disorientation of total strangeness. His adjustment difficulties go deeper than getting used to odd furniture, clothing, and food. (How a species can get nourishment from plants or animals that evolved on a different planet is finessed without explanation, as in most SF.) Early in his adjustment, he feels physically sick at the sight of a particular ET. He reflects at one point, "How do dogs stand it, that never see another dog all their lives? I felt like a smart puppy dragged into a world of super-intelligent bats and bears." His mentors worry that he might "xenofreak," a possibility that feels very real. Tom manages to resist falling into that irrational behavior, but a human-appearing female he meets does succumb, failing her orientation. She views all the aliens as "monsters," including Tom despite his outward similarity to her. Later, a biologically fully human female is repelled by his body hair and beard growth. And the aliens aren't totally free of xenophobia among themselves. Avian sapients refer to mammals as "hairy lactating monsters." Moreover, the delicate issue of different species smelling "wrong" to each other is directly confronted. I've never come across another work of fiction that focuses so intensely and believably on the problems a human immigrant would have with fitting into a society of even the most intelligent and benign aliens. Yet he does form close friendships with his bird roommate and a few of the bat people.

The last lines of the book declare, "So we're all Mind together? I don't know if it is true, but I can believe it right now." This novel vividly portrays how hard it would be to maintain the ideal of IDIC while struggling with deep-rooted instincts. There's no romance in this story (except for a hint near the end) but plenty of Intimate Adventure.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Astrology Just For Writers, Part 12 - Virgo, 6th House and Soul Mates by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Astrology Just For Writers
Part 12
Virgo, 6th House and Soul Mates
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Often the best reason to go to a religious service is the jokes told by the Priest, Reverend or Rabbi.

These are usually very old jokes, and I do ever so much relish old jokes as plot-material for stories, just as cliche and misnomer supply reams of raw material for story tellers.  There's a reason old jokes survive generation to generation and get laughs from those who are too young to have heard them before -- and that reason is worth deep study if you plan a career in fiction writing.  It is most easily revealed by a study of Astrology -- not to "foretell" the future, but to understand Character Arc.  So this series of posts is Astrology Just For Writers.

The index to previous posts on Astrology is here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_30.html

The Alien Romance subject we need to look at here, and will later examine in the series of posts on, perhaps, Theme-Character Integration, is, "What exactly IS a human?"  Until we can answer that, we can't "create" the Alien who can fall in love with our Human Character.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/07/index-to-theme-character-integration.html
What Is A Human Being? is a huge topic, much bigger than me, for sure.

But what brought it into focus for me is a joke, which is not surprising because the entire purpose of Comedy is to reveal that which is too big to see.  If you want to understand Comedy, study the Mary Tyler Moore show.
http://www.amazon.com/Mary-Tyler-Moore-Show-Complete/dp/B00005JLIC

The particular joke that caught my attention, that I just can't get out of my head, was told by a Rabbi at Yom Kippur Services -- how incongruous!  But it worked to open an entire issue Romance Writers must pay attention to, especially when trying to depict an Alien-Human Soul-Mate pair, a very complex Relationship.  If it is a Romance, the Relationship must drive the Plot, and that means the writer must know much more about the structure of Human Nature than the reader is likely to know, as well as how and why Characters "arc" -- and how to depict a Character Arc.  The core of Depicting (show don't tell) is Theme.

Here is a post laying out the basics of Theme and story structure:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-to-use-theme-in-writing-romance.html

Here is my earliest post on Soul Mates.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/03/soul-mate-characters-heroic-villainous.html

We've been discussing Soul and Soul-Mate in the context of Romance Craft and how the Romance genre is a natural fit into the Science Fiction Genre for a long time.  We've even touched on Comedy, but not on how to use it to reveal an esoteric thematic point in show-don't-tell.  That's what this joke does -- expresses a huge abstract notion of the nature of humanity in show-don't-tell.

Here's the essence of the joke, which I can't repeat exactly because I'm not good at comedy:

God was challenged by a Mortal who didn't believe in Him.  The Mortal says he can make humans, too, just as God does.

So God accepts the challenge and they repair to an open field to compete.  God reaches down and picks up a handful of dirt, and Creates it into a Human.  The Mortal then reaches down and picks up a handful of dirt and begins to create a human, but God says, "Wait!  You can't use THAT dirt -- I Created that dirt."

If the Mortal uses material that God created, then the Mortal isn't Creating a Human "just as God does."  He's using the material God Created.  His work is derivative, not original, therefore the entity he creates isn't "Human" in the sense that the Humans God Creates are Human.

This joke begs the question, "What is a human being?"

To define "Human" we generally reference Genesis, where God Creates Adam -- or more precisely Adam Kadmon (the first Man).

Adam Kadmon is not a "man" at all, but a genderless, or composit, template with both male and female nascent within.

Then God separates the female, leaving a "man" who is no longer the First Human.

The premise of my Sime~Gen Series is that the Sime~Gen Mutation is of the same order of basic Creation as that separation into male and female, so you have male and female Simes and male and female Gens -- whereupon family relationships become extremely complex, and Romance takes on a whole new meaning.  Playing with Worldbuilding at that original level of Creation makes a writer research and ponder the very essential nature of humanity, so I've spent decades burrowing into Tarot and Astrology, as well as Kabbalah, and every other religion.

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This post on the Astrology of the 6th House is to mull over an observation about the meaning of the 6th House as it pertains to the phenomenon of Soul Mate.  The plot-driver of the Sime~Gen Series is all about Karma and Soul Mates.

By the time you read this, the audible.com audiobook edition of the Sime~Gen novel, Mahogany Trinrose, one of the more esoteric-based novels revealing a lot of the hidden ESP functions pivotal to the series, on amazon.

Mahogany Trinrose Kindle and Trade Paperback

http://www.amazon.com/Mahogany-Trinrose-Sime~Gen-Book-Four/dp/1434412083

As always when studying the "Houses" of Astrology, focus on the "Natural" Houses -- with Aries as the 1st House and Pisces as the 12th.

In this case we are studying the Soul Mate properties of the 6th House.

Because the Astrological zodiac is depicted as circular, divided into 12 "Houses" -- and 12 "Signs" -- which exactly coincide in the Natural position (with 0 degress Aries Rising -- or "on the Eastern Horizon" --) therefore the 6th House is opposite the 12th.

This is an obvious fact, one that is just so blatantly "in your face" that you don't see it.

But the astrological wheel graphically represents something that is equally obvious in the most ordinary glyph used to represent the Kabbalistic Tree Of Life.

