Alien Sexuality/Writing discussion #2

Using biology and animal reproduction to design alien physical and social sexual characteristics.

a.) GENERAL OVERVIEW

I know I'm preaching to the choir here but have patience with me while I explore a few basic concepts first.

The concepts are as follows, intelligence, informed consent, rape, child abuse and bestiality. Why am I exploring these concepts first? Because we need to review the correct definitions of these terms before we jump into the area of alien sex and designing alien physical and social sexual characteristics.

Intelligence: A general mental capability that involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend ideas and language, and learn. In psychology, the study of intelligence is related to the study of personality but is not the same as creativity, personality, character, or wisdom.

Informed consent: Person's agreement to allow something to happen, such as a medical procedure, that is based on full disclosure of the facts necessary to make an intelligent decision.

Rape: Rape is a crime wherein the victim is forced into sexual activity against his or her will, in particular sexual penetration. It is considered by most societies to be among the most severe crimes.

Child abuse: the physical or emotional or sexual mistreatment of children.

Bestiality: Sexual relationships between a human and a nonhuman animal. Also called zoophilia.

What separates humans from animals? Intelligence? Yes. However, if you look at the basic definition of intelligence, dogs, cats, monkeys, dolphins, human infants and children and mentally disabled humans all meet the general criteria. And don't tell me dogs and cats don't understand human speech. You know they do. Not every word but they understand enough to comprehend simple verbal commands and concepts. Chimpanzees and gorillas can be taught sign language. Animals can love. We all know that. Look at the bonds between humans and their pets. However, an animal's level of intelligence and comprehension is a lot lower than an human adult male or female. The same thing applies to human infants and children. Last, but not least, the additional factor of informed consent applies. Because the mental capacity to comprehend and verbalize consent is not present, then rape, child abuse and bestiality are the results. This includes mentally disabled adults. If their mental age is that of a young child, their ability to have informed consent is impaired and sexual contact with them is considered rape.

The majority of readers and writers have no problem with the concept of sex between a human and a shapeshifter, including while the shapeshifter is in his or her animal form. Why? Because, regardless of the physical shape or form, the shapeshifter is an adult who has the mental age and level of comprehension to give informed consent to the act of making love.

Believe it or not, Edgar Rice Burroughs delved into these topics when he created Tarzan. What is the dividing line between man and beast? There was this horror and fear involved in this story over the possibility that Tarzan was the offspring of human/ape sexual encounter. If he were, would this make Tarzan less than human? Would this make Tarzan an animal who didn't have the intellectual capacity to be human? Of course, this topic wasn't explored completely because Edgar Rice Burroughs established from the beginning that Tarzan wasn't the offspring of a human/ape sexual encounter, that Tarzan was a human infant raised by a female great ape who'd lost her own infant. He used the common knowledge and legends about different species adopting and raising infants who were not of their species.

The mythical founders of Rome, Remus and Romulus were placed in a basket after their birth and set afloat on the Tiber (note the similarity to the story of Moses). The basket came aground at the grotto Lupercal, under a fig tree called Ruminal, where the twins were found and suckled by a she-wolf, and later raised by the shepherd family of Faustulus and and his wife, Acca Larentia.

Kipling's Mowgli is another example of a human raised by animals. Historical accounts of

And, of course, all of us have read news accounts of cats adopting and suckling orphaned puppies and dogs adopting and suckling orphaned kittens.

Cross species love has been around for centuries. This ability to love and care is present across a broad spectrum of the animal kingdom. Of course, this type of love doesn't automatically equal sex.

Stories of feral children, as opposed to wolf children, have gained wider acceptance. One of the best authenticated cases is the Wild Boy of Aveyron. Discovered at about age 12 digging in a garden in the Aveyron district of France in 1800, the Wild Boy was mute, naked, and seemingly retarded. (Unlike most feral children, he did walk upright.) It was learned he'd been roaming the hills on his own for at least two years, living on handouts from obliging farmers and whatever he could steal. The boy was turned over to a determined doctor named Jean Itard who taught him to dress himself and perform simple chores. But he never learned to speak more than a couple words.

Feral children have long fascinated scientists. Apart from the sheer pathos of their stories, they raise some gut issues: how do we become human? If we fail to learn critical skills as children, is it impossible to do so later?

Most feral children have been severely stunted and remained so all their lives, suggesting that early human contact is essential to normal development. But others believe the children were retarded to start with. The child psychologist Bruno Bettleheim, perhaps not the best of sources, argued that the children were autistic, that is, severely withdrawn. Those unconvinced say no autistic or otherwise incapacitated child could survive in the wild for long.

A 1970 California case suggests the deprivation theory is closer to the mark. "Genie," a more or less normal two-year-old, was locked up by her demented father for 11 years, reducing her to a state of whimpering imbecility. Despite later training her language development never exceeded that of a 5-year-old. Being a wild child may conjure up visions of some Blue Lagoon-type idyll, but the reality is unspeakably cruel.

Love is NOT sex. Although for many adult humans, love AND sex are intertwined.

We also know that many adult humans use sex to harm others instead of using sex to express love.

Now, if we expand our definitions to include aliens, the fact that an alien has a different physical shape, that an alien has a non-human shape doesn't mean that sex between a human and alien is bestiality, does it? No, it doesn't. Why? Because the intelligence, the ability to reason and give informed consent is present.

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b.) DESIGNING ALIENS: PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS

Mother nature is very inventive with all of her creations in the animal kingdom. You can pick and choose any species on Earth to use as starting point to pattern your aliens.

Mammals would be the first choice, I'm assuming this is because they would be the closest physical type to humans when it comes to love and sex.

But then, when you look at mammals on Earth, there is a very wide variation, lions, tigers, wolves, bears, bats, kangaroos etc... Australian mammals have a unique place, many of them are marsupials where the female has a pouch to carry her young and nipples inside the pouch to nurse her young. Then there are the marine mammals who live totally in the and aquatic mammals who live in water and on land, such as seals, dolphins, porpoises, whales, polar bears, beavers, sea otters, manatee, walrus, the capybara (water pig), and hippopotamus.

Then there are the avian species. Winged humanoids are a common theme for SF Erotic Romances. The Fantasy theme involves angels and demons, of course.

My guess is that about 95% of Erotic Romance books, both ebook and print, that use Earth animals as a model generally go the Fantasy/magical/shapeshifting route with elves, vampires, werewolves and other were-beings. Look at Laurell K. Hamilton, Christine Feeham, Kim Harrison, Karen Chance, Mary Janice Davidson and Anne Rice as a small sample of successful vampire/were-being Romance and Erotic Romance type stories.

If you want to go the SF route, then you can either have aliens whose species evolved into beings with equal and or greater intelligence than humans or you can be looking at genetic engineering to create hybrids.

Interspecific hybrids are bred by mating two species, normally from within the same genus. The offspring display traits and characteristics of both parents. The offspring of an interspecific cross may be sterile. Sterility is often attributed to the different number of chromosomes the two species have, for example donkeys have 62 chromosomes, while horses have 64 chromosomes, and mules and hinnies have 63 chromosomes. Mules, hinnies, and other normally sterile interspecific hybrids normally cannot produce viable gametes because the extra chromosome cannot make a homologous pair at meiosis, meiosis is disrupted, and viable sperm and eggs are not formed. However, fertility in both female mules and hinnies has been reported with a donkey as the father.

If the two species are from a different genus, i.e. alien and human, then in order to procreate, the most likely scenario is in-vitro fertilization rather than natural fertilization through sexual intercourse. This is one of the reasons why I always laugh my head off at the alien kidnaps human female for reproduction through sexual intercourse. Human and ape DNA are 98% compatible but the two species cannot breed hybrid descendants naturally. Why would aliens from another star system be able to breed naturally with human females? This is impossible from a scientific point of view.

Did you know that in the early, original version of Star Trek, Spock was a test tube baby, not the result of natural procreation between a human woman and a Vulcan alien man? Later, they changed this by deciding that all of the 'alien humanoid' species in the Star Trek Universe had a common ancestor who 'seeded' all the different star systems with their DNA.

Another excellent example of stories about genetic engineering creating human/animal hybrids are Cordwainer Smith's stories about the 'underpeople'. In his stories, all the animal species were genetically enhanced with human DNA and they became human servants, i.e. 'underpeople'. Depending on what animal species you came from that initial was appended to your name. For instance, a dog/human woman was named D'Joan and a cat/human woman was named C'Mell and an elephant/human man was E'David.

www.webscription.net/chapters/1416520953/1416520953.htm?blurb

Regardless of that factor, sex isn't just for reproduction.

If you're writing Erotic Romance, the focus is going to be on sex for mutual pleasure and expression of love, not sex for the purpose of procreation. Plus, IMHO getting the heroine pregnant usually ends that story fast because diapers and middle of the night feedings are NOT sexy.


Another interesting website shows dildoes of the penis from many different animal species. A very strange but educational website, IMO.
www.furcen.org/~zetatoys/intro.html

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c.) DESIGNING ALIEN SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS


Here's an interesting piece of trivia about flamingos and flamingo reproduction. The only time that flamingos feel safe enough to have intercourse is when they are surrounded by other flamingos. In order to encourage flamingos to reproduce, zoo keepers have to place multiple mirrors in their cages to give the illusion of being surrounded by other flamingos. Imagine an alien species that can only relax enough to have sex in a public and group sex setting and would be scandalized by the concept of private, one on one monogamous sex.

Biology is important when you consider alien sex. Reproduction could be either sexual or asexual. In asexual reproduction, the parent simply splits off an identical copy or 'clone' of himself or herself. The aliens could have three sexes instead of two sexes like humans. The alien males could be the ones who carry the fetus in pouches like seahorses.

C. J. Cherryh's cat-like species in her Chanur series are aliens who have evolved from a lionlike ancestor. Their social/marriage structure consists of 'prides' where four to five females have one husband in common. When the sons reach adolescence, they are thrown out of the household and must fight and fend on their own until they can return to fight and kill a male adult and take over his 'pride'. Daughters are cherished. If you have too many sons, everyone pities you. Chanur are very proud of their ears. A common curse is to call another 'earless.'

