Talk about your bad timing. Now he decided he wanted to become monogamous, when he was a sex slave in an alien pornship. This was so like him. He always did everything ass-backwards.

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS is an erotic science fiction romantic comedy about what happens when aliens with weird notions about human sexuality—and no clue about human love—abduct four Earthlings to help them build an intergalactic porn empire.

Odilia is a nice planet. The sky is purple, the grass is yellow, the property prices aren’t that bad. But reproduction is painful, solitary, and asexual. Which is why the Odilians find the recently discovered “X-rated” disks from Earth so fascinating. And why the money-making scheme they’re hatching is so brilliant.

The plan is simple: abduct four Earthlings and juice them up on a heady pheromone cocktail. Then plop them in a variety of titillating holographic scenarios and market the results as reality entertainment—for vast profits.

The four chosen humans are strangers to each other, but not to life’s disappointments. Leandros, a lounge singer who’s never committed to anything longer than an Elvis medley. Eve, a interior designer who’s living a life much more beige than bold. Beau, a laid-back car mechanic who wants more from life than oil changes. And Cassandra, an innocent debutante who’s learned most of her sexual know-how from self-help books.

As unwilling—okay, sort of willing—stars of the Odilians’ budding intergalactic porn empire, the four of them consider their options. Relax and enjoy the ride? Try to escape?

How about fall in love?

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS by B.H. Dark, Samhain Publishing
Buy the ebook here!
Coming in print August 2009!

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Some excerpts from our reviews for CLOSE ENCOUNTERS:

"At times hilariously laugh-out-loud funny, at others extremely moving" —(Reader review, eHarlequin.com)

"Close Encounters is an enjoyable, engrossing and erotic romantic that will make you laugh out loud! B.H Dark’s debut novel is wacky, kooky, sizzling, but also funny, tender and moving." —sensual.ecataromance.com

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.