 

That "something" is "opposites."  The very nature of opposites, the fundamental concept of "opposition" is so pervasive in our lives that we don't notice it even when we're talking about it.

Both the astrological chart and the Tree of Life smack us between the eyes so hard with this obvious fact that we just don't notice it.  It's too big.  The fact is too stunning to comprehend.

That fact is: opposites exist.

Matter exists.  So does "anti-matter."  The entire universe is constructed symmetrically -- so why wouldn't you think a Human  Being is not symmetric?  We are symmetric on the outside, sort of -- most people a just a bit asymmetric, which lends them "character."  If we are symmetric on the outside, why wouldn't we be symmetric on the inside, composed of Opposites?

It is so simple, so obvious, we just don't incorporate it into our thinking when we plot a Romance Novel.  We think male-female, and that's the only pair of opposites.  But look at the astrological chart, and look at the Tree of Life -- more than one pair of opposites make up the total pattern.

"Opposites Attract" -- yeah, we all know that and use it when creating a "pair" who will fall madly in love at first sight.

What is it about opposites -- and what has that to do with human nature as depicted in the Rabbi's joke?

The punch-line of that joke, which I can't replicate, is where God says "You can't use my dirt and say you are Creating as I Create."  You have to Create your own dirt, then make a Human.  Maybe you can Create humans -- but can you Create dirt?  Clay?  A specific type of dirt that can be molded into a human?

We, (most Human cultures) assume that the Spiritual is OPPOSITE the Material.

We assume Soul is different from, perhaps incompatible with, Body.

We assume Soul and Body are TWO DIFFERENT THINGS.

We assume that Soul-Mate and Lust-for-Monkey-Sex are two different things.

We assume that one or the other must DOMINATE.

The proposition to mull over, in order to understand what the 6th House, Virgo, (the accountant, Ruled by Mercury) is that the target state is BALANCE.

Here is a thumbnail sketch of the "meaning" of the Houses given to beginners in Astrology -- misleading in many ways, but a starting point.  It "depicts" the Relationship of Opposites.

Ponder the concept of a dynamic equilibrium, a balance of balances where everything swings, and moves, dances, but stays in a dynamic tension with Pure Energy (what I've termed in previous posts here as Godshine) flowing from one state to the other and back again.  A circuit in perfect BALANCE.

All the assumptions about dividing the world into two-things and then fighting until one or the other dominates, are rooted in our modern culture's origin in the Hellenistic, or Ancient Greek culture that produced Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, et. al.

Fighting to Dominate is what the entire pantheon of Greek gods did, and the impetus to fight and to bully Humans, to rape Humans to create Heroes, came from the explicitly described dysfunctional (insane) family relationships among the gods.  It's all there in the mythology.

As a result of what we've inherited from the Helenistic Cultures, we live in a zero-sum-game culture, modeled and transmitted by Football, and other sports where you keep score to determine a winner, convincing all children that this is Reality.

This non-verbal absorption of a conviction makes any other concept of Reality "unthinkable" -- just literally unthinkable.  Our language contains no words for what the horoscope wheel and the Tree of Life depict, so we can't think these thoughts.

The science fiction romance writer must think such thoughts -- then find words to convey the illusion of understanding the alien.

So let's look deeper into the unthinkable alien.

To determine a winner, there must be a loser.

Winner and Loser are considered "opposites."  But are they?

Winner and Loser come in PAIRS - pairs of opposites - incompatible opposites where one must dominate the other. If one wins the trophy, the other can't have that trophy -- the trophy doesn't suddenly become two-trophies.  What kind of a "marriage" is that?  Where's the Romance in "I get and you don't."  Is winner/loser the correct paradigm to describe the reality of Romance?

Is the immersion of our culture in "Sports" the reason many readers won't touch Romance because the underlying concept of the Happily Ever After ending seems "unrealistic?"

In a true Happily Ever After ending, you can not have one of the couple dominating the other -- because the misery of the one dominated will eventually lead to rebellion.  The Sport paradigm disallows any kind of resolution where one does not dominate the other.

Is Reality Created in incompatible pairs of opposites?  Or is there another Relationship that explains how Reality really works?  This is the subject of The Not So Minor Arcana.  Here we're looking at that subject via Astrology.

Giving every kid a 'certificate' for showing up is not the same as preventing them from internalizing the dominance-based model of the universe, as it differs from the balance-based model of the universe depicted in the Zodiac and the Tree of Life.

The Zodiac was familiar to the Helenistic culture, but the Tree of Life was not common to Aristotelian thinking.

We artificially divide humans into Soul and Body to force the concept "Human" into that Aristotelian either/or model of reality.

The misconception is that Reality is "either/or" based (all computers today are either/or based).

The Bible, however, is entirely rooted in a totally different (opposite, and not incompatible) model of reality.

The Bible starts with that Creation story which culminates in the Creation of Male and Female -- in the Divine image.

Perhaps the concept "Human" as depicted in the Bible actually explains to us what we will encounter when we get out into Space and find Intelligent Life on other planets -- or perhaps we may find already space-faring civilizations.

So lets think about the concept Human in terms of the 6th House.

The salient clue is that the 6th House is the opposite of the 12th House.

6th House is labeled, in this diagram, Service and Health -- but it represents your job, what you do to make money, and the manner in which you do it.  6th House is Virgo ruled by Mercury.

The 12th House is commonly labeled "self-undoing" -- the syndrome where you are your own worst enemy, hoist on your own petard, "busted."  But that's only one possible manifestation.  The 12th House is Pisces, ruled by Neptune.

Neptune ordinarily manifests as "dissolution" or "confusion" -- but one common manifestation is Romance.  12th House, Pisces, Neptune, all together define Romance, and the Soul Mate experience.
The 12th House represents the summation of Life, the synthesis of all the other variables in the Natal Chart, everything so deeply merged and mingled that Neptune has the reputation of being 'confusing' or 'dissolving reality' -- Neptune transits are called 'disorienting.'

Pisces/Neptune/12th House synthesizes everything into one thing, dissolving the borders between different things, for example Husband and Wife becoming One.  Marriage is the perfect symbol of 12th House.  Truly, to be "married" means you must "undo" yourself to incorporate the Other within your notion of Self.

Why is Neptune 'disorienting?'

Because, given our Hellenistic heritage, we 'orient' ourselves in Material Reality by separating off the Spiritual and isolating it as if it were something "other" than Material.

The joke the Rabbi told SHOWS without TELLING that Spiritual and Material are not, in fact, two DIFFERENT things.

