Blog Party 5 second guest

Welcome to my second guest for today - Julie Cohen!
Julie has generously offered a copy of The Honey Trap as a prize as well as giving us this exclusive sneak peek at her upcoming May release - Girl From Mars. So any comments for Julie's post will be eligible for the draw to win a copy of The Honey Trap. Don't forget to vote too Dogs V Cats (Dogs were winning by a nose last time I checked) which could win you a copy of Animal Instincts!


'I, Philomena Desdemona Brown, do solemnly swear to forsake all romantic relationships. There. Do I really have to repeat it in Klingon?'


It's not like the vow, made by Fil and her two nerdy best male friends so they'd always stick together, was a big deal at the time. Frankly, Fil wouldn't know romance if it hit her in the face anyway. Her one true love is her job as the artist for the famous comic Girl from Mars. Just like the comic's alien heroine, Fil's never had or needed a love interest,just her best friends.


Until one of her friends breaks the vow and falls in love, bringing her smack back down to earth. Could it be that romance is in the stars for Fil after all?

EXCERPT

(Fil Brown, the artist for long-running British comic book Girl from Mars, has just received a script for the next episode, written by a mystery person. She's outraged by it and has brought it to her editor, Anthony, to wave in his face whilst complaining at the top of her lungs.)
The whole script is about Girl from Mars trying to get home, I said.
‘And?’
‘Girl from Mars can’t get home. There’s her addiction to water, and the gravity difference, and that whole negative energy thing that means that if she re-enters the Martian atmosphere she’ll…’
‘So?’
‘So it’s a pointless storyline.’
Anthony raised his eyebrows. ‘More pointless than saving a bunch of council homes from being incinerated by a fleet of bulletproof robots when the bloody government’s going to go and knock them down next week anyway?’
This was a reference to Girl from Mars and the March of Progress, a Thatcher-era storyline that was a particular favourite with fans.
‘Every regular reader will know this is ground that’s been covered before.’
‘Brown, we’ve been running for over fifty years. There’s very little ground we haven’t covered before.’
‘There’s one ground we’ve never touched, which brings me to my final point.’ I took a deep breath and paused, the better to get across the enormity of what I was about to say.
‘Chief, this script is a romance.’
Anthony regarded me over his fingers. His face did not register shock, surprise, or disgust.
‘You say that as if it’s a bad thing, Brown.’
‘It… Chief… I Clearly I wasn’t getting through. I turned to page six and stabbed at a paragraph with my finger. ‘Look here, when Girl goes to see the scientist Jackson Silver there’s a two-page description of what he looks like and the dimple on his chin, he’s basically Cary Grant as far as I can tell. And then’ I turned pages furiously, ‘on page nine they accidentally brush shoulders and end up looking deep into each others eyes! And then…’ more page flipping, ‘Look at this! It’s banter! And here, while they’re supposed to be sneaking through the network of underground caves, Girl from Mars actually grabs his hand and keeps holding it!’
‘Take a couple of deep breaths, Brown, you’re hyperventilating.’
‘And this is the start of a six-part series, it says at the beginning! What will she do next? Kiss him? Go steady? Get married?
‘Even space aliens need a little tenderness.’
© Julie Cohen May 2009

Available now for preorder at Amazon.com