**This blog contains spoilers.**
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Let me begin by saying, I read my reviews. Of course, I do. As an indie author, I must keep track of what is happening. This is merely good business. If a book isn’t downloading or if I have uploaded the wrong copy, I must read the reviews to know. As for negative reviews about the story, etc., I have quite a thick skin. I have strong opinions, so I am not surprised that people have very strong opinions about my books too. But that’s not why I’m writing this today. I am writing to explain “Abducted to the Alien Pirate” and how it came to be in the Renascence Alliance Series.
To give a little background, I am a jump-in and see what happens kind of person. I am also a practice-and-you-will-get-better kind of person. I am not someone who could write a whole series for over a year and make it perfect before publishing. As a result, I took a few wrong turns in the Renascence Alliance Series, and “Abducted by the Alien Pirate” was one of those learning experiences. Had I known a developmental editor at the time, I don’t think I would have written a novella for Kol and Jesse’s story. Because it is so short, and possibly because of the book’s title, it could give the wrong expectation, leaving some readers confused and disappointed.
I wrote “Abducted to the Alien Pirate” for two reasons, first, I needed to get Jesse to the Empire, and second, I wanted to convey in that story is the question that was then looming in the series, “Is the Alliance Empire a better place for human women than Earth?” I wanted to ask this question because of the way human women still don’t have complete equality even in the 27th century, and we know this from Drusilla having to become a part of an alien society for anyone to care about what had happened to her. (I have written blogs about Dru’s consent, guilt, and why she felt that, but I always erase them because I think it’s still a raw subject for so many people. As women, most of us know what happened, why she made the decision she did, and can understand Dru’s reaction and the help she needed but unfortunately, that never came from Earth. I don’t think I am exaggerating that many women never get the help of aftercare they need when something sexually alarming has happened to them).
My point being in “Abducted by the Alien Pirate,” Kol sees Jesse’s life as better for having taken her from Earth to live with her sister. No question. For Jesse, this is much more difficult. However, by the time she reaches the Alliance, she doesn’t want to be with her sister, but she sees that maybe there’s a better life out there. Also, she had tried and failed to seduce Kol because he is an honorable man, not because she sexually wanted him at that time, but because she thought she might be able to gain control of the ship through manipulation. Kol’s reaction to her was something that Jesse has never witnessed before from men on Earth/in the Exterior. Remember, she questions her mother’s relationship with her father, and it doesn’t sound like her friend, Becky, with whom Jesse is introduced in the book, is in the best relationship either. This is what triggers Jesse to like Kol. He controls himself and is generally a nice man. I thought I even clarified this when Jesse tries to get some random human men to help her escape, thinking they would help her because they are human. However, they only want to sell her for sex.
I know not all men, not all human men, are bad. Of course, I do. However, when people say to me when leaving somewhere alone, “Be safe.” They are not saying, “Be safe from the zombies or vampires.”
My underlying meaning with the “Renascence Alliance Series” is to question whether a society run by women would be better.
I have tried to imagine what women would focus on. Family, women’s health over men (I would love to have a tab take care of my period without cramps or fuss), easy pregnancies and births, and I would like to see it be considered a serious societal injustice if women didn’t orgasm first in sex and how love would be universally understood in society. Scientifically we know that the feeling of love is as Shakespeare wrote:
“Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do; and the reason why they are not so punish’d and cured is that the lunacy is so. ordinary that the whippers are in love too.”
As You Like It
At the end of “Abducted by the Alien Pirate,” I tried to discuss the concept of love (not clever for a romance novel) because I wondered whether a society would run by women be more matter-of-fact about the feelings of love. That is why they tell Jesse her feelings of love for Kol will pass, especially since she has not known him for very long and because of the situation in which they met.
For all these reasons, “Abducted by the Alien Pirate” stumbles a little and I apologize. I am slowly acquiring good editors who see my vision to combine good science fiction that specifically questions our society with good romantic open-door scenes.
I am grateful to all my readers for staying with me through these learning curves and voicing their opinions. Thank you.