Spiritual and Material appear to be incompatible opposites -- just like the nitty-gritty, separate detail orientation of Virgo/Mercury is conceptualized in our culture as "opposite" Pisces/Neptune and its Inclusive Big Picture, everything smearing into one idealistic cloud, portrait of Reality.  Neptune obscures details while Mercury separates them and gives them sparkling-hard-edges.

As you read on here below, always keep in mind that Neptune, the Ruler of the 12th House, is the single most definitive significator of Romance in general, and the Soul Mate (and Happily Ever After ending) in particular.  NEPTUNE is the ruling planet of this blog.  It's all about Romance stories.

Astrologically, Virgo, ruled by Mercury, is the 6th House which represents both what you do to earn a living (your job as distinct from your Career) and your Health.

The connection between satisfaction and success at 'Work' (your job, what you get paid money for) and your Physical Body Health is famous in Astrological interpretations of the 6th House.

Beginners in Astrology puzzle and anguish over finding an interpretation for a 6th House transit.

Seasoned professional astrologers will nail one or the other manifestion, in body or health, with fair accuracy, mostly by ignoring the problem of what the connection is between Bodily Health and Job Performance.  Modern science has pretty much "explained" that to the satisfaction of most people.

This Rabbi's joke tells us explicitly that this designation of 6th House as "Body Health" OR "Job Issues" is nonsense.

This Rabbi's joke tells us exactly how these two apparently unconnected things -- Body and Job -- are actually the self-same-identical thing.

But that connection is apparent only through the Tree of Life view of Reality -- the Biblical Description of the nature of reality as a balance, or dynamic equilibrium.

How the Tree of Life view, the graphic representation of the Biblical view of Creation, tells us the relationship between Body and Job becomes apparent only if you understand that the 12th House (Romance) is the connection between Body and Job.

Get that connection into your head, and your Romance plots will never get stale or repetitive, or derivative.

The connection between Romance, Body and Job is the answer to the question, "What is a Human Being?"  

The assumption you make about the Nature of the Human Being generates all the Themes you use in worldbuilding.

Here is the index to the advanced craft posts on integration of theme, plot, character and worldbuilding.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/12/index-to-theme-plot-character.html
You can use the Helenistic definition of Human, the Roman Definition, or the Japanese, Chinese, Hindu, Native American, or many other definitions to generate dynamite Romance plots.  You can adapt any of them to produce a Happily Ever After scenario if you study and internalize the mythologies of these civilizations.  But there will always be readers who just won't accept that the HEA is possible in real life.

If you do study all these civilizations, and then study the Biblical view of the universe, you will find bits and pieces, a fragment here a shard over there -- traces of the Biblical view in each of these civilizations' mythologies.

The Talmud has it that God offered the Torah to all of the Nations of Earth before he got to Abraham. Each of the Nations asked some questions (typical of their cultures) before answering whether they would accept the Torah, so God just kept on searching.  When he offered the deal to Abraham (then Abram), he just accepted the deal without question, packed up and went to follow God's ways, and then asked what those ways were.

This story explains why you find bits and pieces of Torah everywhere -- everyone got something for considering the offer.  It also illustrates the difference between the culture that accepted Torah, the Biblical View of Reality, and those that regarded that view with suspicion.  The descendants of Abraham are an oddity among humans.

But the Torah also states, boldly and loudly, that eventually all the Nations will "bow down" to God, understand that Biblical View of Reality and rejoice in that understanding.  Nobody loses.  Everybody wins.  Reality is not structured as "either/or" or "I win means you lose."  In the Biblical view of reality, "I win means everyone wins."

That is what is so odd, yet not incompatible, between the general culture's view of reality and the Biblical view of Reality.  When you get a more global grasp of the Biblical View from the perspective of Torah, Tanach, Talmud, Mishnah and Gemmara, you will find that it differs markedly, stubbornly, and emphatically from all the other mythologies.  It is "alien" to every other culture on this Earth, yet is reflected in those cultures, and even the basis of those cultures.

One core issue that distinguishes the Biblical View, yet appears in so many other cultures, is the matter of Body and Soul.

Some cultures say the Body must dominate: "If it feels good, it is good."

Some cultures say the Soul must dominate: "Pleasure is Evil."

Our culture currently is resoundingly rejecting Pleasure Is Evil as a theme -- and going with Pleasure Is The Ultimate Good.  In Romance novels, the first order of business is monkey-sex, then comes Relationship.  Sexual attraction (Body) is considered "irresistible."  Body needs, physical desire, must always dominate any value the Mind (Soul) holds dear.  There's no point resisting the Body because it Dominates the Soul.  That's a thematic premise pervading the Romance field today.

That is, Pleasure (especially sexual pleasure) is the prime indicator by which we distinguish a Soul Mate from the background population.  You have to try out a guy in bed before you marry him, or you'll make a big mistake.  And the guy must be "handsome" -- or the gal "beautiful."  The Body counts more than the Soul.

In other words, the modern USA  culture is working this problem of "What is a human being?" by using the assumption that EITHER the Body OR the Soul must dominate.

Dominance is the only possible way to resolve a conflict, and opposites are always in conflict.  That is a Theme.  You see it working out in International Affairs -- as well as the current Presidential Election cycle.

In other words, in our modern cultural assumptions, Balance is not an Option, unless it is a static balance and tilted to one side or the other.

There is no way to synthesize opposites into a unified whole.

Why do Romance writers and especially science fiction romance writers who deal in the Paranormal (Neptune rules the Paranormal) Romance field need a model of "Human" at all?  Why not just go with your readership's prevailing idea of what a Human is?

Well, if you just accept the prevailing assumption about the nature of Humanity, you will create a lot of read-and-toss, Airplane Read, Beach Read novels, all identical.

What distinguishes one novel from another is theme, and what distinguishes one theme from another is the distinctiveness of that theme.

In Alien Romance, if your Alien character is Human-with-pasted-on-quirks, you won't create a book or series that will be remembered and passed on to children and grandchildren as a "must-read."

The must-read classics are all novels with themes that challenge the unconscious assumptions about Reality, on such a deep subconscious level that the reader is not aware of having their notions challenged.

It's what screenwriting books like SAVE THE CAT! call "off the nose" writing.  You don't call a spade, a spade.  You don't name it on the nose.  You don't hit the nail on the head.  You come at the assumption at an oblique angle and strike a spark that lights tinder in the Soul of the reader.

To do that, you as a writer, need a number of significantly different notions of "what" a human being is.

Your human protagonist has to be able to recognize something "human" in your alien protagonist (preferably that no other human is seeing).

