This past winter, I discovered Science Fiction Romance writer Honey Phillips' alien-human holiday Romances, including her Horned Holidays Series, and became obsessed. Christmas Romances with an alien? More, please!

So when the New Year rolled around, it shouldn't surprise you that I decided to try my hand at writing a holiday SciFi Romance of my own.

I started out with the idea of Holidates with an Alien, but guess what? That series name was already taken...by Honey Phillips, among others.

I laughed so hard when I saw that. Of course, Honey would think of that series name! She's a prolific writer and has some very interesting story worlds under her belt.

Anyway, I shifted things around a bit and finally came up with another hook for the series title, Out of This World Holidates. Not because I'm planning on expanding this one book idea into a series (that's still up in the air), but because of Amazon's algorithms, which is a marketing rabbit hole I won't drag you down. (Unless you're an author, in which case drop a comment below and I'll explain my reasoning for creating a series title for a stand alone book.)

The real interest for me, however, was in the story itself. I wanted to really hit hard on the Christmas aspects, if possible, which necessarily meant (in my mind anyway) setting the story in or around a near future Earth, say 50 - 100 years from now. What would that look like? Space elevators, I thought. Asteroid mining. Colonies on Mars and several moons. An orbital dry dock for spaceships. A dating app that takes genetic, sexual, and personality compatibility in mind when making matches.

And, of course, lots and lots of aliens. You can't have a human-alien romance without an alien!

I've done some heavy worldbuilding for this story and not just with the technology. I had to populate the story world with at least one alien species, preferably more. So I created the Apollonians, a golden-skinned race of aliens who fled their solar system when their star went supernova. (They knew it was coming and had time to plan.) A fairly large contingent of Apollonians settled in Sol System, Earth's solar system, and immediately began helping humans develop and expand their spacefaring capabilities. Many work in the asteroid mining and colony building industries, like the hero, Aureon Eldenthrit, captain of a family-owned cargo ship.

Aureon's Apollonian family settled in Sol System not long after Earth finished its space elevator. That elevator is important to the story: the human heroine, Jamie Adair, is part of the security team for Terran Hub, the space elevator's station. And she is not happy when her sister secretly creates a profile for her on the Out of This World Holidates dating app and sets her up on a surprise blind date.

I eventually settled on a title, How to Date an Alien at Christmas, and am writing Jamie and Aureon's story as a spare-time project.

One thing I want to make clear is that this is not message fiction. Aureon and his family are legal refugees who worked with humans prior to and during their settlement in Sol System. But this is not a book about hot-button immigration issues. I'm not going to shove my opinions on that topic down your throat, so please rest your mind there. I want my SciFi Romances to be fun, action-packed adventures, and that's what I'm aiming for here.

While How to Date an Alien at Christmas doesn't have a set publication date, once The Alien Warlord's Fated Mate is released, I'll be pulling forward Jamie and Aureon's story as my main work-in-progress while the next Warlords of Zephyria story is being developed. The first draft is already roughly 25-30% done. I'm having a lot of fun exploring near future Earth and all the wonderful ways humans can expand into our solar system. Plus, aliens! And Grav Ball, a new sport that I'm not quite sure how to work into the story. But hey, maybe there'll be a sequel! 😉

Keep an eye out here and in my newsletter for more news on Jamie and Aureon's story.