Nessa Claugh Interview - Aliens and Monsters in Romance

Your new book, ENSNARED BY THE ALIEN MEDIC, is the third book in your Ragrim Conflict sci-fi romance series. Can it be read as a standalone?

Yes, it does require the reader to have a basic familiarity with the Mars Needs Women/Bride Program tropes, but that’s about it. Mars Needs Women is at its core, where an alien species needs women to repopulate. The Bride Program trope kind of branches off MNW in that it has an actual set up program to get human women for the aliens and they aren’t just being kidnapped.

I love alien romance stories and I have oodles of questions.

For readers, like me, new to the series – what are the basics of your Ragrim Conflict world?

I’m trying to avoid spoilers for the first two books, but humans have pretty much tanked Earth’s biosphere and climate. The weather is strong and unpredictable, food security is a thing of the past, and while humans are trying to turn things around, it’s a slow slog. Then the Ralothians came. The gold-skinned alien pirates started plucking human women off Earth, and the only thing protecting Earth from a full invasion was the fact that Ralothians are greedy. If a few clans found a source for mates for their womanless world, they weren’t going to share it with anyone else. When the Lukrimians put a stop to it, they only asked for one thing in return: access to human women. Everything is all very above board, with a bridal program, fertility testing, and programs that let Lukrimians select their human mate. Nice, right? The rest of the galaxy isn’t interested in helping Earth because we can’t be trusted. We need guardians. And Lukrim is just the right planet for the job, right? Right?

What are the aliens like? The same type of alien in each book or different?

There are different aliens in each book – CLAIMED BY THE ALIEN focuses more on the blue-skinned Lukrimians who are very humanoid just with blue skin and some harder skin patches, and involves run-in with their golden Ralothian counterparts, who are similar to the Lukrimians, but they just want humans as slaves. In WITHIN ALIEN ARMS, we learn that there are more aliens out there who are friendly to humans, and in this case it’s the Tremallin scout Dagnar, who has four arms and a lot of ideas on what to do with them. ENSNARED BY THE ALIEN MEDIC gives us a new kind of alien; Voshan doesn’t have extra arms or protective plates. He has a whole mess of tentacles on his back, and his new human friend has no idea that they serve a certain purpose on females.

How are humans generally viewed by the aliens?

Without giving too much away, generally positively. The Lukrimians think human women are the bees knees, though they strongly disagree on how humans in general have treated Earth. The rest of them are just kind of generally interested and want to see what humanity can offer on the wider galactic stage.

Is ENSNARED BY THE ALIEN MEDIC a romance involving three people?

ENSNARED is not; only the first book is an MFM romance.

Your book METEORS AND MENORAHS seems like a fun romcom & totally my kind of book. There’s a lot going on there. Of course, there’s the “different religions” and “he’s an alien” thing, but there’s also the “fake romance turned real” romance trope – which is my absolute favorite trope. What inspired you with this story? Do you have a favorite trope?

Honestly, I wanted to write an alien romance that wasn’t set in space and played a little bit with the religion I grew up in. I’m kind of partial to the aliens who look like aliens trope. I’m guilty of writing the “just make them a skin color that doesn’t exist on Earth” thing myself, but I do enjoy the really inhuman aliens like Tiffany Roberts’ vrix, or even something as basic as size difference. With METEORS I wanted to go with something that’s a little more believable, because I don’t think you’d find a lot of humans that would be fine with A) dating an alien right off the bat of finding out about them in the first place and B) being lied to for a good amount of time about your identity. I’d also seen a ton of Christmas themed alien stories, but nothing really for any other cultures/religions.

Your book FROM THE LABYRINTH is about monsters and humans dating. Having read a few books with this theme, I found that I enjoy it. Is this the only “monster dating” book you have? Do you plan to write more?

As of right now it’s my only monster dating book. I plan on writing more, and it was on my to-write list for February and then ENSNARED BY THE ALIEN kind of just grabbed me at the end of January and totally derailed my plans. In the future I’m planning on centaurs with multiple sets of equipment, tentacled mermaids (I guess I’m on a tentacle kick right now), and other less-loved monsters from mythology. I’m not on the ‘shifters are overdone’ wagon, but there are so many other options out there for monster sex.

If you could only recommend one of your books to romance readers, which one you pick? And why?

My current baby is obviously ENSNARED BY THE ALIEN MEDIC. I’ve come quite a way from CLAIMED, and while it’s the first in the series, I don’t think it’s the strongest work because I hadn’t done as much research as I should have at the time. ENSNARED had me going down a long alien sex rabbit hole and trying to see what would appeal to readers, and I think I’ve hit the mark on a lot of things in it, as well as going after some other romantic entanglement issues like leaving a bad relationship, dealing with a stalkerish ex, and guilt trips.

Some other authors I’ve interviewed in the past have surprised me by saying that the kind of things they like to read are different than the kind of things they write. What do you like to read? Favorite books? Authors?

I still stick pretty hard to alien romance and monster romance. Right now, my favorites are Tiffany Roberts’ THE SPIDERS MATE trilogy, just because of the sheer worldbuilding and the sheer attention to detail and society building. Tiffany and Robert gave the vrix a religion, mores, the individual characters have values… it’s all very well put-together and I’m still boggled by it all. I’m finally getting more into Ruby Dixon, though I have a long way to go with catching up.

What are you currently working on?

The fourth (and possibly final) book in The Ragrim Conflict, with the in-progress title DOUBLE CROSSING THE ALIEN. We’ve seen what’s happening on Earth, we’ve seen what’s happening in space, and we’ve only gotten the barest glimpse of the turmoil on Lukrim’s surface. DOUBLE CROSSING will bring us down to Lukrim and let us see what’s going on in higher-ranking Lukrimian society, give us a heroine in her forties, and throw us into the arms of an underground resistance movement.

ENSNARED BY THE ALIEN MEDIC by Nessa Claugh

Ragrim Conflict #3

Lissa Jones is a runaway human—not that her husbands would admit it if you asked them.

Married to two alien men from Lukrim to get off a polluted, dying Earth, Lissa found herself isolated in a culture she didn’t understand. Meeting someone through an alien bridal program had never been her plan, but she was dealing with it. And then her life came crashing down. A lie. Her husbands? Unwilling to let her go.

Voshan found himself ripped from his normal job as a surgeon on a planetary disaster relief ship to serve on a hospital ship. A war to free Earth loomed and there would undoubtedly be casualties. It wasn't something he had ever anticipated, but he wants to free the humans as badly as anyone else.

After the two unexpectedly meet, Lissa's backwater planet heritage becomes valuable in the operating rooms of the war. Lissa’s attention is on the operating table and Voshan, and he can't keep his mind or his sul-tentacles away from her. The only thing standing between them? Her husbands are coming and they want her back.

Romance Science Fiction [Self Published, On Sale: April 4, 2022, e-Book, / ]

Buy ENSNARED BY THE ALIEN MEDIC: Kindle | Amazon CA | Amazon UK | Amazon DE | Amazon FR

About Nessa Claugh

Nessa grew up thriving on trips to natural history museums and Jurassic Park. Once adulthood was upon her, it was only a matter of time before she discovered shifter romance and dominant aliens. She enjoys titillating the Triassic and stargazing.

Ragrim Conflict

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