Your alien protagonist has to be able to see something alien in your human protagonist (preferably that no other alien is seeing.)

To pull that off, you have to understand how your target reader understands what a human being is, and you have to have a complete grasp of what other views of humanity can be understood by your reader if you can show them without telling.

As noted above, all cultures have some bit or piece of the Kabbalistic view of the human being. Astrology spans all cultural barriers and depicts mathematically and graphically what we all sense about ourselves, and how we "read" others.

Any reader looking for a Soul Mate novel with an HEA ending will be able to stipulate the existence of the Soul.

Most, however, will not be consciously aware that the resolution of the Body/Soul conflict in our culture is depicted as show-don't-tell in the work/health connection, the 6th House.

I'll give you one example of how this theory can explain the work/health connection, and from that you should be able to create new variations that could form a template for a comprehensible yet alien Alien protagonis.

Here is one way to understand the 6th House, Body/Work connection.

Here are two previous posts discussing the Soul-Time Hypothesis relevant to this quesiton about the meaning of the 6th House.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/01/cycles-and-seasons-margaret-carter.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/01/theme-symbolism-integration-part-4-how.html

Here's the theory of what a human is that can generate infinite numbers of sexy alien protagonists.

Think back to that joke at the top of this post.

The nature of anything lies in its initial moments.  That's why Astrological Natal Charts of both human births and the "birth" of an Event -- the moment something happens -- hold usable meaning.

The starting point of a novel determines it's ending point, just as the start determines its middle.  Get those 3 points wrong, and the novel not only won't sell to a big publishing house, but it will be panned by comments on Amazon if you self-publish it.

The starting point determines the middle and end.

Or the middle determines the start and end.

Or the end determines the start and middle.

Unlike Euclidean (another Helenistic Greek) Geometry where it takes 3 points to determine a line, or a triangle, "life" only needs one point.

Or at least, that's the Kabbalistic (Tarot) theory.

In other words, in the Biblical View Of The Universe, there is no such thing as "random" -- but it's not "deterministic" either.  Determinism is one of the precepts of all the Ancient Greek plays that were updated by the Romans and copied by Shakespeare.

We live inside a pattern, but we have Free Will.

So any given starting point for a Life contains the potential for all sorts of middle and end points.

Free Will choice determines which of all the possible middle and end points will gain potential energy.  Which of those high-potential-energy points will be actualized is negotiated with God (who is not a Bully like the Greek gods; he doesn't dictate, He negotiates personally, individually.)

That's where the immense variety of human endeavor comes from.  We all contain Infinity because we were Created by the Infinite -- we are (like the Tardis) bigger inside than outside.

Here is a theory of what a child is that can be crafted into a Theme.

A child is born with specifically delineated Potential.  The child has a Soul from conception, but that Soul is enormously complex and thus doesn't all "fit" inside the baby.  The Soul has to "descend" as it prompts the baby's growth.

We say (also a thematic point) that when the Soul leaves the Body, the human dies.

But that idea is based on the either/or structure of reality.  Perhaps the Soul isn't either-present-or-absent.  Perhaps it is a gradual, step-wise, ever increasing habitation of the Body?

Kabbalah delineates Levels to the Soul - just like Atoms were first thought (by the Helenistic Greeks) to be the smallest indivisible particle of matter, but later were discovered to be composed of electrons and a nucleus, and all of those particles are composed of other sub-atomic particles, each with its own Character.

Likewise, the Biblical View of the Universe, gives us a vision of the human Soul as being composed of Levels, all very intricate and complex.

A baby has a Soul connected, but not fully descended.  At various ages, on the birthday (by the Hebrew calendar) the Soul descends a little more.

This explains how and why children at different ages have increasing capacity for self-control, self-discipline, comprehension of the abstract, etc.  The stages of human development show us what to teach at different ages.

Children learn by doing.  Thus, at each age, additional activities are added to the daily regimen, and additional responsibilities are added until at age 12 or 13 the child is fully responsible for the consequences of her/his actions.

Real learning is always non-verbal.  The deeds carve and shape our view of the universe.

With deeds, we learn the words that correspond to those deeds. Charity.  Justice.  Compassion.

None of those words means anything without the previous practice of the deed: "Don't hit your little sister!"  "Johnny, you must share that toy even though it is yours."

So as a child becomes an Adult (sexual maturity is a big part of that), the Soul descends and gains a firmer grip on the Body.

Throughout the rest of the life, there are milestone birthdays (70 and 80, 90 and 100, being major significators) that delineate a firmer and then weakening grip of the Soul on the Body.

For most of the productive (working at a 6th House job) life, the Soul fits into the Body like a hand fits into a glove.

The Soul wears the Body, and like the hand wearing a glove, stretches and shapes the Body into a replica (an opposite, like a plaster cast you pour molten metal into to make a 3-D object) of the Soul.

We now know that you can have many genes that are not "turned on" or "expressed" -- and that the experiences of Life can switch genes on or off.  You are not your genes.  You are not pre-destined (a Helenistic concept incompatible with the Biblical View of the Universe) by your genes.

You are what your Soul can make of you.  That can be infinite possibilities in infinite combinations.

Or maybe you are what "you" make of your Soul.

In the Helenistic view of the universe, the question would be, "Well, WHICH is it -- the Soul that makes the Body or the Body that makes the Soul?"

In the Biblical view of the universe, that question is utter nonsense.

See how you can use various views of the universe in various human cultures to depict truly Alien aliens who can be Soul Mates to a human?

An Alien who has never heard of the either/or zero-sum-game view of the universe would be sorely puzzled by the very question "which is it?"  The question itself is nonsense.

In the Biblical view of the universe, Body and Soul are really the same thing (Neptune synthesizes).

Remember the Rabbi-joke?  "You can't use that dirt.  You have to Create your human from scratch as I did."

That's MY dirt.  I created that dirt.

What dirt is that?  It's the "dirt" or "clay" from which our bodies are "molded."

Just as that clay was Created specifically to be the body of a particular individual human, so too was the Soul that will wear that Body Created.  They are a pair, synthesized, made one, Neptune style.

We know, today, that our Body is a few pounds of carbon, minerals, etc. (dirt) and a whole lot of Water.

We don't know yet what our Soul is, or is made of, other than it is the breath God blew into Adam's nostrils.

In a previous post, I pointed out the Soul-Time-Hypothesis that I think explains a lot about why "science" can't peg the Soul and prove it exists.

Theory: the Soul enters manifestation through the dimension of Time.