The fascinating part about C.J.Cherryh's Chanur series is the number and variety of the alien species. She has seven alien species (counting humans) in this series. Even though the sexual aspects are not portrayed in any explicit fashion in this series, the cultural and social interactions are fascinating. I recommend this series if you want to see how she shows all the different alien cultures interacting together.


Mahendo'sat (singular mahe), black or brown primate-like creatures, human-size, very curious and political. The Mahendo'sat political system is based on the concept of Personage, a charismatic figure with a lot of social credit. (My impression of them was along the lines of bears as the model for the mahendo-sat.)


Stsho, minute, fragile, crested white beings (even their eyes are pearly white), xenophobic and non-aggressive. ( I saw the Stsho as based on moths and butterflies for their ancestral DNA.)

Tc'a-Chi
Tc'a, methane-breathing yellow five-eyed snakelike beings, and chi, yellow arthropod-like creatures.

Kif, bare-skinned, ash-black, long-snouted bipedal hunters. They are the tallest race in the Compact, slender, fast and deadly. They are strictly predators, requiring live prey; they have twin set of teeth, outer for biting and inner for chewing, and retractable claws. (Think vampire bats as their ancient ancestor)


Hani, feline-like race, maned, bearded, usually of red or tawny fur. (Physical and social structure patterned after lions.)


Knnn, the third methane breathing species, multi-legged tangles of wiry black hair, the most technologically advanced in the Compact: unlike others, they can maneuver in hyperspace and carry other ships with them. Only tc'a can communicate with them (or claim they can); the knnn are incomprehensible and therefore deemed dangerous by the other races, not to be provoked. They trade by snatching whatever they want and leaving whatever they deem sufficient as payment behind; it is an improvement over their prior habit of just taking trader ships apart.

WORLDBUILDING IN GENERAL

When you create alien cultures, you need to consider the environment that influences their culture.

The physical environment in which the species lives. Desert type planet, ocean planet, methane atmosphere planet, planet with a higher gravity than Earth. Planet with a lower gravity than Earth.

The location and nature of the race's dwellings, including the spatial relationships between those dwellings. Think about bees and how they organize their hives. Think about beavers. If the species has wings, are they a cliff-dwelling species.

Their diet, methods of obtaining and consuming food, and cultural practices regarding the preparation of meals and eating. I remember reading an early Young Adult Robert A. Heinlein story where eating in public was taboo. In order to gain respect and to be treated as equals, the humans had to insist on private, curtained individual booths where they could do their shameful eating without anyone seeing them.

Processes which the aliens use to share knowledge. The species could be telepathic. The species could be one where they have no written materials, all knowledge is transferred mind to mind.

Customs and ideas regarding death, dying, the treatment of the race's dead, and the afterlife. For my book, The Huntress, the aliens did extensive research on death and brainwave patterns and verified reincarnation.

A wonderful website you can use as a reference model when you do your basic worldbuilding is here at
www.sfwa.org/writing/worldbuilding1.htm

Last but not least, here is an excerpt from The Huntress to show you how my reptilian hero's sexual responses are triggered by scent and taste rather than by sight.

Huntress excerpt: WARNING EXPLICIT ALIEN SEXUAL CONTENT IN THIS EXCERPT

Sonia scooted back on the bed and hugged her knees. Her wet clothes had dried into dampness along the way to his room and her hair had frizzed out into a snarled mass of curls sticking to her shoulders and back.
Rulagh knelt on the edge of the bed, leaned forward and stroked her cheek with his finger. “If you’re not ssure, we can wait.”
She tilted her face into his hand and breathed in his spicy scent, a scent that had deepened into warm musk. He curved his fingers along her cheek in a gentle caress. A shiver raced down her body. She wanted to feel those fingers on her breasts, to have him touch her all over. What was it about him that made her want him so much? He had claws. She should be afraid of those claws. But she wasn’t.
His forked tongue was an important sensory part for him. He used it constantly to taste the air and her skin. Her heart stuttered in her chest. She sucked in a breath, expelled it in a long, shuddering sigh, then took his hand, pulled it to her mouth and licked the inside of his wrist in a shy caress. A combination of salt and spice tingled her tongue and sent a surge of pleasure straight to her pussy.
“Yesssss.” He seated himself beside her, pulled her into his arms and kissed her long and hard as if he wanted to devour her mouth.
The liquid warmth of his tongue made her throat ache with hunger.
When he ended the kiss and pulled away, she hissed and clung to his shirt. More! She wanted more.
Rulagh pulled her closer, rubbed his thumb over her stiff nipple under the thin cotton material of her tank top then traced the neckline. “Do you cherish this?”
She blinked. Why is he asking me this? His dark, scaled hand rested against the white fabric. “It’s just a top, nothing special.”
He flexed his fingers and extruded three-inch long razor-sharp claws. “Let me remove it for you.”
Her heart jumped into her throat. “R-remove it?”
“Like this.” He hooked his index claw in the neckline and waited.
Her face burned as if flames licked it. She wanted him more than she ever wanted anything or anyone before in her life. If she said no he’d stop, but her panties were soaked already with the juices of her arousal. She bit her lip and nodded. Her nipples swelled with anticipation.
He ripped the thin cotton apart from top to bottom and reached for her breasts. Hot, scaled skin like rawhide abraded the tender flesh. Her nipples tingled.
“May I taste them?”
The thought of his mouth upon her shuddered through her and soaked her panties even more. “Y-yes, please.”
He bent his head, closed his lips over her right nipple and suckled it with greedy, hard nips. The hot wetness of his mouth on her skin went straight to her groin like an electric shock.
He moved to her other nipple, gave it a playful nip and sucked it inside his hot mouth with his agile tongue. Ohgod. If his tongue and mouth felt that good on her breasts, how would it feel on her clit?
When Rulagh lifted his head from her breasts, her wet nipples ached for more attention. His eyes had darkened to almost pure black again. He flicked his tongue out for a split second. “Ssonia.” His hoarse whisper shifted her name into a sibilant burr that gave her goosebumps. “Your skin tastes like ssweet, iced melon.”
Her heart skipped a beat. She’d never thought about how she tasted before. Now, with him, taste had become a suddenly unique and erotic touchstone of their lovemaking.
He pushed her back onto the bed, reached behind her head and lifted her hair out of the way. His warm cinnamon musk flowed into her lungs like liquid fire. She stretched out on the sheets and opened her legs for him. Her heart slipped into the slow, hypnotic beat of anticipation.
He lifted her feet to his lap and removed her sneakers and socks. The scales on his palms tickled the soles of her feet. Her toes curled under the sensuous warmth of his gentle touch.
He moved her feet aside, bent over her body and unzipped her jeans. When he slipped his hands under the waistband of her jeans and panties to pull them down, she lifted her hips for him. He threw them on the floor, climbed on the bed and positioned himself between her wide-open legs. The spines on his scalp flared. The tips had turned dark red. Did that mean the sight of her excited him as much as he excited her? “Aren’t you going to take your pants off, too?”
Rulagh’s smile widened. He shook his head. “I haven’t finished tasting you.”
Or was there another reason why he kept his pants on? Could it be that he didn’t want her to see his cock yet? Was it scaled like the rest of his skin? What color was it?
Rulagh lowered his face to her pussy. His forked tongue dipped between the swollen lips and all conscious thought disappeared. His tongue swirled around her clit and tugged. A soft keening moan escaped from Sonia’s mouth. There wasn’t any time to think now, only react. Her hips jerked convulsively in an instinctive demand for more, more, more of his agile tongue.
“Yesss.” His voice vibrated against her skin. “Fuck my tongue. Show me how you want me to fuck you.”
The word ‘fuck’ slammed into her like a bucket of ice water. Her entire body stiffened. She sat up and pushed his head away from her crotch. Daniel used to say ‘fuck’ all the time and call her his whore. Did Rulagh think of her as a whore too?
Rulagh sat back on his heels and studied her face. “What’s wrong?”
“You said fuck.”
He cocked his head. “I care for you. I want to protect you and share pleasure with you. That’s the word they used in the holovids your father showed me. Did I use the wrong word?”
She stared at his face, at the red tipped spines rippling on his scalp. “No. It’s a correct word. I just didn’t expect you to use it. Did those holovids arouse you?”
Rulagh pursed his lips. “The images were educational.” He bent over, leaned his head closer to her body and flicked his tongue out, as if he wanted to lick her from head to toe. “They had no scent to arouse me.”
He traced a line between her breasts and down her stomach with a blunted forefinger. It left a delicious sensation, a line of fire from her breasts to the wet curls at her groin. “There was nothing for me to touch.”
He slid his finger into the moisture dripping from her crotch and inserted it deep inside her. Sonia gasped at the sudden feel of his finger inside her. He pulled it out, held it to his mouth, flicked his tongue out and slowly licked the liquid off. The spines on his head stood straight up and darkened from deep red into pure black. “The women had no taste to arouse me.”

************

Thank you. I hope these lectures help you create many wonderful aliens and stories about them.

Barbara Karmazin
www.sff.net/people/selkiewife

Alternative-Read.com: REVIEW: Insufficient Mating Material ~ Rowena Cherry ~ Dorchester Publishing

Alternative-Read.com: REVIEW: Insufficient Mating Material ~ Rowena Cherry ~ Dorchester Publishing

In Form

I'm not here to talk about pecs, abs, and hard bodies. I'm here in celebration of pen-pushers.

There's nothing like filling out forms to clarify the mind and build the character. I don't mean your tax returns, or those of your alien hunk, though that is an idea if I ever decide to write a high finance romance. This week --in the persona of my next alien romance hero, 'Rhett-- I'm filling out certain Ministry of Justice forms in the interests of research.

'Rhett is the "Dirty Harry" of his rogue Royal family. He's Dirty Harry with a sword... and a spade, it would seem. He knows where the bodies are buried, and he is the family trouble stabber. I'd say "trouble shooter" but he prefers to use a long, sharp weapon. Not that he fires blanks. He's as "alpha" as his cousins and half brothers.

He's the Great Djinn who likes to do the right thing.... Of course, it is debatable whether the "camisole plot" to disgrace and destroy Tarrant-Arragon (in FORCED MATE) was entirely ethical, but dirty tricks are an essential part of interstellar diplomacy.

'Rhett crossed swords, albeit verbally, with Tarrant-Arragon again in INSUFFICIENT MATING MATERIAL. Now, he's being sent on a dangerous quest because everyone wants him out of the way. He has to extract something from Earth, and he'd prefer to do it legally.

