CLOSE ENCOUNTERS is out! And we are totally stoked (as the guy who used to dress up as a skateboard dude in high school used to say).

Here's a little bit of history.

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS started in a very simple way. We (that is, Kathy and Julie) used to write books together in high school, about us having sex with rock stars, and a couple years ago we were hanging out before an RWA conference talking about writing romance and one of us (it was probably Kathy, she has all the good ideas) said, "Let's write another book together." We came up with this great Greek alpha hero and we started plotting out a really good, dramatic falling-for-the-boss-and-getting-blackmailed Harlequin Presents type story.

The thing was, as we started writing it (we were sitting on deck chairs by a pool, which is where all good novels get written, darling), we quickly realised that when we wrote together, we were totally incapable of writing anything serious. Like the alpha hero suddenly got a brother who was a cross-dresser or something and we could never resist the chance to describe the hero smouldering all over the place.

It was going nowhere.

At the conference, we sat around a lot drinking (as you do) and we had a conversation something like this.

"This book isn't working. We're too silly to write Harlequin Presents."

"I know. We need to change it, somehow."

"But how?"

(Simultaneous drinks of alcohol, followed by simultaneous zings of genius.)

"SPACE ALIENS!"

Of course, after that, everything fell quickly into place. Our Greek alpha hero became a Vegas lounge singer hero (still Greek and sort of alpha), and we added a Southern mechanic hero (Alabaman and sort of beta) to balance him out. We made up some porn-hungry aliens, because you know that aliens would just love porn if they got hold of it. And holograms. And sex.

Lots and lots of sex.

Sometimes the best ideas really are the simplest.