The Soul has no material dimensions -- no height, width, breadth, mass, weight, not even "energy" as in electrons or magnetic fields.  That's why modern science can't even find it, nevermind measure it -- all our instruments are made of matter.

The Soul doesn't inhabit the Body or Possess the Body.

The Soul is not the Body, but it is not an "either/or" relationship.

The Body and the Soul are both created by God, designed for each other, just like in the joke.  "That's My dirt!  Make your own."

Now, back to the 6th House.

Theory: suppose the Soul is given a free will choice before conception.

Astrology assigns the meaning of the MC, the 10th House Cusp, to the Purpose of this Life.  Natural 10th House is Capricorn, the Manager, and is ruled by Saturn.  While that 10th House cusp can be in any sign, depending on where and when you are born (when your Life begins), it adds attributes of Capricorn and Saturn to your personal 10th House cusp.

Science shows how hormones trigger birth, and the trigger starts in the fetus.  The fetus's Nature determines the moment of birth.

So suppose the Soul chooses the Parents and the moment of Birth to make the "purpose" of this life.

The Soul takes on a Life to realize the potential encoded into the 10th House cusp.

That sign/ruler combination chosen by the Soul is inflected by Capricorn and Saturn (Management and Discipline).

Saturn is often regarded as "purpose" or "ambition."

You are born with an ambition to realize your potential for completing a certain job, a purpose in life, a career.  By Noel Tyl's theory, the Moon position by sign, ruler and House represents your driving need, and Saturn organizes the world around you to fulfill that need.

But to do that, you need to make money, have a job, 6th House.

Another interpretation of the Natural 6th House, Virgo, is "service."

Virgos make great secretaries, accountants, detail oriented people.  Unless they have a Big Picture attribute highlighted elsewhere in their Natal Chart, they tend toward project-oriented professions. They make great health-care professionals, treating each patient as a project.

But there's nothing shallow about Virgo.  They aren't subservient by nature.

The 6th House is put to the service of the 10th -- the ambition, the Purpose Of This Life is served by whatever you do for a living, as a job.  Your career is the purpose of your life, your job is a means to walk the paths of that career.

It is often said the key to real happiness (as in Happily Ever After) is to Serve.

THEORY:  If your 6th House (job) is serving the Purpose of Your Life, your Body (6th house) will be healthy.

In other words, your Soul took God's job-offer to be You and do Whatever Job He Had That Needed Doing.  As long as you are doing the job you were hired by God to do, you will be healthy enough to do it.

You might not be "healthy" by general human standards.  You might be what is termed crippled or disabled.  You might be melting down with autoimune disease.  You might be missing limbs. You might have impaired senses.  If you are doing the job you were hired to do, then you will be healthy enough to do it.

Sometimes the job is to  be sick, dependent, impaired.

Sometimes the job is to be hale, healthy, strong, and the person upon whom the lame and weak depend.  Sometimes the job is to support the weak.  Sometimes the job is to be weak so that the Strong can do their job.

It's all 6th House.  Service equals Health.

The 12th House, the opposite to the 6th, is about the transcendent Soul, the summation of the Life, what it all means.  Neptune is idealism, a transcendent vision through the Soul's eyes, not the eyes of the Body.

There are a lot of insights into the meaning of the 12th House, Pisces ruled by Neptune (which rules Romance, as I keep reminding you).

The 12th is "reflected" into the 6th House.

Here's a story that illustrates (show don't tell) how this 6/12 axis of the Natal Chart works.

We can regard God as the artist who is Creating one-of-a-kind original artwork, each one a human being (or maybe an Alien Soul Mate for a human being).

All of the crafts our artisans practice express a way that the Divine Creates us.

One of those crafts is the silversmith.

If you research on YouTube you might find a video showing how to smelt silver where the silversmith gives tells the student how to determine when all the dross, or impurities, have been burned out of the silver -- leaving only pure silver.  How do you know when to stop smelting?

The clue the silversmith looks for is the reflection of his/her own face in the melted puddle of silver.

When purified, silver becomes a mirror, reflecting the smith's visage back at him/her.

The metaphore for why God smelts us in the fires of Life, gives us all this hardship, obstacles, difficulties, sorrows and grief, is that he's purifying us as silver is purified.  And he'll know we're finished, we're pure, when he sees Himself in us.

The Biblical description of God has long lists of attributes shown to us over the ages - for example, there are 13 Attributes of Mercy (and that's just one thing, Mercy).  Other Attributes likewise have parts.

When you reflect those attributes, He'll stop heating you in His fire.

Any Romance writer trying to create an Alien Love Interest, a non-human Soul Mate for a human, can use one or a few of these attributes to establish the essential humanity of the non-human regardless of the non-human's biology, form or figure.

Here are the 13 Attributes according to My Jewish Learning.
http://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-13-attributes-of-mercy/2/

---------quote-------
– The Lord! (Adonai)–God is merciful before a person sins! Even though aware that future evil lies dormant within him.

– The Lord! (Adonai)–God is merciful after the sinner has gone astray.

– God (El)–a name that denotes power as ruler over nature and humankind, indicating that God’s mercy sometimes surpasses even the degree indicated by this name.

– Compassionate (rahum)–God is filled with loving sympathy for human frailty does not put people into situations of extreme temptation, and eases the punishment of the guilty.

– Gracious (v’hanun)–God shows mercy even to those who do not deserve it consoling the afflicted and raising up the oppressed.

– Slow to anger (ereh apayim)–God gives the sinner ample time to reflect, improve, and repent.

– Abundant in Kindness (v’rav hesed)–God is kind toward those who lack personal merits, providing more gifts and blessings than they deserve; if one’s personal behavior is evenly balanced between virtue and sin, God tips the scales of justice toward the good.

– Truth (v’emet)–God never reneges on His word to reward those who serve Him.

– Preserver of kindness for thousands of generations (notzeir hesed la-alafim)–God remembers the deeds of the righteous for thebenefit of their less virtuous generations of offspring (thus we constantly invoke the merit of the Patriarchs).

– Forgiver of iniquity (nosei avon)–God forgives intentional sin resulting from an evil disposition, as long as the sinner repents.

– Forgiver of willful sin (pesha)–God allows even those who commit a sin with the malicious intent of rebelling against and angering Him the opportunity to repent.
---------------End Quote-----------

It doesn't matter what religion you espouse, or even if you're an Atheist or Agnostic, you recognize these behaviors as desireable and a signature of the Lovability of a person (human or not).  So most of your target audience will respond to a show-don't-tell illustration that your Alien character just naturally (without thought or consideration, without hesitation) exhibits one or another of these attributes.

