GINI KOCH: Author Interview and Giveaway

Gini Koch writes the fast, fresh and funny Alien/Katherine “Kitty” Katt series for DAW Books, the Necropolis Enforcement Files series, and the Martian Alliance Chronicles series. Alien in the House, Book 7 in her long-running Alien series, won the RT Book Reviews Reviewer’s Choice Award as the Best Futuristic Romance of 2013. As G.J. Koch she writes the Alexander Outland series and she’s made the most of multiple personality disorder by writing under a variety of other pen names as well, including Anita Ensal, Jemma Chase, A.E. Stanton, and J.C. Koch.
Currently, Gini has stories featured in the Unidentified Funny Objects 3, Clockwork Universe: Steampunk vs. Aliens, and Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets anthologies, and, writing as J.C. Koch, in Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters, The Madness of Cthulhu, Vol. 1, and A Darke Phantastique anthologies. She will also have a story in the first book in an X-Files anthology series coming out in 2015. Gini can be reached via her website: http://www.ginikoch.com

UNIVERSAL ALIEN, releases today. Make sure to click on the link under the interview and enter the Rafflecopter giveaway!

She took out a few moments in her busy schedule to tell us all about it.

RK: For those new to the ALIEN COLLECTIVE, how would you describe the series?
It’s the most fun you can have with your clothes on and a deal at twice the price! (Hey, you can’t blame a girl for trying.) It’s soft science fiction with a lot of humor, romance, and action.

The series follows Kitty, who discovers that the Roswell rumors are true, but with a twist – the aliens are here to help us and, as a side benefit, they’re all gorgeous. Kitty gets involved with Centaurion Division, and with the aliens and humans working there, one in particular. As the series goes on, Kitty gets more and more involved in the fight to protect the Earth from all the threats, both internal and very external, trying to destroy it. She and her alien hottie, Jeff Martini, end up more and more at the center of the many conspiracies and plots running at any one time, while still maintaining that the best relationship is one where the romance and sexy times continue, regardless of what bad guys and life throw in their way.

RK: What can we look forward to in the latest installment?

Double the Kitty and double the fun, action, snark, romance, and intrigue. Book 10/UNIVERSAL ALIEN deals with something that’s been building in the series since it was first introduced in Book 3/ALIEN IN THE FAMILY – the fact that we live in not a universe but a multiverse. Kitty gets to see how her life might have turned out if she’d made a different choice years earlier while having to save the day in not just one but two universes.

RK: You have tough heroines and lots of adventure in your stories. How do you create your heroines?

I create women I’d like to hang out with. I’m not a shrinking violet and I have a hard time writing main female characters who want to hide behind someone else when danger rears its fugly head.

Many of my heroines have tough pasts (though Kitty doesn’t – she had a totally normal upbringing, but that’s because the rest of her life is filled with Interesting Times), but they end up with the best guys because they’re smart, gutsy, brave, and willing to stand up for what’s right while protecting the weak and the innocent.

RK: Will Alexander Outland: Space Pirate be getting a sequel?

I sincerely hope so. Long story (that’s up at my website somewhere, LOL) but the original publisher for the first book sold us (all their authors and books on contract) to another publisher, and my agent was able to get agreement from both old and new publisher that we can take the rest of the series elsewhere. So, we’re waiting to see if a really good small press is interested in continuing the adventures of Nap and Crew. If not, I’ll probably self-publish the rest of the series as I have it planned. However, I’ve discovered that I work better with deadlines set by other people, and I enjoy good editing and someone else getting to worry about most of the process to get the book into readers’ hands, so I’d really rather house it with a publisher that will actually help the series do well, as opposed to one that didn’t seem clear about how distribution is supposed to work in this industry.

RK:  If aliens invade, do you have a detailed plan or will you just wing it?

While I write about friendly aliens, and I sincerely hope that what I’m writing turns out to be true, I fall more on the Stephen Hawking side of the house, which says that any aliens coming out to our boondocks solar system are coming to enslave us, eat us, kill us for our natural resources, or, as Douglas Adams posited, to blow us up to make way for a galactic superhighway. I don’t buy that the Vulcans are just hanging about waiting for us to develop FTL drives before they show up and toss us the Fingers of Friendship.

As for my plan to survive, I’m going to do that in the same way as I write – wing it until it works.

Blurb:
Being the wife of the Vice President isn’t easy. Especially when your talents lie in kicking butt and rocking out…
Jeff and Kitty Katt-Martini find out just how easy it is for the wife of the Vice President of the United States to unintentionally insult an ally. Now they have to smooth things over with the Australian Prime Minister, pronto, or risk creating an international incident the worldwide anti-alien coalitions will be able to use to force Jeff to resign and the A-Cs to leave the planet.
But before Kitty can make things worse, a cosmic congruence and a little help from some powerful beings shoves her into another world — one where she’s been married to Charles Reynolds for years and aliens don’t exist. She’s also landed in the middle of a huge conspiracy and is marked for death…but at least that’s business as usual.
Kitty’s not the only one confused, because the Kitty from that world has taken her place in this one. Now Alpha Team and the Diplomatic Corps have to make sure that no one spots that there’s been a switch, while keeping World War III from happening. And they have to do so while keeping this new Kitty in line, because she has views about what to do and how to it, and time is running out.
Can both Kittys save their respective days before it’s too late to go home to the universes they belong to? Or will one Kitty decide to keep the other’s life…forever?

 

GIVEAWAY
Gini is offering one winner the choice of one of any of the first 9 books in the Alien/Katherine “Kitty” Katt Series (TOUCHED BY AN ALIEN, ALIEN TANGO, ALIEN IN THE FAMILY, ALIEN PROLIFERATION, ALIEN DIPLOMACY, ALIEN VS. ALIEN, ALIEN IN THE HOUSE, ALIEN RESEARCH, or ALIEN COLLECTIVE), signed and personalized. Open internationally.

Follow the link to enter:

RAFFLECOPTER GIVEAWAY