Not salt. Not a Ring. Not a moon rock. Could be a crashed spaceship? (Or not.)

So, I have obtained lawful "extraction" forms from One Of Her Majesty's Principal Secretaries of State in the Ministry Of Justice, and 'Rhett is endeavouring to fill them out truthfully.

Full name of applicant.

Already this is not easy. If one writes really small, one can fit seven Royal and Djinn names into the box, but should one? Selecting just three would be less startling, but if only three, which middle name should one choose?

Title.

Which one? Prince? That's bogus! Great Djinn and lesser god? True, but unwise to tell humans so. Leviathan, Saurian Knight? That would arouse suspicion. No doubt, Mr would be the stealthy choice. Sometimes an alien is obliged to lie for the protection of the person reading the form.

Full address.

One does not have a Post Code or a Zip code aboard a Gravity Class, interstellar war-star. Nor a telephone number. Perhaps 'Rhett is going to have to deliver his forms in person, wave a gentle hand like Obi-Wan Kenobi and murmur "This is plausible." However, even this humble, simple, everyday question forces an alien to decide where he will reside (officially) for the three months that it takes the British civil servants and Principal Secretaries Of State to process "extraction" paperwork.

Time to contact a builder and discover whether it is possible that the house in Cambridge that Tarrant-Arragon burned to the ground on the night of March 31st 1994 (upon the occasion of abducting Djinni-vera) could have been rebuilt. Alternatively, one would need an hotel, remembering that a three-month stay will mean that one --and one's entourage of aliens-- is exposed to the business of May Ball time.

Thereafter, the questionnaire becomes increasingly intrusive and baffling, particularly for an honest alien hunk. With a family tree as complicated as theirs. Should one list one's father's second wife's offspring as brothers, half-brothers, step-brothers, or cousins?

Would a human arrest warrant be issued for one's father, because he broke modern, Anglo-American taboos which did not apply to him, being an alien god-Prince?

And then, one comes to the requirements for the exportation of that which is to be extracted. I have to chortle as I imagine how officialdom might react if, for instance, one submitted a letter from Captain James T Kirk, attesting that the USS Enterprise had been engaged to transport the (mystery treasure) to (wherever).


As one wades through forms and questionnaires, an author --who thought she knew everything about her hero-- discovers details that might need to be filled in. I never thought I'd recommend form-filling as a profitable way to spend ones precious writing time. But I DO!

By the way, I googled "form filling". I recommend you do, too.

http://ha.ckers.org/blog/20060821/stealing-user-information-via-automatic-form-filling/
http://www.freedownloadscenter.com

Best wishes,

Rowena Cherry

Insufficient Mating Material is in the UK contest

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We interrupt your regularly scheduled post

Just back from RWA where I was totally surprised to win the Prism for best Futuristic of 2006 for SHOOTING STAR! Woohoo! I was totally blown away when they announced my name since I was up against really stiff competition Susan Grant and Liz Maverick. So now I'm an award winning author and I'm reaaly excited about the release of Star Shadows coming in November.

Silly Season

Folks:

Well, here we are in the "silly season" -- and I just saw on TV a whole long feature on the "news" about UFO's! (Yeah, Roswell 60th anniversary, Buzz Aldrin's orbital sighting, the whole nine yards!)

Meanwhile, I had a run-in with the Medical Establishment. I have a very good doctor in a great group-practice. They have electronic records and state-of-the-art everything. But their front desk that does appointments is of a different order of being.

I had an appointment to have several routine screenings done -- so I finish the first part and go back to the desk, and they say "come back tomorrow".

I just moved heaven and earth to clear 4 hours for their convenience and they want me to come back tomorrow? Like I have nothing to do but dance to their drumbeat?

I said, loudly so everyone in the waiting room could hear, "Maybe I should get another doctor? When I miss an appointment, I have to pay a cash penalty. What do you pay me when YOU miss an appointment?" I said waving the letter they sent me demanding 4 hours of my time as if it were worthless.

I haven't seen Morehouse's film SICKO and I don't intend to. I have enough real-life experiences, thank-you.

Well, I got very loud and assertive -- and guess what? They had people standing around in back ready to run those tests and nobody in line!

So I got all my testing done.

Meanwhile, my husband had a run-in with the post office. One phone call to the Post Master revealed a new Post Man creed. It turns out that they now deliver the mail only if it's convenient for them.

If they're understaffed because of vacation or illness, they just skip some houses. If there's too much mail to sort, they just don't bother to do it all that day. This was said to him to explain why our grocery store flyers don't get delivered when they should even though the stores have mailed them on time. (also another local paper we subscribe to mails the issue -- but the post office can't be bothered to deliver.)

It's summer. Humanity estavates? Silliness erupts and takes over? Brains take a vacation?

I just met a new neighbor around the corner from me. Moved in last week. He was fixing a sprinkler pipe on the outside of his fence. Guess what? The real estate agent who sold him the house neglected to mention HE is responsible for the bushes and watering system between his fence and the sidewalk.

So I walked home thinking, "It's not just me!" It's not that somehow, suddenly I do everything wrong. There's something ELSE going on here.

It's the "Twilight Zone" feeling -- I don't recognize the world I live in.

Then I saw an episode of PAINKILLER JANE. (it's not a bad show -- on Sci Fi channel, and an original of theirs) In this episode a whole small town was under the mind-control of a "neuro" (the psychically talented people Jane's group hunts down and neutralizes by forcibly inserting a computer chip into them). The town was peaceful, happy, non-contentious, 0 crime rate, 0 homeless and so on. The picture perfect existence. (reminded me of a Star Trek episode where the whole planet was "happy" under a computer mind-controller.)

It was Jane's group that had to go to the mat (they actually lost a regular; killed her off!) to restore the town to it's "normal" degree of nastiness!

And I just read an article on how the American public seems finally to be sick of blood-on-the-walls movies!

Hollywood, movie fans shy away from "torture porn"
By Bob Tourtellotte Fri Jul 13, 4:19 PM ET
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Torture, it seems, doesn't pay at movie theater box offices like it used to.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070713/media_nm/horror_dc_1;_ylt=AsLWhhTjLmr93Gg9Zuc2DVQE1vAI
Today, I'm into setting up schedules and meetings at NASFIC.

Jean Lorrah and I are collaborating (yes, again!) on a new story, and we plan to workshop on it at the convention called NasFic (North American Science Fiction Convention) that replaces the World Science Fiction Convention when the Worldcon is elsewhere. This year WorldCon is in Japan (Jean's going and is on the program there). And this year NasFic is in St. Louis -- and on a really odd date (beginning of August instead of Labor Day weekend.)

Websites:
http://www.nasfic.org/ is the index page for NasFics -- this year's is ARCHON which is also known as TUCKERCON in honor of the famous SF writer and fan Wilson Tucker.

http://www.archonstl.org/31/index2.html is ARCHON

WorldCon index page is
http://www.worldcon.org/

To add to this "silly" mixture, I just finished reading Charlaine Harris's ALL TOGETHER DEAD - where she kills off a whole bunch of vampires and immerses us in vampire politics to the eyebrows. She's got a good series going there -- Sookie Stackhouse is a charming character who doesn't do much of anything except read minds and shrewdly apply what she learns.

In this one she meets a fellow telepath-human and they team up but they don't actually get along too well. She can't read vampire minds, though and that causes some complications.

And now I'm reading an e-book in the HOUSE OF THE ROSE series from awe-struck e-books (http://www.awe-struck.net/) (a historical vampire-rewritten gods-n-goddesses series). I do highly recommend this series -- it's kind of like Dark Soap Opera -- black-suds? All these immortals playing tricks on each other and trying to steal memories.

Here we have two characters, once male-and-female spouses, now reborn as both male, and one is freaked because "he" was a Knight Templar straight-arrow in this life before becoming a vampire.

I saw the new Harry Potter film (Order of the Phoenix). I noted the audience was utterly silent - no laughs, no gasps. The Potter theaters in the complex were not sold out, but TRANSFORMERS was sold out. Potter grossed more than other films that weekend.

Potter has a "parallel world" online -- check out this article:http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070717/tc_nm/arts_potter_internet_dc_1;_ylt=ArIU_GfXZV26BuNeM8AdKTIE1vAI
The mall was stuffed to overflowing and the theater complex was busier than usual on a Sunday afternoon but the Mall was fuller than the theaters. I don't see such crowds except at Christmas Shopping time - no parking places. Big sales, and a little "back to school" new stuff -- but not enough to account for that mob even on a 114 degree heat Sunday.

All this very "silly" mixture will no doubt color and "inform" the Sime~Gen story I'm working on with Jean!

The point of all this? There isn't one! Which is the point. This is the sort of "input" I gulp down all the time, and every once in a while it arranges itself into something that makes sense. This week - I don't see the connecting thread. Maybe you do?

The rest is left as homework for the student! (I do purely hate that phrase in textbooks!)

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/

Alien Romance and More (Craft and Inspiration)

Alien Romance and sexuality encompasses a vast array of possibilities. The first things you need to do is decide your alien's home planet, cultural matrix and general physical characteristics. I generally create a "notes" file for each of my stories where I brainstorm and research as much information as I can before I even start writing the first chapter.

In the "notes" file, I list all the character names, alien and human, personalities, ages and general physical characteristics of the alien. If the story location is in a different city, time period, planet, space station or star system, I also research as much information as I can about that location so I can build upon it to create a plausible background reality for the story and for my aliens.

Our own animal kingdom is a good place to find information and ideas for aliens. For example, when I wrote The Huntress, I wanted to write about a vampire legend that was non-European. Mama Zuca told me about the Hispanic legends about chupacabras or "goatsuckers" which are said to be killing farm animals by draining their bodies of blood.
http://skepdic.com/chupa.html
http://www.qsl.net/w5www/chupacabra.html
http://www.alienbaby.com/chupa.html
http://paranormal.about.com/cs/chupacabra/


So, I did an internet search on chupacabras and learned that the first sightings were back in 1952 along with the UFO sightings. Of course, because SF is my first love, I did a "what if" using a more factual and science-based premise. I said, "What if the chupacabras are the feral descendants of vampiric alien pets left behind by UFO tourists." Picture a pack of pit bulls left behind on an alien planet and the ecological repercussions of their feral descendants terrorizing the local inhabitants eighty years later. The next logical step was to postulate an alien bureaucracy. What if there's an Interstellar Humane Society?


