Touched by an Alien

Doctor 10 & Donna Nobles

I've been gone over a week -- the right kidney decided that it was time to pass a stone. Obviously not drinking water this spring caught up with me ... You'd have thought I would've learned that lesson Summer 2010 since the same thing put me in the hospital. But no ... it seems that I, like my students, am a slow learner. Let's not make it three times! Since I knew what was happening, I didn't go to the doctor this time -- but, to add insult to injury, some nasty bronchial bug laid me low. For about 60 hours, I lay comatose in the bed while my body healed. I only got up long enough to watch "The Doctor's Wife" on Saturday night. Nail Gaiman wrote a wonderfully witty script with a good mix of chills and thrills. The interplay between the anthromorphized TARDIS ("Sexy") and her thief showed why this show tends to have writing that is head and shoulders above most American scripts. Favorite lines: "You're always bringing in strays!" (Now we know what the TARDIS thinks of the companions!) When the Doctor says, "You're unreliable. You never take me where I want to go," the TARDIS replies, "No, I take you where you need to go." It's a show to introduce a first-time viewer to the WHOniverse, but fans will enjoy the acting and story.





Gina Koch has her own version of aliens with two hearts (like the Doctor) in her ALIEN series. I picked up the most recent, Alien in the Family, which was the third book centered around a wedding ... there was so much comedy & conflict in the blurb on the back of the book that I was intrigued -- but I decided that I'd better put the 2011 novel down and locate the first in the series, Touched by an Alien.


Katherine "Kitty" Katt must have reconciled herself to the absurb name her parents gave her. She's an ordinary woman in heels ... who springs to the rescue when a man morphs into a winged monster and goes on a killing rampage. The clean-up crew in sunglasses and black Armani suits may look human -- though impressively on the GQ model side of human -- but they are really alien males from Alpha Centauri. Jeff Martini is their local squad leader, and he and Kitty hit it off immediately. Pheremones fly as she comes to grip with how hot the men are ... and how immensely dangerous the situation has become.


Good thing Kitty's an only child with few close friends, except for her conspiracy nut friend Chuck who is mentioned but never seen, and no pets ... The nastiest terrorist on the planet (no, it's not a real terrorist) has combined with the nastiest monster parasite in the known universe; both want to either kill or convert Kitty to the cause. She's not buying it ... besides, she wants to get her hands on Jeff's hot bod and discover the joys of alien sex.


Koch has a deft touch for comedy, and the sexual high jinks shouldn't turn off most readers. I checked her bio: yes, she's a member of RWA (Romance Writers of America), a bonus from a marketing point of view. Although I found the novel in the SF section, I would not be surprised if some intrepid soul moves it over to Romance. By the rules of romane writing, technically this novel is NOT a romance ... The defeat of the main villain happens after the couple resolve their differences; also, defeating the villain might be a hair more important than "the relationship." Both items break the rules of romance writing, which reverses the importance of those events. Still, the book was a fun read -- if a covert one at school -- and I bought the second in the series yesterday at Borders.


Check out Touched by an Alien for a fun summer read. See ya under the cabana ... and ignore the screams from the room next door. It's just Jeff teaching Kitty new ways to be touched by an alien.