And the reverse is true -- the Alien protagonist will recognize the Alien-Within your human protagonist when one or a combination of these traits comes to the fore in the plot.

Notice the phrase above: "as long as the sinner repents."

You may be surprised how fast the "repents" scene, the confession scene, the tell-the-truth scene, establishes rapport between the Character and your Target Reader, even if the Character is Alien.

The Target Reader is selected by what is repented, to whom, and why (maybe also when in the narrative arc confession and repentance take place).  Different readers will applaud a Character's choices of when to fess up to what, and why fessing up is necessary (or not necessary).

Think about the TV Series I Love Lucy -- every episode with a very funny confession scene.

The Values (2nd House) of your Confessing Character are shown-not-told by that choice of when and to what to confess.

In the 3rd book in the Romantic Times Award winning Dushau Trilogy, I hinted at an Alien's contemplation of condemnation by his father and grandfather when he finally would get home and confess.

His trepidation at confronting his family showed a similarity to human values -- even though he is so definitely not human that his wrong-doing does not seem wrong to a human.

http://www.amazon.com/Outreach-Dushau-Trilogy-Book-3-ebook/dp/B002S525DK

Those 13 Attributes of Mercy embody the essence of what it is to be Human, a  Soul wearing a Body that fits like a glove, a work-glove designed for a specific task which the Soul is dead-set on completing come Hell or High Water (10th House Purpose In Life) using that Body (6th House) to do the Job (6th House).

When fully integrated (purified) into that task, the Soul shines through the custom-Created Body and attracts the Soul Mate.  It is the Soul that is "mated" -- not the Body.  So you can easily depict a Human/Alien Romance.

Romance (Neptune/ 12th House) blossoms, Love At First Sight happens, and Health-Job-Service and everything Virgo manifests as the Virtue of Virgo rather than the Vice.

Every astrological sign can manifest as its best virtue or its worst vice, and it could be that whether virtue or vice is apparent depends on how much of the Soul has infused the Body.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Explaining Marriage To An ALIEN

Someone must have written an explanation of how to explain marriage to an alien from another planet (my apologies for the tautology) but my cursory Google search gave me explanations for children and for idiots (their word, not mine).

http://www.dailydawdle.com/2011/12/how-to-explain-gay-rights-to-idiots.html

No one seems to address the obvious question of why the Government gives benefits to persons who get married.... in an age of no-fault divorce, remarriage, dual incomes, single mothers, etc. They focus on the unfairness of the Government giving benefits to persons who are assumed to have penis-vagina sex from time to time.

Why does the Government do that? My alien thought process doesn't mean to ask for an historical account of how and why marriage came to be.

My romance-minded alien would understand that --presumably-- society benefits if persons who wish to cooperate to raise well-adjusted, healthy, sociable, useful members of the next generation, are encouraged to do so, or at least not penalized financially and socially for the unpaid amount of time and effort that goes into parenting and also making a lifelong commitment to take care of each other, and also of their aged parents.

But what about persons who have no interest in doing all of the above? Why does a government allocate status, respect, and rewards funded by taxpayers to people who shack up?

http://ccgaction.org/swc/realityofmarriage suggests that "marriage" today means two different things, "marriage is merely the public recognition of a committed relationship between loving adults" and "marriage unites a man and a woman with each other and any children born from their union."

If procreation, childbearing, child-raising/parenting, permanence are no longer an essential part of the marriage contract, what benefit is it to a government or to a society?

My alien might suggest that sexual exclusivity ought to be encouraged, even if it is temporary, to slow the transmission of various epidemics. What, then would my alien suggest as a remedy for the concept of "open marriage", which he would see as surely a form of tax fraud.... if not a pyramid scheme.

Perhaps, an alien with Spock-like dispassionate logic might suggest that the tax code should be revised, so that every person --married or unmarried-- should be obliged to file their tax returns separately, excepting only cohabiting parents who can demonstrate that they are actively supporting and rearing children of school age (or younger) and that those children are meeting or exceeding academic goals.

That would benefit the Government and Society.

My alien's solution would not take care of issues of wills and inheritance, death taxes, visitation rights, next of kinship rights. He'd probably abolish the taxes, and suggest that marriage contracts should include Living Wills and limited Powers of Attorney. He would suggest that, if the Government values marriage, the Government should provide one-time, free legal services to draw up comprehensive marriage contracts for all citizens (optional, not compulsory.... but required reading, and mandatory for couples wishing to file joint tax returns.)

Rowena
alien djinn romances

An alien's view of make-up and human health care

Greetings, my brother.

There is no point in asking whether or not you are in good health, and obliging you to reply. By the time your reply reached me, your answer would be several cycles old.

I'm on a planet called "earth" by the sentient species of animals with whom I've communicated. "Earth" means "dirt" or "soil" to them. Illogically, this planet consists mostly of water (salt water).  I digress. This is a distracting environment.

No doubt, you remember our discussion about the question, "Do wild animals mutilate themselves?" We thought that the answer was that animals only mutilate themselves if demented by boredom or stress, perhaps in captivity. We don't include defensive shedding of tails or other appendages as a means of distracting a predator.

Well, brother. I've found an exception to our rule. I haven't figured out what causes these animals to mutilate themselves, and their offspring, and their companion animals. In some cases, they seem to find it attractive in spite of the practical drawbacks.

For instance, in stressful urban settings, they take colored inks and powered needles, and stab themselves until words or images are "tattooed" (as they call it) permanently on their skin. This is not a punishment for criminal activity, as you might expect. I could understand it if antisocial individuals had a warning of their bad habits written on their faces or arms. Instead, animals appear to pay other animals to torture and mark them.

This can be monotonous. Greater variety can be achieved through the messy daily application of colored paints and powders and grease. These chemicals often contain poisons and carcinogens. Nevertheless, some working animals, mostly females, are forced as a condition of "employment" to smear these poisons on their faces and are often expected to pay for their own care if and when the poisons cause illnesses. "Employment" is what these animals do to obtain tokens which they exchange for food and other necessities.

To digress again, this payment for health care business doesn't strike me as fair or reasonable. There are exceptions, of course, but there are no penalties for self-induced problems. That baffles me.

The prudent, abstemious, provident and healthy are forced to pay for the care of the wasteful and self-destructive, as well as for the unfortunate who might deserve help. Thus, some animals spend all their discretionary income on liquid pleasures, or expensive things to chew, or stinking weeds to burn in their mouths, or on dangerous sex. Then, when their lifestyle catches up on them (or on their mates and offspring), they cannot pay for the care they need to restore them to health. So, others who have not spent all their money on sick-making habits, are forced to pay for their fellows. If they object, they are savagely punished and impoverished.