Every bureaucracy has tons of paperwork and records. I know. I worked for 29 & 1/2 years as a bilingual social worker for the Pennsylvania Welfare Office. Blech. Talk about a high stress and mind-numbing job.

On Earth, we're mammals and the majority of our pets are mammals. The chupacabras are supposed to be an combination of reptiles and mammals. Extrapolating from that, I decided that the alien owners of the chupacabras were also a combination of reptilies and mammals. Plus, I already knew from my college anthropology courses that per evolutionary theory, millions of years ago, mammals and reptiles were one species that divided into two separate species. From that bit of knowledge it didn't take a very large jump to decide that the aliens for The Huntress never evolved into two separate species of reptiles and mammals but continued as a combination of both species.

From there I researched reptilian reproduction and learned that reptiles are a scent-based species who use their tongues to taste odors. I learned that iguanas are able to smell when their zookeepers are in their fertile time and these iguanas will then behavior courteously towards those zookeepers.  I also learned that many reptilian species have a hemepene. Wow! Needless to say, from these bits of factual information, I was able to develop a unique story idea and alien species for The Huntress.

Where do I find story ideas? Many of my story ideas I find by perusing SF art work.

For one of my Erotic SF stories, this one published by Loose Id Books, On The Edge of Time, I created a different type of alien reptilian shapeshifters. The initial idea for this story came from a Boris Vallejo image showing a man's torso with a living snake tattoo on his arm.

I decided that the type of space travel in On The Edge of Time would be through wrymhole space and that in wyrmhole space, this species of aliens had their full shape-shifting abilities but outside of wyrmhole space, they needed a host body to survive as a living tattoo on that host body. I also decided to add another twist to the story. Reptiles lay eggs. They don't have live births. I decided that my alien species in this story lays their eggs inside the male host body. I had tons of fun getting the hero pregnant in that story. LOL.

GENERAL RESEARCH SITES FOR ALIEN BIOLOGY

One fertile area for research for alien story ideas is to look at folklore and apply a factual answer for the magic of those folklore stories instead of fantasy answer like I did with the chupacabra legends for The Huntress. For my Sidhe series, Covenants, Down Came a Blackbird and Out of the Dark, I looked at the Celtic legends about the Elves and applied a SF rather than a Fantasy explanation. I decided that the Sidhe were an extraterrestrial species whose home planet became the asteroid belt in our solar system and whose foremothers migrated to Earth when this happened. Of course, their advanced technology was mistaken by humans for "magic". I then applied science based explanations for their magic. For the selkieskins, I decided the selkieskins were bioengineered symbiotes used by the Sidhe as spacesuits and/or deep sea diving suits. Nuada of the Silver Hand is another Celtic legend. In that tale, after his hand was cut off in battle, the Sidhe smith crafted a silver hand for him that acted like a real hand. Sounds like our modern day prosthesis, doesn't it?

Here's a website with links to folklore from every country on Earth at http://www.cbel.com/folklore_tales/

SF images are another great place to find inspiration for your stories. Here are a few websites I recommend.

Boris Vallejo's artwork at http://maniera.wbp.zabrze.pl/foto/vallejo/page_26.htm
Luis Rojo's artwork at http://www.jormungand.de/index.htm, click on the links for the different "rooms" to see his artwork there.

BOOKS for research on aliens.
SF books are my first choice for getting ideas about aliens. Why? Because most SF books have already researched their aliens properly. Of course, they also have a tendency to skim over the sex part in their books. No problem. I can still use these books for basic background information and add sex later. LOL.

C. J. Cherryh is an anthropologist who write excellent aliens and alien cultures. http://www.cherryh.com/
I recommend her Chanur and Foreigner Series. http://www.cherryh.com/www/univer.htm#Chanur
If anyone is interested in reading the Chanur or Foreigner Series, I can lend you those books. All you have to do is mail them back to me when you're finished reading them.

For Space Opera type SF and aliens, I recommend Sharon Lee and Steve Miller's Liaden Universe books.
http://www.korval.com/liad.htm Sharon and Steve are a husband and wife team who have crafted a remarkable series of SF Romance stories. (Not enough sex for me, of course, but the Romances are fabulous and give me ideas to build my own stories.) If you scroll down toward the middle of the website, you can find links to sample chapters online for their books. You have to scroll down past the bibliography to find the links to the sample chapters like this link to The Tomorrow Log. http://www.korval.com/ttl1.html

Again, I have copies of their books that I can loan out to anyone who's interested in reading them. All I ask is that you mail them back to me after you've finished reading them.

If you want to write Space War/Space Station type stories, I recommend Elizabeth Moon's Vatta's War and Serrano legacy books. http://www.sff.net/people/Elizabeth.Moon/biblio.htm Elizabeth Moon is ex-military and applies her knowledge to her stories.

Of course, I recommend my books at www.sff.net/people/selkiewife too. Why? Because in addition to creating plausible SF for my books, I also include the kind of Explicit Sex that you won't find in the mainstream SF books that I'm recommending. That's one of the main reasons why I started writing Erotic SF, I got tired of wonderful SF alien stories where they skimmed over the sex parts. I wanted it ALL. I wanted great SF action adventure and sex in the same story. What's with mainstream SF where they will boldly go where no one has gone before but they can't go into the bedroom?

Mind you, mainstream fiction is willing to go into the bedroom when it comes to Fantasy type creatures like werewolves and vampires. Look at Angela Knight, Mary Janice Davidson, Laurell K. Hamilton, Kim Harrison and all the other authors in this field.

BUT, for some strange reason, mainstream publishers seem to have this mistaken assumption that women don't READ SF, that only men read SF and men don't want to see all that mushy love and sex in their SF stories. Cut me a break. Women read SF too. Hell. Go to SF conventions and notice all the female fans running around at the conventions and buying books.

More authors I recommend who write Erotic SF and SF/Romance are http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifahttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifs follows:

Linnea Sinclair http://www.linneasinclair.com/
Camille Anthony http://www.camilleanthony.com/
Kayelle Allen
Rowena Cherry http://www.rowenacherry.com/
Judy Mays
Susan Grant http://www.susangrant.com/
Kaitlyn O' Connor http://www.newconceptspublishing.com/kaitlynoconnor.htm


Whew! That’s all for today’s overview of Alien Romance. During the next weeks, I'll be going into more depth and specific detail about worldbuilding, creating aliens, their cultures, SF Forensics, SF physics & space travel, writing about injuries during fight scenes and of course, the care and design of alien sexual characteristics, physical, mental and cultural.

I'm open to questions and discussion about today's topic and any other topics that you might want to explore.

Thank you.

Barbara Karmazin
www.sff.net/people/selkiewife

Different Strokes -- Headless sex

We're used to having one of everything, (unless we have two... as in kidneys, lungs, arms, legs, ears, eyes).

Margaret and I like to watch some of the same things on TV. I will definitely stop writing my alien romances to watch "The Most Extreme" or "Fooled By Nature" on Animal Planet.

It's not that I'm particularly twisted (or so I fondly imagine), but I am interested in watching male animals getting their heads chewed while they do their reproductive duty. I understand that male praying mantises have a second heart --or is it a second brain?-- down there, which is what enables them to pump more vigorously once the head is gone.

I wonder whether they fornicate faster because the blood flow is diverted to the second brain or second heart once the big head no longer needs a supply. I like to know the ins and outs, and the hows and whys! Like, dying trees often produce a vast and vigorous quantity of flowers and seeds.

I've heard that Brachiosaurs (long necked dinosaur types) may have had an extra heart to pump blood along that long neck. Do giraffes? Or do giraffes just have a really efficient sequence of valves... like canal locks?

When I watch elephants and other large quadrupeds with extremely stiff spines and highly mobile (and apparently well-controlled) reproductive equipment go about the business of procreation, I cannot help thinking of some of the building supply equipment I see on the road... the sort that has a driver in the cab at the front end, but a little cab with a crane and control center at the back end to do the delicate work of lifting and maneuvering.

Have you ever watched an elephantine erection in action? Remarkable!

In National Geographic for Kids, there's a delightful article about animals being nice to one another. In one story, a forest elephant gets the sensitive tip of its trunk damaged in a hunter's trap. So, it leaves the forest and goes out onto the savannah (usually forest elephants stay in the forest, and savannah elephants stay on the savannah, and as a result of not socializing their ears have evolved to look different... apparently). The forest elephant walks up to a surprised savannah elephant and pushes the tip of its hurt trunk into the savannah elephant's mouth.

At once, the savannah elephant tastes the blood, understands his fellow's plight (they must both be young male elephants, I assume, or they would not be alone) and uses his own trunk to pull up a small tree and thrust it into his new friend's mouth.
Aaaahhhh!

There's not a lot of use for me in thinking further about sensitive, prehensile trunk tips and other applications because I write romance with alien elements.

My aliens do have secondary brains and hearts... one has to have a rationale why priapism isn't a problem during the

rut rage

, for the few readers who wonder about such things. One of these days I really must ask my friend Jade Lee (the author) how practitioners of 17-hour Tantric sex don't damage themselves. In my next book, I also touch on the problems of having more brain than humans.

By the way... if anyone clicked the "watch elephants" link in this blog, and is now furious with me for sending them to the INSUFFICIENT MATING MATERIAL book trailer (which is also on my newly rationalized website), try looking to the right in the sidebar of what YouTube catalogues as similar subject matter.

On an administrative note, Cindy Holby aka Colby Hodge is on assignment. I shall blog on her Saturdays until September... apart from August 4th, when Marjorie M Liu will blog.

