When What You Thought ... Isn't

So a few years ago Mr. Nina and I left our home state of Maine and bumped from Rhode Island to Vermont and home again. This meant while we lived in other states we had to find product replacements for everything we were used to finding at the grocery store. I walked up and down the aisles of new stores looking for some of the “standards” I kept in my cupboards. One of those basics was carbonated soda water. Not quite tonic, but similar. I drink it all day instead of tap water. In Maine, we bought the store brand. Well, obviously I wasn’t going to find that in Rhode Island or Vermont, so we found something that looked like it would fit the bill. Same description, reasonably priced and 0 calories. Perfect.

 

Yeah, well, I poured my first tall glass and took a long swallow … and promptly spit it out. It was like drinking Kool-Aid with bubbles. GAH! A mouth full of sugar. When I looked at the ingredients I discovered it contained aspartame. Blech! I don’t like aspartame. I find it overly sweet. I ended up dumping 3 bottles of the stuff because I just couldn’t drink it. I was so bummed. I really felt that the product should have been more clearly labeled. 

What’s this got to with reading books? A lot actually.

A while back I bought a book that sounded very intriguing. The title was about Vikings. The cover showed a Viking. The back cover blurb talked about Vikings, ships and characters from different worlds falling in love. Yay! I was going to read a romantic historical Viking story. I settled in and within the first chapter was introduced to a “space bridge”. Wai … what? The “ship” turned out to be a space ship. The “other world” turned out to be outer space. Now don’t get me wrong, I LOVE science fiction stories. I read them all the time. Heck, my latest book is a sexy sci fi romance—but I don’t lead the reader to believe they are picking up a light-hearted romantic comedy. The cover of A TOUCH OF LILLY shows a moon, a very bright star and two guys, one of them with red skin … red skin. There is nothing that could lead a buyer to think they were picking up anything but a story set in, if not space, at least a futuristic world of some type. Even if you never read the back cover blurb, you’re not going to think you’ve picked up a steampunk novel or an historical. 

I felt totally cheated. The thing is, it might have been a good book. I might even have enjoyed it, but I didn’t get past the second chapter before I set the book aside in disgust. It’s not what I plunked my money down for. I was looking for an historical romance and what I got instead was an eclectic mix of sci fi and historical which is a totally unique story and a great story idea by this author, but not so much for the unsuspecting reader. 

So how do you see it? Am I way off-base on this? Have you ever picked up a book you felt fell in one genre and actually turned out to be another? Did you feel like you got the old bait and switch? I’m just wondering if I’m feeling a little overly sensitive about this. 

 

My latest release is a sexy sci fi suspense. It's ON SALE for $.99. I hope you check it out.

Blurb:

Ex-Chicago detective LILLY D’ANGELO has a secret she doesn’t share with anyone. A master of the one night stand, she’s given up ever finding a soul mate and thrown herself head first into her career. That is, until she captures the wrong alien. Kidnapped and sold into the sex slave trade, she’s shipped into deep space. Barely escaping with her life, Lilly now travels the galaxy working as a bounty hunter using her secret talents to bring down criminals and seeking revenge on the one male who ruined her life.   

Agent DALLAS SAWYER works for deep space’s version of the FBI. After a disastrous mission that left several of his team members murdered, a president executed, and Dallas near death, he’s determined to take down the assassin targeting government officials. When a sexy human female gets between him and his goal, Dallas and his alien partner find themselves on the receiving end of a passionate night they won’t soon forget and a proposition that may very well blow up in their faces.  

Because in deep space … true love can happen with just a touch. 

Excerpt:

Dallas threaded his way through the crowded sidewalk back to the alley. He’d learned over the past month the residents of this territory on Garalon Five were night owls. Not that they had a choice. Things wouldn’t slow down until the first two moons were well below the horizon and the third just beginning to rise. The lack of daylight had thrown him when he’d first arrived. Though the Nebulae Galaxy--a term that grated as it was technically a solar system--had a major star at its center, the weak light didn’t reach a good portion of the planets. Heat on the inhabitable planets came from deep within their crusts. 

 

He didn't give a shit about the specifics, just that the interminable darkness was fraying the ends of his taut nerves. Another two days, a week tops, and this mission would be finished and Dallas could return to Earth for a much needed vacation with some human companionship.

 

Working for the government was a lonely business. Lonelier still when he was out in deep space away from his own species. Five years ago, when Dallas had graduated from Quantico, he'd envisioned this life, traveling the stars in search of bad guys and adventures. But working for QAL wasn't all the pamphlets had promised. It seemed even in space, shit happened, people died and no matter how far he ran, he couldn't outrun a broken heart.

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The Name Game

What's in a name? Everything I say. I can't start on a book until I've figured out the perfect name for my characters. Never mind that I know very little about the story or about where I'm going save for a very vague map of where I'll end up.

But I have to have names.

I've been getting some feedback about my newest release, a science fiction erotic romance, A TOUCH OF LILLY. People love the story. What they're not enjoying are the odd descriptions of aliens and names of planets and such. Interesting. It never occurred to me that I could drive readers away from a story by coming up with new alien names.

Kind of silly that I didn't think of that since I'm one of those readers that actually "says" every word I read in my head. I have a hard time enjoying a story if I can't decipher the pronunciation of every character. But here's the thing I think that makes writing different. I created the characters/places/aliens. They're logical in my head. Crazy I know. But there it is.

Here are some of the aliens and names in "A Touch of Lilly" ...

