What a blast! I do have to say that I enjoyed every second of it. I did, despite my nerves. They say that when you are "on the spot" you never say what you mean to say, or you always think of something better that you could have said after the event.
So true!
I consider myself a bit of a seasoned talk show host myself, but only on Podcast radio (www.internetvoicesradio.com) and there is a vast difference between being the
host and in control, and being the guest.
I'd planned to tell the gracious host, Baron Ron Herron, what Survivorman Les Stroud told me about using rabbit guts as wilderness condoms.
With hindsight, maybe that would not have been such a good idea. Maybe it was just as well I didn't get to it. People in California would have been having their breakfasts.
(For those who don't know, Survivorman, Les Stroud, was my survival consultant for INSUFFICIENT MATING MATERIAL, and he gave me the cover quote.)
I gather that Baron's show airs in Pebble Beach, among other places, and also in Queensland, so I'd hoped to talk about the Pebble Beach concours d'elegance where my husband has been one of the honorary judges for eleven out of the last twelve years. The Monterey aquarium is one of my favorite haunts when we visit.
I'd have liked to mention some of my bookseller friends in Queensland... Rosemary's Romance Books, the Intrigue Bookstore, Margaret Bell, and more. Ah, well!
Anyway, I did have a good time. (I wish I could have cracked a joke, though!)
SEQUEL TO A SPOOF
HOW do you write a sequel to a spoof?
This was the first challenge I faced when FORCED MATE was a success, readers –and my editor—wanted to know when the next book would be ready.
In FORCED MATE, I lovingly took every stock Romance situation and had fun with it.
Hoping for swift sexual success with his human abductee, the alien hunk bases his seduction strategy on Romance novels and the early, less sensitive James Bond movies.
To his astonishment and annoyance, the heroine doesn’t follow the script.
INSUFFICIENT MATING MATERIAL couldn’t be a spoof, but it had to have plenty of humor, lots of sexual tension, a heroine who doesn’t follow the script, a gorgeous, powerful, competent but flawed hero, political chicanery, intrigue, and a dastardly assassination attempt.
I started thinking along the lines of THE ADMIRABLE CRICHTON meets THE TAMING OF THE SHREW with a touch of FACE OFF, and some MISS MARPLE in outer space.
Or –and I say this with Les Stroud’s permission—SURVIVORMAN WITH SEX.
INSUFFICIENT MATING MATERIAL begins with a shotgun Royal wedding. The hero’s nemesis decides that the hero must be married to a political “liability wife” … the most scandalous, most airheaded, fashionista princess available.
Only, the Princess takes one look at the chap being frogmarched up the aisle to mate with her, and she knocks him to the ground and storms out.
So, the all-powerful Nemesis maroons the hero and heroine on a desert island like a pair of exotic animals in a zoo breeding program, and waits for nature to take its course.
From the moment Djetth and Princess Marsh crash land in the sea off their island home, (getting wet) they have to fend for themselves, make a bed and a shelter, find water, build a fire, dig a latrine, hunt for and gather and prepare food, deal with that monthly challenge… clean their teeth and other parts.
There’s a huge political secret that a very powerful member of the royal family is trying to cover up. He’ll stop at nothing to kill the princess and her rejected lover… but who is he? Is it the hero or the heroine who is his target? And what is this dire secret?
...
Rowena Cherrry
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