On our world, we'd expect this sort of stupidity to lead to social unrest, wouldn't we, brother? But on our world, the healthy outnumber the sick. It's the reverse on this earth.

This will shock you. If these animals don't know what a certain body part is for (or don't like what it's for), they will go to great expense and trouble to cut it off or out... parts of the gut, organs in the throat, even parts of their genitalia!

I've heard, but have not yet found a way to eyewitness this, that there's a very large country where they routinely cut off part of a newborn male child's positor which they consider superflouous and unattractive. This cruel procedure is done without pain remediation, and the child suffers agonies. Later in life, the positor is not as sensitive as it ought to be, adult males require drugs. Some of these drugs, I hear, are not without unpleasant side effects.

Ludicrously, after all this suffering and trouble, the results of the cosmetic surgery are seldom displayed. Even when in use, the positor is covered in a thin synthetic glove. When I find out why they bother, I will let you know! That is not the most unnecessary of surgeries, but it is one of the most routine, and is one of the few that is forced upon a baby animal that cannot consent to it.

Captured, display and companion animals cannot consent. Some have parts of their tails hacked off. Others have parts of their ears cut off. Some types with sharp, retractable claws have their claws pulled out by force so that they cannot defend themselves.

This is a dangerous and illogical world, my brother. Fortunately for us, our mind control abilities are effective. The most intelligent and dangerous animals are relatively easy to brainwash.

I'll write again when I have something interesting to share.

Your brother,
Thor-quentin.

Sexism and the English language

I love writing alien romance in part because it allows me to comment on our society and our ingrained beliefs without being offensive... I hope.

This weekend, I've been going over the copy-edits of my most recent romance, Knight's Fork, which is due for release in October 2008.

It's been a delightful and instructive experience. I've inferred that my copy-editor is an erudite, scholarly, English professorial type of the male persuasion.


Possibly, I've enjoyed a similar mixture of glee and embarrassment to that reported by RomVet Cindy Dees.

Cindy Dees recounted that a lieutenant colonel in the lowest regions of The White House had to read her slightly steamy Romance novels to make sure that no Cindy Dees fictional action adventures accidentally betrayed the sitting President's secrets.

Cindy Dees, Lise Fuller, Lynn Hardy, Larissa Ione, and Ashley Ladd were my guests last night on a special radio program in honor of Armed Forces Day and Lynn Hardy's dedicatedtoourdefenders.org organization which sends books to members of the armed forces who are desperately bored during their down-time while deployed overseas.


Back to my copy-editing.

In this scene from KNIGHT'S FORK, the hero, 'Rhett has just shared the contents of a letter from his grandmother. The letter summarizes family history.


One name she had heard recently. “The toddler who was a terror, Djetthro-Jason. Is that my sister’s new Mate? He spoke to me at your fortune-telling.”

’Rhett nodded, unsmiling. “He’s my half brother. His mother, Djavena, was my mother, too. My father married—on Earth, they call Mating “marrying”—three times. My mother, Djavena, also was Mated three times. Three brothers had her, one after the other. She got passed around.”

His mother had three Mates.

Electra noted his casually brutal tone, and also the doing word-choice for his father’s sex life, and the done to wording for his mother, as if Djavena hadn’t had a choice. Possibly ’Rhett’s view of females had been affected…and also his attitude toward sex.



Au: means this is a question for the author. The comments pertain to the last paragraph.

Au: this doesn’t seem to refer to anything above; delete?
Au: ‘the had her wording for his mother’ ? [is ‘done to’ from an early draft?]


Did you notice the difference between the Active and Passive constructions? Did you notice the Subjects and the Objects of the phrases and sentences?

I did it deliberately, of course.
Surely, it doesn't take an alien, or an immigrant, or a feminist to notice the subtle sexism in our language, does it?

Best wishes,
Rowena Cherry

Want sex... with Wolverine?

Of course, I am not in a position to offer you the Hugh Jackman mutant character, but he's a better example of a man with an abnormal hand than the prosthetic or bionic hands of Darth Vader and cool hand Luke Skywalker.

If you look carefully, you'll find characters with warhands in all my books going back to my 1995 copyright of Forced Mate, and to Mating Net in 2004, but they are not heroes, and no heroine is asked to go to bed with them.

Are romance readers ready for a hero equipped like some species of male crab, (where the claw used to beckon and threaten is larger and more brightly colored and more sharply serrated than the other claw)?

Well, are you?

Male readers, this question isn't really aimed at you! But I'd be happy to know if you could identify, and whether you think having one big hand with spikes sticking out, and a erectile leathery cuff-frill (imagine having a umbrella on one wrist) would interfere with your prowess in the sack.

I need to know right now because in the book due to my editor tomorrow (I have revision time) I have to either give the hero of the next book a warhand, or else explain why he does not have one.

I'm a meez-ing

[warning: rampant silliness]

I was all set to do something writerly and genre-ly about aliens and legends and our books and how our characters and ourselves perceive it all (and how run-on sentences suck...). Then I went to author Tori 'Sofie Metropolis' Carrington's site (because the writing team of Lori and Tony were of great help in teaching me, or rather Theo Petrakos, to swear in Greek in THE DOWN HOME ZOMBIE BLUES) and there was a Meez on their site.

I was hooked. Okay, I've been on Neopets for several years. I've seen Zwinkys but they didn't grab me. Meez grabbed me. I'm a meez now.

Yep, that me as a Meez and Daq-cat. On a starship bridge. What could be better? You can also find me in the Bar on my site: http://www.linneasinclair.com/bar.htm

If this amuses you, here's the official spiel and link:

You can make your own at Meez.com
When you sign up, enter my username: linnea1015 as the referral (yeah, we get some kind of points for doing so).

Yes, silliness. But it does somewhat relate our desire to escape who we are, and explore "other" (and we've had some great blogs here on "other-ness"). Books were for the longest while, the epitome of "escape" and "explore other." Then came radio (The Shadow Knows!) and television (Star Trek).

Now we can actually BE an other. There I am, with my beloved cat. On the bridge of my starship.

Is that too cool, or what? (And yes, I do own and am at this moment wearing lime green Crocs, just like my Meez.)

If you become a-meez-ed, post and let me know. Maybe I'll start a link to all my a-Meez-ing friends and readers on my site.