Barbara Karmazin will be guest blogging on Sundays, and will delight us with at least one lecture about alien sex. We can look forward to a hot summer! The hero in Barbara's The Huntress is extraordinarily well endowed. He has two!!


best wishes,
Rowena Cherry

Sex in the Wild (and Wilder)

I've just finished rereading DR. TATIANA'S SEX ADVICE TO ALL CREATION, by evolutionary biologist Olivia Judson. You should all get this book! In the format of an advice column for animals, plants, and microbes with romantic and sexual quandaries, the author imparts densely packed information on reproduction throughout the natural world in a most entertaining style. She explores the evolutionary advantages of patterns such as promiscuity, monogamy, infidelity, homosexuality, hermaphroditism, parthenogenesis, and the most aberrant behavior of all, complete asexuality. Did you know that many animals change sex over their lifetimes, depending on environmental or social conditions, or that in some species the sex of the young is determined by factors such as water temperature rather than genetics? Have you heard about the hermaphroditic snails who have penises on their heads? Lionesses in heat copulate at least once every half-hour over four or five days. In many species of birds thought to mate monogamously, DNA tests of chicks have shown that infidelity runs rampant. Despite the popular perception of males as promiscuous and females as monogamous, polyandry is far from unknown in the animal kingdom. Some bird females will have several mates, each on a separate nest incubating his own clutch of eggs. And we've all heard of the male spiders and preying mantises who present the ultimate gift to their mates to ensure the robustness of their children: She devours him (literally) after fertilization. Some male insects even copulate more vigorously with their heads bitten off. (Passing up the easy punch line. . . .) Strangest of all, some slime molds have over 500 sexes. (No, that doesn't mean they have to get 500 individuals together to mate. It simply means they have that many distinct kinds of reproductive cells. It still requires only two to produce a new organism.) I was surprised to learn that sex and reproduction don't necessarily go together. “Sex” basically means a method of exchanging genetic material between individuals. That exchange may be separated in time from the creation of new individuals (e.g., an organism might trade DNA with another one now and generate offspring by budding later).

Suppose your human hero or heroine forms an emotional attachment to an alien who isn't humanoid or even mammalian in reproductive biology but something much wilder, such as one of those species. If the couple doesn't mind being unable to have children together, might they share sexual gratification anyway? Or would it feel too much like bestiality? How dissimilar would they have to be, physically, to trigger that perception? At some point of difference they might have to confine themselves to emotional bonding, as "soul mates." Or they might just be intimate on the level of friendship. I'm reminded of the STAR TREK episode in which the blind telepath bonds with the medusoid whose physical form is so alien (or so dazzling) that no human being can look at him/it without being struck mad. That bond must be (in the words of the introduction to the TV show BEAUTY AND THE BEAST) "stronger than friendship or love," yet it's completely nonphysical.

Booksigning

After 50 plus books, I don't usually blog over book signings. But a new Books A Million just opened up in the Brandon Mall in Florida. And they are romance friendly! In this day and age, it's a cause to celebrate. The store was not only willing to carry my new books but my backlist. So this is really special.

I was totally psyched to go and sign books. And then they ordered a gazillion Kiss Me Deadly books and put up tote bags for their sign in the window and my palms broke into a sweat.

Normally, I sell between 10-25 books at a signing. And this store brought in so many there is NO WAY I can sell that many. Yikes. I doubt that many people will even walk by in two hours and even if every one of them bought a book, I still won't sell them all. Then as I often do, I started to really worry. I imagined myself sitting there behind this mountain of books and no one buying any. It's many authors' worst nightmare. I'd rather face an alien invasion than sit behind a table of books and be unable to sell them, with no one to talk to and wishing I could make myself invisible.

This is when I start counting friends--friends who I could talk into coming in to buy a book in the middle of a busy Saturday. But for those of you who don't keep track, this week is the Romance Writers of America National Conference. So most of my friends are out of town.

So if you happen to be in Brandon Florida, between 2-4pm on Saturday, please stop by the Books A Million and pick up a book for yourself, your mom, your best friend, your grandmother and the alien who lives under your bed....

Heinlein On Love

Folks:

I returned yesterday from a unique weekend immersed in
scholarship and erudite discussion of Robert A. Heinlein,
celebrating the day (7/7/07 ) when he would have been a hundred
years old had he lived.

I learned so much I didn't know! My background and interests are
much more like Heinlein's than I had ever suspected.
And I'm sure I said things others didn't know that changed their
views -- they came up after the panels and asked for my handouts
which contain the URL of the Alien Romance blog.

Frederick Pohl (the editor who bought my first story, the first
Sime~Gen story, for WORLDS OF IF MAGAZINE OF SCIENCE FICTION and later as book editor for Bantam Books bought my first non- fiction project STAR TREK LIVES! and who has written a long list of SF novels) was there speaking fluently, casually, mellifluously, about Robert, his attitudes, experiences, friends, associates, and his three wives.

As I said in my previous post, I was on 6 panels and an
autographing in 2 days -- Friday and Sunday. Saturday I wandered
in and out of panels, and watched a few videos and talked and
talked to people.

The weekend became a blur of significant experiences. But there
was an odd theme running through it all -- love. Heinlein on
love is a remarkably deep topic.

You may think of his later books, Stranger in a Strange Land,
Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Time Enough For Love -- but there are
deeper themes on love in his "juveniles."

The Heinlein Centennial was co-conventioned with the SFRA
(Science Fiction Research Association -- professors who read
papers on SF because they happen to be fans who write academic
papers). So on Thursday evening, I spotted Fred Pohl through a
crack in a door, and crept in to an SFRA panel to listen to the
end of that panel.

It gave me a hundred ideas for things to say on the later panels
I was on, but I only got to say one of them.
Being academics, they were talking (in grieved tones) about
teaching Heinlein's books, and how younger people just WON'T
read Heinlein.

Later at another panel I heard someone who should know state
that when RED PLANET (the animated version of Heinlein's novel)
was aired, children ran to the library searching for more books
by him.

But before I heard that, on Friday at noon I was on a panel
about "Everything I Needed to Know I Learned From Heinlein" --
(which is pretty much true). And there I mentioned this blog and
pointed out how, RAH's themes, ideas, and vision lives on and on
and ON through us.

Young people who read my books (and there are amazingly large
numbers) are reading Heinlein (and Marion Zimmer Bradley, and
Theodore Sturgeon, Hal Clement, etc etc). Even younger people
who are reading Linnea Sinclair are reading Heinlein, which
would be true even if Linnea had never read Heinlein because
she's read my books.

In fact, any modern fan of novels with SF or Fantasy content
that ALSO involve strong characters and plot-driving
relationships is enjoying the legacy of Robert Anson Heinlein.
Linnea is now training new writers, and so the legacy will be
passed on to yet another generation -- and that legacy is,
without love you don't have a story!

It's especially true of Science Fiction -- one definition of SF
Fred Pohl and John W. Campbell came up with was "if you can take
the science out and still have a story, you don't have an SF
story."

Most Alien Romance that I've seen to date passes that test --
there's some science element that absolutely MAKES the story.
But there is also some Relationship (not always romantic love;
parent-child, teacher-student, buddy, sister-sister, oath-bound,
magical geas, etc) that causes the characters to make one plot-
decision and not another -- that drives the plot to a satisfying
conclusion.

And that's what Heinlein invariably did. He showed us the role
of love in society, even alien society, and that to handle
science efficaciously, one must be filled with that love -- love
of humanity (or one's own species), love of town, country,
village, tribe, family, spouse(s), children, teachers, -- LOVE
drives the world.

But learning steers us -- and Heinlein glamorized education to
such an extent that maybe a third or a half of the people who
showed up for the Centennial had advanced science degrees
because of their early exposure to Heinlein.

Reading Heinlein makes you WANT to study -- even if the subject
is boring -- because you can see the use for being educated, as
opposed to "getting an education."

On Saturday, I learned that Heinlein had, as a very young man,
memories of 2 or 3 past lives. That could easily explain the
level of mature genius he evidenced throughout his whole life.
But by his thirties, those memories had faded to memories of
memories.

Still it gave him an awareness that science doesn't study the
whole of our real universe -- an attitude I have always had.
Maybe I was born with it, or maybe I absorbed it with RAH's
novels, or my upbringing -- but it pervades my life to this day.
Science is absolutely necessary, but it doesn't apply to
everything of importance in life.

Heinlein had read James Branch Cabell (fantasy writer of the
1920's and 1930's) who influenced the field markedly and then
fell out of popularity. And Heinlein knew L. Ron Hubbard, and
some associates of Madame Blavatsky -- who had at the time moved
her operations to India.

This mystical view of the universe blended into his scientific
view of the universe in every book he wrote, but became more
pronounced in later years -- after the feminist revolution of
the 1970's and the influence of Star Trek on the SF/F reading
population when he saw he could publish stories about what he
had originally wanted to write about. (we have a "manuscript
found in a drawer" that's recently been published to show this
is true.)

Also on Saturday I saw all at once, without commercials, the
cartoon film made of his novel RED PLANET -- which was a major
love of mine. It's a story about motherly love, and a rite of
passage story for a boy and his sister. The boy makes best-
friends of a young Martian while Earth is terraforming Mars
(something they're now talking about actually doing).

Of course, since it's a juvenile, the boy and his Martian friend
save Mars and change the course of history. That's the "great
man" theory of history, and one I use in my own novels because
sometimes it's true that apparently insignificant people make
huge contributions because of their personal emotional life.

But for me, the book has always been about the intense love and
understanding between the boy and the alien-child.

The significant story development, for me, is the scene where
the alien (after sticking with the human boy through many life-
threatening adventures) tells him that he must hibernate and
morph into his mature form, which will take longer than the
human boy's entire lifetime.

That leave-taking, that parting scene, is for me THE defining
moment of SF as a genre. I internalized it so greatly that I
barely remembered it until I saw it on the screen.

The animated version tag ends the story with a scene where the
Martian, as an adult, is telling his best-human-friend's
grandchild about his childhood best friend. It's a cartoon! I
cried my head off!!!!

On Sunday I did 4 panels and hardly had a moment to sit and
listen to other panels. I was on a panel titled "I now pronounce
you" -- which turned out to be about people who are actually
living Heinlein's model of the "line marriage" and the "group
marriage" from Moon Is A Harsh Mistress.

I did two panels on Heinlein's Heroines, and got into a number of discussions
challenging the view that Heinlein's writing is male chauvinistic (it's not -- but those who don't understand the nuances can't tell the difference.)

One thing about this convention that was really odd. There were,
I think, fewer than a thousand people spread over two huge
hotels with multiple tracks of programming going all the time --
and despite all that, all the panels I did filled the room. It
wasn't ME or the celebrities I was on with. It was that people
came to the event in order to go to the panels!

