The swings and roundabouts of a lion's sex life

It's been a weekend of Must-See TV for me.

My favorite scene, perhaps of all the Harry Potter movies so far,
is the demonstration duel in Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets
where Gilderoy is so busy posing that he gets zapped by Severus Snape.

Why do I like that scene?
I find it immensely gratifying when a poser gets their come-uppance!
Don't we all?

One of the most enduring themes in literature is hubris:
the dramatic downfall of someone who gets too big for their boots.

If you can't zap someone obnoxious, or watch them being zapped,
it's fun to imagine telling them they are about to be zapped.

"Your High-and-Mightiness, you are in deep shit!" one of my characters
says with great glee --and lives-- in my next survival romance,
Insufficient Mating Material. In real life, most of us wouldn't dare
say that sort of thing to a boss, or to a world leader....
hence the cathartic charm of reading, or watching TV and movies.

Another program that stands out in my mind is Nigel Marvin's
documentary about the swings and roundabouts of a lion's sex life.

Actually that is my very loose, personal interpretation of what I liked
best about his high minded and scientific program.

The up-side of being a lion with a big, dark mane is that the lionesses like you
(and you have fewer parasites).

The down-side is that you have a lower sperm count.

I haven't figured out how I can work that quirk of nature into one of my
alien djinn romances, but --trust me-- I probably will.

I wish you all an interesting week.

Rowena

Marooned on an alien planet with the ultimate fashionista who won't take off her wet clothes to save her life...

Survival Romance

I love a challenge. I won't say that I invariably take a dare,
but if someone tells me something can't be done...
I like to prove them wrong.

The impossible equation in Isaac Asimov's THE GODS THEMSELVES
was one of the premises that made that book so very
memorable for me.

Anyway, one beautiful spring Saturday in 2004,
I was sitting at a booksigning beside Kathleen Nance.
The booksigning was at a Library, and almost no members of
the public came. So Kathleen and I started talking about writing
and our then-current projects.

I was having trouble deciding whether my alien couple ought to
be marooned on Earth (for the fun of having an alien heroine
experience Earth) or on a planet in outer space that had been
mentioned in FORCED MATE.

Kathleen cautioned me how very hard it was to write about a
couple who were stranded on a desert/deserted/even jungle island.
This was before LOST (which I never did get around to seeing.)

That was a challenge. If it weren't a cliche--not to mention a gender switch--
I'd say it was a red flag to a bull.

Once I started research on Tracking, Wilderness survival, extreme camping
etc, I found plenty of physical and emotional challenges to keep my
hero and heroine busy, interesting, and at each others' throats.

(Not quite literally. My aliens aren't alien vampires.)

Best wishes,
Rowena

:-)

Rowena Cherry
author of alien djinn romances
chess themed romances

Now... a survival themed romance
INSUFFICIENT MATING MATERIAL!