Off to Ohio early Wednesday morning, so if you live in Buckeye-ville, come see me at:

June 22nd-- WALDENBOOKS Tuttle Crossing Mall, Columbus OHBook signing 1130am – 1pm

June 23rd--ELYRIA, OH, PUBLIC LIBRARY, West River Branch, 1194 West River Road NorthMeet and Greet with the Teen Advisory BoardPublic Workshop & Public Book signing hosted by Waldenbooks/Borders Express12:30 pm until 4:30 pm

June 24th-- WALDENBOOKS The Mall at Fairfield Commons, Beavercreek OHBook signing and Meet and Greet with the Romance Readers Group2pm – 4:30pm+

~Linnea

Battling Backyard Aliens

You think I don't have any?
I do!

I've been battling some of them for four years at great personal cost! Not in terms of my own limbs... have you guessed where I'm going with this? Poison and fertiliser and strategically applied water are my weapons of choice against the alien invader.

My alien invader is green, with very large, dark almond shaped eyes, and a sinister mien. His brow ridge make him appear to frown menacingly at me. His body is long, and green. He has a body-armored thorax, an well defined abodomen (not a six-pack, though). He has wings. His glistening "body" --you know some mealy-mouthed editors favor calling a certain masculine body part "his body", right? I don't-- is an unimpressive inch or two.

Of course, an anticlimax follows.

My garden of delights has been penetrated by...
The Emerald Ash Borer

Moreover, the lake at the bottom of my garden (I own 80 feet of frontage, and I pay the same as a neighbor with 500 feet) has also been colonized by aliens, brought in on the feet and in the poop of giant Canada geese.

We wallet-warriors have had to call in the Government, local government, to help us fight alien vegetable matter. There is no other way to compel everyone to pay their "fair share" in the fight against this sprawling, weedy alien who will kill our lake if we don't fight with every weapon at our disposal, including waterborne weed-whackers that look like gamblers' riverboats.

Yes, I know aliens. I could write horror stories, if I were to exaggerate. Imagine if the Emerald Ash Borer didn't want to put his reproductive tackle inside my tree, and implant his offspring there, to eat me from the inside out. (How Alien!)

Imagine if the Thing in my lake had tentacles. (How LOTR!) Or a that it could walk. The Ents weren't the only ones. Did you read Day of the Triffids at school?

But I write alien romances... I don't "do" alien horror.

What's in your back yard?

Best wishes,
Rowena
(From whom not even a credit card commercial is safe from spoofing)

Insufficient Mating Material--Hidden Image contest

There's an image hidden on the covers (either the front, back or spine) of Insufficient Mating Material. Find it, enter at www.rowenacherry.com/hiddenimage/ or by writing to
Rowena Cherry
PO Box 554
Bloomfield Hills
MI 48303-0554

One entrant will win $500-worth of books!
No purchase necessary.
Void where prohibited.

It's all about the Horny Berries

"What's it about?" the potential Reader asks at a book-signing.

I panic. I know I'm not good at this. More often than not, I say too much, and bore people. On the four hour drive down to Cincinnati for this signing, I've rehearsed over and over, with the loving help of my biggest critic. My thoughts spin like a tickertape parade.

Do I say, "Horny Berries"?

Do I say, "Remember that Harrison Ford movie where he was a hard drinking pilot who crash landed with --I think it was Ann Heche, playing a Vogue editor-- on an uninhabited island, and they had to survive. Only it's different, because in my book, the hero and heroine are politically embarrassing alien royalty, and someone is trying to kill them--"

"Someone tried to kill Harrison Ford," my critic snarled.

"Those were pirates. It's not the same as assassins sent to find them. Anyway, I didn't see that film until after I'd written Insufficient Mating Material."

"Who cares?" My critic shrugs. "What's different?"

"My book has this 'Face Off' element. The hero has had his face changed. He's the same guy that the heroine fancies herself in love with, but he can't tell her, and she doesn't know. Since she thinks she's in love with someone else, it's the worst thing in the world for her... to be marooned with a horny stranger."

My critic grunts.

"Oh, I'm soooo lame!" I wail.

Critic laughs.

"And, they don't have a plane-load of supplies to live off. After they are shot down, their plane sinks..."

"You shouldn't call it a plane if it's science fiction," critic objects.

"Their two-seater spaceship sinks in eight feet..."

"Shouldn't you use alien words for measuring?" he interrupts again.

"How polite is that, when I only have a couple of seconds to get my message across? The couple has to survive with what they are wearing and what they can find, like my book's survival consultant Survivorman..."

"Good! You should talk more about Survivorman."

"I don't want to give the impression that the book is about him. It's futuristic romantic fiction. It's not even quite "Alien Survivorman with Sex." It's true that Les and I both use entertainment to communicate some vital --and accurate-- wilderness survival advice, and Les read my book, and gave me some extra tips, and set me straight on a detail or two that I got wrong... And he gave me the cover quote. Anyway, when I show people my poster, it's the horny-berries that they ask about."

Critic snorts. "Are there horny berries in the book?"
(He hasn't read it.)

"No, but..."

"Can you say HORNY in a bookstore?"

"There are horny toads. They're respectable. Horny doesn't just mean 'in the mood to be sexually active' but it does suggest to the reader that this is a book with sexually graphic language. Berries are an important food source, but if they are alien berries, you have to find out if they are edible or poisonous. You start by smearing a little juice on your wrist... anyway, my hero does all that, to the heroine, and at first she thinks he's building up to kinky sex.

"Of course, when she realizes that he's using her as a food-testing guinea pig, she is furious. And very depressed. And, she is a fashionista, a bit like Paris Hilton only crossed with the most scandalous female member of any European royal family you can think of. She doesn't like having to wear a plain white, man's T-shirt. So the hero uses berries' juice to tie-die her T-shirt... while she's wearing it."

Meanwhile, while I try to remember my best pitch, my potential Reader is reading the blurb on the back cover. The keywords there are "shot down", "failing to mate", "guitar glue", "psychic sleuths", "disguises", "a killer", a "damning tattoo" on the hero's "tool of seduction", and there is Survivorman's quote.

There's no mention of Horny Berries. I came up with horny berries when making the Insufficient Mating Material book promotion video. One has about eight frames (excluding frames for titles and credits) to tell a story, and between three and five words per frame. I should probably throw out something new.

But, it's too late. While I've been tongue-tied, my potential reader has moved on. Next time, I'll do the 'Carpe Scrotum' thing.

"It's about horny-berries," I'll say in my best BBC English voice.


Best wishes,
Rowena Cherry

(Speaking!!! and signing Sunday February 11th, 2pm to 4pm at the Barnes and Noble on Telegraph and Maple, in Bloomfield Hills)