But I also had a few people who had seen me at a panel on Friday
following through to all the panels I did on Sunday -- people
who hadn't read my books and didn't know who I was. I had three
or four long conversations in the hallways, too.

I was on a couple of panels with J. Neil Schulman, an SF writer
who is forging ahead into film making. He's written, produced
and directed a feature film which is an Action Comedy starring
Nichelle Nichols (Uhura on Star Trek: The Original Series).

The film, titled Lady Magdalene's, is being marketed for theater
release.

http://www.ladymagdalenes.com/

"Jack Goldwater, an IRS Agent on load to the Federal Air Marshal
Service, is relieved of field duty after insulting a powerful U.
S. Senator, and finds himself exiled to a humiliating desk job
in Nevada as the Federal Receiver managing a legal brothel in
tax default. Where -- with the help of the brothel Madam, Lady
Magdalene (Nichelle Nichols) -- he uncovers an Al Qaeda plot to
unload a nuclear bomb sized crate at Hoover Dam. " Runtime 117
minutes.

Watch theaters for that film - it'll likely be a landmark.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/

And then...another GAMES OF COMMAND scene

Another little GAMES OF COMMAND vignette than ran through my mind (and into the keyboard) after the story "ended" in the book:

Sass was nervous as she stepped into the Regalia’s ready room. Branden Kel-Paten saw that in the way her gaze flicked to his as he rose from his seat behind the room’s long conference table; saw it in the way she was trying not to purse her lips as her mind—-caffeine-fueled, as usual-—worked at light speed. And he saw it in the way she absently fingered the edge of her utility belt, then caught herself and stopped. After three months of living with her on the Regalia, he knew all her little idiosyncrasies and more.

After three months of living with him, he thought she might realize she had nothing to worry about. It wasn’t as if he was going to kill the man following Sass into the ready room. Though the thought did hold a certain appeal…

“Kel-Paten.” Dag Zanorian nodded curtly, the ready room door shutting silently behind him.

Ooh, jealous! Tank’s furry head poked over the table top from where he’d been snoozing on an adjacent chair for the past hour while Kel-Paten went over the latest block of data he snagged from a Concordance cruiser before it escaped into the Void. The furzel’s empathic and telepathic range had expanded in those passing three months and he was never subtle about commenting on what he sensed or heard.

Embarrassing at times in the privacy of the captain’s quarters. But informative right now.

So Dag Zanorian was jealous. Imagine that.

“Zanorian.” Kel-Paten nodded back.

“Sit, Dag,” Sass pointed to a chair opposite his, compscreen already slatted up out of the table top and at the ready. “We’re all on the same side now.” She rounded the end of the table then lifted Tank out of the chair. The black and white furzel thumped down onto the ready room table with a soft sigh. Love Mommy!

Sass swiveled the chair around to sit. Kel-Paten brushed the top of her head with a kiss before she did so, sat when she did, didn’t miss the narrowing of Zanorian’s eyes.

Big jealous!

Sass tapped a white paw in warning. Evidently she heard Tank this time.

Kel-Paten bit back a grin while he shunted data to Zanorian’s screen. “This is the pattern we’ve been picking up in this sector for two weeks now,” he told Zanorian as a private message popped up on his screen: Gloating is unprofessional.

But it feels so damn good, he sent back to her screen with a thought. The Regalia—-being U-Cee-—wasn’t designed with data ports at every comp station for him to spike in. So far he’d only had time to convert two stations in the ready room, one on the bridge and, of course, in the one in the captain’s quarters. The majority of his time was spent bringing the New Alliance fleet up to date with everything he knew about the Triad. It didn’t matter it was now called the Sanctified Concordance. The hardware—ships, station, data systems—were still Triad built. And the personnel—even though they were Ved controlled—were still Triad Fleet crew and officers. The latter pained him. It was bad enough to witness the deaths of some of his key officers. It was worse to watch those still alive, controlled and driven insane by the Ved...

*************************


See, the characters really never shut up. Or go away. I guess that's kind of good. ;-) ~Linnea

Grievous: A human for all seasons

How many favorite recurring characters do you have? Or follow?

In a series, each sequel may have a different hero and heroine but quite often there is a secondary character who continues to play an important secondary role. Maybe she is a pet cat or dog that gets passed around, or a meddlesome matchmaker, or an authority figure --the mysterious older brother, the King of England, a secret society-- or maybe it is a magical artifact, or a robot.

I have the very human Grievous, who gets loaned out to a greater or lesser extent.

In FORCED MATE (my first book), the alien god-Prince Tarrant-Arragon made Grievous a job offer that he couldn't refuse.

He retains his job title of "Earthways Advisor" to god-Prince Tarrant-Arragon in INSUFFICIENT MATING MATERIAL but also acts as congenial jailer.

In my work-in-progress, KNIGHT'S FORK, Grievous is sent along on a quest, and is the first to blurt out a wisecrack when he thinks a plot element is suspect, or when an alien's behavior is out of order.

I drafted the following scene snippet over a year ago when I started thinking about the three books that will follow INSUFFICIENT MATING MATERIAL. At the time, I wasn't sure which book it would work best in (if at all). In my opinion, the trouble with combining a "Quest" story with a Romance is that quests require either a lot of characters (and more than one villain) or a lot of travel.

----

“Are those Earthgirls? They’re adorable, perfectly formed miniatures. Can I have one?”

Rhett translated Prince Thor-Quentin's remark for Grievous's enjoyment. A nod and hand wave from the human informed him that the courtesy was unnecessary.

“And by have you mean…?” he questioned Prince Thor-quentin diplomatically.

“To take home with me.”

“You don’t think that would be cruel?”

“What’s cruel?”

Rhett and Grievous exchanged glances.

“I want to talk to one of them.”

“Any one in particular?” Rhett drawled sarcastically.

Missing the point, Thor-Quentin studied the group of young women, like a tweenager on the wrong side of a pet shop window. “That one. No. All of them.”

“You do realize that Earthgirls don't speak Tigron, nor do they speak High Court?"

“They don’t?”

“No.”

“Can’t we implant something in one of them?”

“Your dick, I dare say,” Grievous growled, under his breath, in English. “Arrogant little snot, isn’t he, Sir?”


“It is you who wishes to converse, Thor-Quentin. Perhaps we should put something in your ear.”

“A flea, I should say, Sir.” Grievous muttered.


“If I want one, I have to learn her barbarian language?” Thor-Quentin said with incredulity. He was catching on. “How?”

“Ask Grievous. Nicely.” Rhett said, bored of the conversation.

----

Until next time....
Rowena Cherry

So many posts, so little time

I've been trying to post a copy of my Star Shadows cover all day. For some reason the site won't pick it up. I've also been trying to get my Meez of Elle, who is the heroine in SS up. But the site is down...Frustration upon Frustration.

I just finished reading my page proofs for Star Shadows. This was probably the most difficult book I've ever written. It took me over a year to do something that usually takes four months. My family was going through a difficult time with the long slow death of a loved one. At one point I had to walk away from it and come back. I discovered halfway through that I had too much plot for the story. I have a six year gap in the story just so it won't be too long. The first half is about the innocence and foolishness of youth and the second half about second chances.

There comes a point in a book when you are too close too it to judge it as a whole. You have to step back, take a break and look at it with fresh eyes. This was good. It gave me an entirely new appreciation of the characters and the story.

Star Shadows will be out in November. Until then I've got Twist to finish and a historical release, Rising Wind to promote. Since I'll be going on the road in my Cindy Holby persona I won't be around to post. So I"m taking a break from Alien Blog until September.

Take care!

Patriotism and Robert A. Heinlein

A version of this was submitted this week to
The Heinlein Centennial Reader A Call for Articles and Essays
about Heinlein's Life & Work
http://www.heinleinsociety.org/

I'll be going to the Robert Heinlein Centennial convention in
Kansas City over the July 7, 2007 weekend. They've put me on 6
panels in two days. So I've been preparing some handouts and
thinking about the topics.

Meanwhile, one of the Sime~Gen fans (Midge Baker) announced
she's a Robert Heinlein fan -- imagine that -- and gave me a URL
I'd like to share with you.

It is ever so gratifying to discover that some of my all time
favorite authors have fans who also like Sime~Gen and my other
work. And that happens quite a lot. Maybe I've done something
right.

You may note that my first novel, a Sime~Gen novel titled House
of Zeor which first came out from Doubleday in hardcover then
had numerous mass market paperback and translation reprints,
plus an Omnibus reprint, was dedicated to Robert Heinlein.

After a lifetime of reading his work, I first met Robert at the
World Science Fiction Convention in Kansas City in 1976 when I
was on an autographing tour for my non-fiction book Star Trek
Lives! about why fans like Star Trek. They held the first
Worldcon Blood Drive at that convention, and donating blood was
the only way to get RAH's autograph.

As it happened, I was disqualified from blood donation at the
time, but he built in a dodge to get around the requirement. If
you stood in line at the Bloodmobile, and were turned down, you
got a heart-pin that was your ticket to stand in line at the
autographing.

So I did both stand-in-lines (long ones) and got my heart-pin
which I still wear, and finally got to the desk where he was
signing books. Instead of asking for his autograph, I gave him
House of Zeor autographed to him by me.

He later called me and made some very encouraging remarks. So I
sent him my second novel, Unto Zeor, Forever and he called me
again asking if I was a medical doctor (which I'm not) because
I'd portrayed the essence of that profession with remarkable
realism.

Later still, he invited me and my family to visit him in his
home, a visit where my children (just the right age) got
autographed copies of his juveniles which they treasure to this
day.

There's a reason for that dedication of my first novel -- and it
wasn't to get an invitation to Robert Heinlein's house.
Sime~Gen and almost all of my work falls into the category I've
named Intimate Adventure
http://www.simegen.com/jl/intimateadventure.html
for more detail.

Romance and Intimacy (which aren't necessarily the same thing)
are both about Relationship -- about me vs. other with the focus
on Other.

Romance and Intimacy both create the binding force that holds
society and civilization together -- the bonds between
individuals which then extend to children, ancestors, extended
family, tribe, city, nation, etc.

It is this fundamental binding force of civilization that Robert
Heinlein writes about with such moving conviction that it became
one of the core drivers of my own fiction.