Xerick
Ka'al
Braugtot
Drikspa
Znedu
Ickbata
Thaegan
ba'alkin dagger
Pteran Omega
Beta Mrenn
Krystallos Three

That's most of them. I'm sure there are more. What do you think? Difficult to pronounce? Would they drive you crazy as you stumble through them in a romance?

What's really interesting is that I pride myself on finding new and inventive words when I'm creating a new world. My intention is not to create a stumbling block--just the opposite in fact. I just want to create a something new and different that the readers can fall in love with. But now I'm wondering if I've gone a bit far. What do you think? Have you put down a book because you couldn't get past the names the author chose?

And since we're chatting about my newest release, how about I throw in the blurb and a short excerpt. (Oh, you soooo knew I was going there didn't you? *vbg*)

Ex-Chicago detective LILLY D’ANGELO has a secret she doesn’t share with anyone. A master of the one night stand, she’s given up ever finding a soul mate and thrown herself head first into her career. That is, until she captures the wrong alien. Kidnapped and sold into the sex slave trade, she’s shipped into deep space. Barely escaping with her life, Lilly now travels the galaxy working as a bounty hunter using her secret talents to bring down criminals and seeking revenge on the one male who ruined her life. 

Agent DALLAS SAWYER works for deep space’s version of the FBI. After a disastrous mission that left several of his team members murdered, a president executed, and Dallas near death, he’s determined to take down the assassin targeting government officials. When a sexy human female gets between him and his goal, Dallas and his alien partner find themselves on the receiving end of a passionate night they won’t soon forget and a proposition that may very well blow up in their faces.

Because in deep space … true love can happen with just a touch.

EXCERPT
Lilly D’Angelo wasn’t expecting a trip down memory lane when she sauntered into the dingy tavern, but the acrid stench and gruff hum of the Friday night crowd carried her back to one of the seedier establishments on Chicago’s south side nonetheless. Except for the clientele, the owner had managed to replicate nearly every detail right down to the blue haze of cigarette smoke and the soft crooning of a jazz band on the corner stage.

Pushing the sour thoughts of home from her mind and focusing on the job at hand, Lilly morphed her features into her sexiest vixen pout and moved gracefully toward the long bar on the other side of the room. Her voluptuous breasts, spilling temptingly from her silk blouse, led the way. The eyes watching her leather-clad ass sashay around the battered tables were clustered on various life forms—none of them human.

Yeah, definitely not Chicago. Hell, this wasn’t even Earth for goodness sake.

“Regent’s ale, straight up, hold the brenic.” Lilly ordered the local brew in English, hoping the two-headed alien behind the bar had a cochlear translator in one of those eight holes that passed for ears. Satisfied when one head nodded, she settled on a stool, making sure her fur jacket and blouse parted just enough to offer a seductive view of her cleavage. She shifted, allowing the black leather skirt to ride up her thigh and expose a little more silky real estate. The reflection she saw in the mirror behind the liquor bottles was every inch a working woman on the prowl. She wasn’t trying to attract anyone in particular, just hoping to mislead the locals into thinking she was some female making a living with her body—which was true—just not as the human streetwalker she impersonated.

Undercover work was what kept food in her belly and a roof over her head. But it was the cold-hearted need for revenge that had driven her to flaunt her feminine wares on distant planets. Walking among low-life criminals—most of them of the non-human variety—was a small price to pay for the opportunity to avenge the calamity that had become her life.

Lilly wasn’t a xenophobic bigot by any stretch of the imagination. It’s just that six months in deep space, working as a bounty hunter in these kinds of joints, wasn’t really long enough to become accustomed to the scenery. The Nebulae Galaxy’s spaceports overflowed with aliens of all sizes and genders; from two-headed Xericks, like the bartender, to the gangly-limbed Znedus and oversized Ka’al with their mahogany skin and flat noses. The twelve planets of this galaxy had become a melting pot of sorts for all types of aliens.

Only that wasn’t really a fair term here in deep space.

Alien inferred the life forms didn’t belong. On the contrary, it was humans who were invading their territory. The treaties of 2253, signed well over forty years ago, had guaranteed the safe travel of humans in deep space. After the snafu of ‘34, which saw the first major battle over territories since light travel had been discovered, humans had insisted on protection for their species. They’d formed some bullshit board of security, guaranteeing humans could run roughshod over the universe like everywhere else. Though they were technically called Q’orstan Aerlheit Lunivarsium, most people referred to them as QAL. Lilly nicknamed them the alphabet mafia. At one point in time, she’d actually considered working for them. Then they’d discovered who she was—or more specifically what she was—and she’d had to detour from that career path. It didn’t matter. They could all go take a flying leap into the lava pits of Beta Mrenn for all she cared. Just because they didn’t appreciate her gift, didn’t mean Lilly couldn’t use her talents to bring down the bad guys.

Of course in deep space, bad was a relative term.

There was the kind of bad that got a person lost on the polar ice caps of Dallas Eight without a backup plan. Or the bad that forced someone to stow away in the engine room of a Drikspa alien tanker bound for unknown destinations, praying not to get caught. Or the bad that got a human female imprisoned as a sex slave on the mining colonies of Krystallos Three, hidden from even the long arm of the QAL. Lilly shivered at that one. Even her talents wouldn’t free her from that kind of torture.

She was just happy to be here on Garalon Five where bad meant nothing more than crossing paths with every brand of space pirate, ex-con or fugitive looking for a new start. As one of the more recent colonies in the Nebulae Galaxy, the G-5 government turned their collective back on past offenses on other planets and allowed anyone to start a legitimate business. It’s what had actually brought her here to the dark planet.

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