[close] My "god-Princes of Tigron" series began with Forced Mate a spoof of historical abduction romances (nothing gets ripped) where the abductor is a morally questionable alien.

He has Machiavellian tendencies, and after he finds his perfect "mate" (lots of chess terminology), he decides that the best way to neuter his most dangerous political rivals who are now his in-laws is to entrap them into politically disastrous marriages to liability wives (who happen to be his own scandalous sisters).

Insufficient Mating Material is the first such exercise. A rival chooses a new face and identity and a "fate worse than death" over execution. A shotgun royal wedding is arranged, but to everyone's astonishment, the bride-to-be balks at the sight of her groom and hurls him, telekinetically without touching him, onto his scrawny rump.

The principal villain decides to shoot the unhappy couple down and maroon them on an alien subtropical island until the bride learns to appreciate her destiny. Another villain fears that the bride's newly revealed telekinetic powers might bring to light an old crime he thought he'd gotten away with.

It's "Survivorman" with sex, "magic" and murder.

Knight's Fork is funnier, snarkier and less sexy. It's Helen of Troy in deep space, where all the Helen wanted from the Paris character was a sperm donation, but the intergalactic equivalent of the paparazzi caught her leaving his bedroom in tears and all the world leaders (including her husband and her brother) assumed the worst.

All my titles are chess puns. "Forced Mate" is from Pandolfini's term for a race between the two Kings to make a pawn his Queen. In chess terminology "Insufficient Mating Material" is when the players realize that no matter how badly or well they play, no one will checkmate the other. A "Knight's fork" is when two or more pieces are threatened simultaneously, and only one can be saved.


Rowena Cherry
SPACE SNARK™

Heroines get more hero than they bargain for....

Rowena Cherry has played chess with a Grand Master and former President of the World Chess Federation (hence the chess-pun titles of her alien romances).

She has spent folly filled summers in a Spanish castle; dined on a sheikh's yacht with royalty; been seranaded (on a birthday) by a rockstar and an English nobleman; ridden in a pace car at the 1993 Indy 500; received the gold level of the Duke of Edinburgh's Award; and generally lived on the edge of the sort of life that inspires her romances about high-living alien gods.

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