I became a science fiction writer very much because of Robert A.
Heinlein's vision of what humanity could and should be -- our
highest calling -- the counter entropic force in the universe,
the organizing force.

I first discovered his novels in the library in the early 1950's
-- or more accurately, my mother discovered them for even his
juveniles were shelved not in the children's library but in the
adult library to which I didn't qualify for a card. So my
mother sneaked me books way above my grade level. So I
did learn everything I needed to know about life from those
early juveniles.

One of the most important things I learned was the reason for
Patriotism and for Good Manners in any society containing
humans.

Here's the URL where you can find Robert A. Heinlein's speech on
the nature of Patriotism on Jerry Pournelle's website (which is
worth exploring).

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2mail/mail212.html#RAH

That reason is survival. Pure and simple. Human societies that
fail to engender patriotism and good manners become extinct.
Heinlein held that "women and children first" = Patriotism.
That no society can survive if it doesn't reproduce. In that
endeavor males are expendable; women and children are not.
It's not that women CAN'T fight -- it's that society can't
afford it. If it comes down to a woman defending her children,
the warriors have failed. (but the attacker is going to be very
very sorry!)

In Sime~Gen, the channels don't fight because the Householding
that doesn't put "channels & Donors first" doesn't survive, even
though the channels are the most powerful combatants.
Heinlein had a reverence and respect for the POWER of womanhood
that went bone marrow deep - beyond words.

Heinlein's vision of the reason why viable human societies
produce Warriors is very deeply ingrained in my concept of
"Intimate Adventure."

Intimate Adventure replaces the "action" in Action/Adventure
with Intimacy -- so it becomes Intimate/Adventure.
In Intimate Adventure the Warrior's courage is needed on the
field of Intimacy, as well as the field of physical battle.
The Warrior's ability to give wholly of himself in service of
the Group -- to hold nothing back -- is rooted in personal bonds
of all kinds. The first personal bond that begins this process
is infant to care-giver (child to mother).

Through life, an individual forms hundreds of such bonds with
varying degrees of Intimacy -- and eventually, finds a mate and
raises children.

Romance is that activated state just prior to forming a mating
bond -- and the process of forming that bond.

What attracts a woman to any man is that man's untapped ability
to form such a bond at the deepest, most intimate level -- the
level where "what does she see in him?" and "what does he see in
her?" are clear and self-evident.

Women seek Men who will put them first in "women and children
first" -- a man who will stand between danger and the survival
of the group.

That ability to stand between danger and the survival of the
group is based on that network of bonds formed with individuals
of the group, the ancestors' sacrifices, and the vision of the
accomplishments of the progeny. So deeply steeped in Heinlein's work,
I wrote House of Zeor to portray a "Group" that would be worthy
of the kind of Patriotic Warrior Heinlein wrote about, the
Householdings that exist to prevent the extinction of the human species.

Robert Heinlein advocated "Pay It Forward" -- so I'm paying his
legacy forward by teaching the Intimate Adventure style of
writing on simegen.com.


Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/

GAMES OF COMMAND - after the last page...

Authors always write more than the readers read. For any novel, there are pages and pages that end up on the cutting room floor due to word-count limitations (I've posted some here), and then there are the post-book scenes. These are things that flow from the keyboard even after the book has been put to bed.

You see, when you've been living and breathing a character (or several characters) for months (or even years), you can't just shut them up, turn them off with the flick of a light switch. Not surprisingly days after GAMES OF COMMAND was done, edited and outta-my-office, Sass and Kel-Paten still wandered in from time to time and gave me a glimpse of what happened AFTER the book's last page...

Ralland Kel-Tyra caught Sass by the elbow as she threaded her way through the tables in the ship’s mess, and leaned his mouth down to her ear. “He’s about thirty minutes from imploding.”

She angled her face towards him but didn’t look at him. She watched Kel-Paten, instead. Had been watching him since he’d entered the Regalia’s mess hall ten minutes ago. “How long has he been like this?”

“His ‘I’m the only one who can save the universe’ mode? About four months, ever since he headed the mutiny against Psy-Serv.”

“Umm,” Sass said and then sighed. It had been less than an hour since they’d left the Vaxxar—a ghost ship now, secured for tow. Timm Kel-Faray and two other crew were in Monterro’s sick bay. The rest of the thirty-nine survivors were sent to the mess for a hot meal while her crew made some hasty rearrangements for sleeping quarters to accommodate them on the three day trip to Varlow.

Kel-Paten had tailed after her—or sometimes strode ahead of her—as they’d gone from shuttle bay to the bridge to sick bay and now to the mess.

At the moment, he was standing by a table of three former officers from the Vax, whose trays were full of hot food and mugs of cold beer. But a few minutes before that he’d been at a table of four, and minutes before that, another table of three. Had he eaten? No. He hadn’t even had a sip of beer.

“When’s the last time he slept?” she asked Ralland.

“I honestly couldn’t tell you. But I thought when we found the Regalia, found you…did you see what happened when Tank showed up on the bridge?”

She had. The site of the unshakeable admiral dropping to his knees had shaken her. “We had visual of your bridge, just not audio.”

“I thought he was going to implode then. He didn’t. That’s what worries me. He should have. He achieved the objective: he saved everyone he could from the Vax and Dalkerris. He got out of the Void, again. And he found you. That was everything. I thought that was everything. But he won’t stop. He can’t stop,” Ralland corrected himself. He shook his head wearily. “Damn him.”

“When’s the last time you slept, Captain Kel-Tyra?”

Ralland slanted her a quick, challenging glance that was one hundred percent Kel-Paten, even though his eyes were the color of chocolate and Kel-Paten’s were pale ice blue. Brothers. Four, six years apart? She didn’t know. But their stubbornness was just one more thing they had in common. “I’m due,” he admitted after a moment.

“And you’ve been assigned one of the executive guest suites.” The Regalia had two on the deck below the bridge. In an emergency—and this was one—they could sleep three people. “My people will take very good care of your crew,” she added. Five had already left, being guided to their quarters by one of her crew and a furzel, for probably the first decent sleep they’ve had in months.

“It’s him I’m worried about,” Ralland said, jutting his chin in the admiral’s direction. Kel-Paten had moved to another table.

“I will take very good care of your brother,” Sass said softly.

Another glance but no challenge this time. “You’re an amazing woman,” he said with a small smile.

She smiled back. “Then let me do my job.”

He squeezed her arm. “Aye, Captain.”

“Get some sleep. And if you can find your way to my office at 0930, I could use some help processing your people before we hit Varlow.”

A short nod. “I’ll be there.” He moved away, the sound of his footsteps lost in the clatter and clank of the mess hall.

She headed for Kel-Paten, who looked her way at that moment, his mouth curving into that odd, crooked smile of his. She noticed again how much thinner his face was. He wasn’t eating or sleeping, and maintaining his 'cybe systems was draining his body. It was as if he was stuck on Red Alert, all systems at max. If he didn’t implode he would burn up from the inside out.

“Our table’s up there.” She motioned to the command staff dining table on the raised platform along the wall.

“I’m not hungry and there are a few things I—”

She yanked on his arm. “Now, flyboy. Food. Beer. Or wine or Excelsior or whatever’s your poison of choice. But now.”

She saw it then. It was as if—for a moment—things weren’t synching, as if—for a moment—he didn’t know who she was or where he was or what he was doing there. His expression blanked. She felt him tense under her fingers. Fight or flight.

Then he was back. “Tasha—”

She switched tactics, abruptly. “I need your help. My office, now.” Taking care of himself wasn’t on his agenda. But a request for help fit neatly into his ‘save the universe’ mode.

She’d feed him, later. After he imploded...

Not quite a scene, I know. A bit of a vignette. There's one other that occurs a few months past this one. I'll post that next week (if I'm not going too nutso packing for RWA National and forget to do so).

I've been asked if readers will see further adventures of Sass and Kel-Paten. I don't have any formally planned as of right now, no. But you can see from the above that the characters aren't about to go away without a fight. I guess that's a good sign. ~Linnea

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.

Kiss Me Deadly trailer

The True Founder of Alien Romance

Folks:

What we're really talking about here this week is what I call "The Fiction Delivery System" (as in "The Healthcare Delivery System" -- fiction is, to me, a required nutrient of life.)

It shouldn't matter what the delivery medium is (print, graphic novel, animation, TV, film, whatever). It delivers fiction.

The true founder of Alien Romance as a genre was among the first to break through the artificial barriers between media and genres. Let's explore this in detail.

------------------

Rowena Cherry wrote in her Sunday June 24th post here:

The great dilemma is, would alien romance readers today want to buy --in effect-- a traditional Regency romance in outer space? Was the Star Trek movie where Mr. Spock got married the omega and alpha of the genre, or is there room on bookshelves for more sexually continent heroes?

----------------------

Margaret Carter's repost on Wed. June 20th (or Thursday?) also connected the Vampire to Spock and furthered that with a discussion of the Hero of a Paranormal Romance as being "different" from the hero of a regular romance.

-------------------

Susan Kearny, on Wed. June 20th asked for input about how useful book trailers are in selling books -- i.e. a marketing question direct to readers who buy books.

--------------------

Rowena - the Star Trek story you're thinking of was Amok Time, an episode of The Original Series, not one of the movies.

An interesting connection with the Vampire mythos is that, during Pon Farr, a Vulcan male can be a lethal danger to other males -- or DIE himself.

This connects "death" and "sex" with an alien twist on the subject. After all, in evolution as we know it, you can't have a reproductive drive that kills the reproducer BEFORE they reproduce and expect the species to thrive.

However, in many byways of sexual exploration among humans, death (or near-death) is exciting or inciting. Most people consider that extremely "sick".

What's different about an SF-Romance hero (or paranormal romance -- actually Spock qualifies as both since he's a telepath and bonds with his partner telepathically in a bond that can only be broken by death)?

And what has that difference to do with the efficacy of BOOK TRAILERS?

Using Spock as the example, think carefully.

Theodore Sturgeon invented Pon Farr and added it to Vulcans and Spock. Have you read his stories?

