Building an Alien – KC Burn

Neither of the heroes in Spice ‘n’ Solace are aliens.  But the aliens are the reason Jathan and Kaz meet, and they play a big enough role that I needed to know several things about them, including their appearance.

First challenge: I decided early on that I might want one of these aliens to have their own romantic story, potentially as a human’s lover.  Unless you’re Fred Kwan (Tony Shalhoub’s character) in Galaxy Quest, that generally means the aliens need to be humanoid.  I’ve seen centaur erotica… so presumably a quadruped might be a possibility, but a bipedal species is more likely to have a universal appeal – here on Earth, anyway :)  Great.  One thing decided — my alien walks on two feet.

I love dinosaurs.  I took a couple of paleontology courses in university, so I thought perhaps dinosaurs might be a decent source of inspiration for my aliens.  So I went back to Wikipedia.

I started typing a few of the names I remembered from my courses: saurischia, theropods, hadrosaurs, ankylosaurs… and in the description of the ankylosaurs I had the inspirational trigger I needed.  I don’t actually come out and say it in the book, but the humans called the alien race Ankylos because they vaguely resembled ankylosaurs.

But… I bet most humans wouldn’t be willing to cuddle up with an alien who has skin that’s like body armor and protruding bony spikes, never mind do the dirty with!  And since I write erotic romance, somebody better be lusting after someone else!

Stay tuned… alien nookie is up next.  And don’t forget – commenting will enter you in the draw to win a copy of Spice ‘n’ Solace!