I met him several times at cons -- had long conversations with him and I grew up reading his stuff. I've posted a short piece about his influence on me at

http://www.simegen.com/sgfandom/welcommittee/TedSturg.html

When I saw the TV Guide blurb for that episode and learned that Theodore Sturgeon had written it, I WROTE that episode's script in my head - I knew exactly what would happen, scene by scene (if my dialogue was off a little) because I knew Ted Sturgeon's work.
He played with alien sexuality incessantly. Poul Anderson just included the biology of reproduction in his worldbuilding -- but Sturgeon got down to the nitty gritty of the "drives" involved.

What makes the PARANORMAL ROMANCE hero "different" from the usual romance hero is very simple -- the writer has the ability and indeed the obligation to "worldbuild" around the "paranormal" attribute.

Since it's a romance, it may have more to do with relationship than actual sexuality, but today's romance usually includes at least some sex, not just hinting and making out.

So what's different about a paranormal romance hero is that HE is different in some aspect of his maleness. That difference can be an impediment (say if he's a ghost and just doesn't connect) or an enhancement (say he's a telepath and can trigger all kinds of wondrous sensations in his partner).

What's different about the paranormal romance hero is that ALL the parameters of personality and physiology taken for granted in a regular guy can be changed.

What's interesting about reading a paranormal romance is the adventure of finding out what's different about him -- and how that difference will re-shape the parameters of the essential Relationship.

What's that to do with a book trailer?

Notice this discussion mixes and matches TV, film (ST had films), and print (ST has print books) with wild abandon.

It wasn't so long ago that mixing media just wasn't allowed. Then publishers made heaps of money off TV spinoffs -- actually though it didn't start with Trek, it really exploded when Trekfen discovered real Trek novels (let's not mention Blish's SPOCK MUST DIE!)

Jean Lorrah, my sometime co-author, has written a list of best selling Trek books. I mean best-selling AMONG Trek books.

So what is the real significance and use of the Book Trailer?

To further blur that gap between film, TV, and print (and e-book).

Publishers have found that advertising books on TV via trailers doesn't work -- it may sell books, but not enough books to cover costs (because air time is expensive and not enough people read books.)

Response to Susan Kearny's question indicates that readers who read blogs like this don't decide to buy a book on the basis of a YouTube trailer.

So what is a book trailer for????

Its audience isn't book-buyers. It's audience is film makers -- producers.

A book trailer shows how the material of the novel would translate to the screen.
Writing a book deliberately including the "set piece" moments that a film has -- visual moments that "say it all" in pictures and thus end up in the trailer -- puts you in the running for selling that book to the film industry.

Creating the trailor for that book proves the book could become a film.

There was a whole long discussion recently on the e-book List at EPIC (the professional e-book writers and publishers org) about the difference between a script and a novel. It's a big difference.

So what goes into a paranormal romance book trailer that would attract readers?

The exact element of sexuality/relationship-bonding that is different in your alien-hero.

If only someone has preserved the TV ads for Amok Time, you'd see what I mean.

Kirk comes backing out of Spock's quarters and hits the wall. Plomeek soup (green soup) follows splat. Spock SCREAMS at Kirk (yes, he uses invective both in Amok Time and in the film about the whales (colorful expletives).)

The bridge scene -- "T'pring - my - wife."

T'Pau being carried into the arena on a litter.

The fight in the Arena with Spock quite clearly trying to kill Kirk.

In other words, Spock behaving in a very un-Spock way -- but the viewers of the show already know what the Spock-way is.

The mental BONDING of the Vulcan wedding is only mentioned briefly in passing in this TV episode, Amok Time. But literally hundreds of millions of words have been fan-generated based on that one hypothesis - what would sex be like for a telepathically bonded pair?

What does it take to break that bond? What can force it to form accidentally (K/S). What does it take to keep it from forming if it's spiritually inevitable?

Yes, that's right -- the Alien Romance genre just about got it's whole start in Star Trek fanfic. And those stories all started with Amok Time and Theodore Sturgeon's addition to Trek of male-heat and telepathic bonding.

So Theodore Sturgeon is the real founder of the whole Alien Romance genre and he never wrote a single romantic word! (horror, yes, literary polemics yes, romance - uh-uh.) Or maybe it's Gene Roddenberry, who gave SF print writers like Sturgeon a chance to write SF for TV -- something just unheard of at the time!

Who do you think is the real founder of Alien Romance?


Jacqueline Lichtenberg

http://www.simegen.com/jl/

New Words For New Worlds

Okay, confession time--prior to this point, I cheated. Because I write Earth-based sci-fi, my world building was limited to an Earth that was almost exactly the same as the one we live in...except there are aliens openly living among us. So, I never really worried about the other differences except as they related to my aliens, the Observers, and the world and society they came from.

Now, with my current WIP, which is set on Earth twenty years in the future, I find myself questioning everything about these future humans. Language, for example. We've always had some kind of word to indicate when something was "cool" or "neat."

Remember "rad" from the mid to late 80s? How about "wicked awesome" or "def"?
But what makes a certain word stick around? Would people in 2027 still be saying "cool" or would they have moved on to some other variation, like "icy" or "chill" maybe? Or, perhaps in a society in which many freedoms have been sacrificed supposedly for the greater good and safety for everyone, "free" might take on the role "cool" plays now as something limited and intangible that everyone wants to have. Everyone wants to be cool (in theory), and in their version of our world, everyone wants to be free. But using that word in this new context, "I love your jacket. It's so free," might be weird or confusing to readers who, living in our world in 2007, have an entirely different understanding of the word "free.'

One of my favorite examples of this language thing done well is "shiny" from the Firefly television series and the movie that followed, Serenity. "Shiny" basically replaced "cool" or "good" in just about every context. When the engine is falling apart, Kaylee tells Mal, "Don't worry, Captain. It's all shiny." It can also be used sarcastically as when Mal is confronted with more bad news, "Oh, shiny." But "shiny" also works in this beat-up world where the Alliance, the bad guys, have all the new technology and Mal's ship is constantly on the verge of breaking down. "Shiny" means new and problem-free, which is something greatly desired by Mal and his intrepid crew.

My heroine in this story is tech-savvy (much to my utter dismay) and a rebel. She refers to herself, tongue in cheek, as an "information liberator," which basically means she'll get you the information you want or need, whether it's the unedited version of the Bible or your local politician's "donation" record at the local house of ill-repute, for a fee. In a world where everything, including the internet, has been sanitized for your protection, unbiased and factual information is a hot commodity. These days, she might be referred to as a hacker, but in her world, she's called a cyber terrorist by the fearful and big-brotherly government almost as often as she's referred to as an "undisclosed source" when it benefits their agenda. This girl loves gadgets and the latest tech. What word would she use for "cool"? What do you guys think? All thoughts welcome.


Stacey Klemstein
(My thanks to Linnea, Rowena and everyone here for letting me fill in!)
Stacey Klemstein is the author of the Zara Mitchell series, a science fiction romance trilogy. THE SILVER SPOON, Book One, is available now, and EYE OF THE BEHOLDER, Book Two, will be released in February 2008. Book Three, as yet untitled, is in progress. Visit www.staceyklemstein.com to read free excerpts!


****

Stacey Klemstein
Author of THE SILVER SPOON (July 2007) and BITTER PILL (May 2008)

Visit www.staceyklemstein.com or myspace.com/staceyklemstein to read an excerpt and more!

"Don't misunderstand, it's not like I enjoyed having this happen to me. I guess it's just some kind of bizarre twist of fate, or maybe a sixth sense that only kicks in when the grim reaper is afoot. It's not like I'd wanted to find the high school swim coach floating face down in the deep end, any more than I'd wanted to find the assistant librarian hanging from the rafters in the library attic with a stack of true crime books kicked over beneath her.

It's just that whenever bodies started floating, swinging or, in this case, dropping, I happened to be there..." --BITTER PILL

Tall, dark, and continent

Am I going to talk about "continents"? Or "continence" as a heroic quality in an alien romance? Continence! Sexual continence, as opposed to sexual incontinence. We all think only of bladder control, because pharmaceutical company advertisements bombard us with solutions --or pills-- for that problem. As far as I know, there is no product to change the habits of the sexually incontinent. Possibly "continent" in the sense of sexual restraint has disappeared from the modern lexicon. I'll have to look!

Why do so many of us swoon over Spock, and scorn Kirk?

Kirk was supposed to be the hero. He was attractive in a short, brown-haired, pudgy/muscular sort of way. He had pecs and his tight top showed them. He scored with a different girl every week. He was impulsive, occasionally outspoken (rude), and he had tantrums. And, he got himself into trouble. He was like the sexually experienced, promiscuous, "rake" type hero that is so popular in romantic fiction.


Mr. Spock was more the traditional Regency romance hero.

He did not sleep around. He was almost invariably polite. He was formal.
I cannot recall him swearing. I cannot imagine him using any of the short, sexually colloquial terms that are a pre-requisite a book to qualify as "erotic romance". His wit was dry, and you had to pay attention to "get" it. Often he expressed devastating criticism just by raising one eyebrow. Jim's ways bewildered him. He was tall, dark, good looking, clean, well groomed. He was in control.

And he did that neat thing with his fingers. (But that's another story entirely.)

Mr. Spock --as a character, I don't mean I have the hots for Leonard Nimoy, bless him-- is the sort of hero that I'd like to write (and have my own happy ever after with!)

I see Rhett as potentially Spock-like.

(Rhett is in Forced Mate, also in Insufficient Mating Material. Get a glimpse of him in the "Insult and Injury" excerpt. Now he's getting his own story.)

The great dilemma is, would alien romance readers today want to buy --in effect-- a traditional Regency romance in outer space? Was the Star Trek movie where Mr. Spock got married the omega and alpha of the genre, or is there room on bookshelves for more sexually continent heroes?


(Games of Command is in my TBR stack.)

Rowena Cherry
alien romance

Twist

Here's the cover to my alien vampire book. Which is really a time travel. It's for a new line by Dorchester Publishing called Shomi and with more of an urban fantasy edge. Thing Underworld, Blade Runner, along that line. All the covers are Manga inspired.

My book will be released in Feb 08. But the first in the line, Wired by Liz Maverick will be out in July, followed by Marianne Mancusi's Moongazer

We're real excited about the line so if you see Wired on the shevles be sure to give it a try. Liz writes awesome action and is an award winning author with her Crimson City series. Moongazer, which I've read, features an alternate universe and you never know which one is real until the very end.

I'm off for a week of writing and relaxation at the beach!

Superior Species

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