When Zibb, the giant alien Bee, kidnaps the boy Jason and holds him hostage in the great ship Skyhive, she does so because she thinks he's "cute." Is there such a thing as love at first sight, and can love exist between two such different creatures as a Bee and a human boy?

Love isn't always fuzzy and warm, like Zibb. It can crackle and flash between two different personalities. Sometimes that happens between Aadab Ali and his girlfriend Iodine, who have different faiths in a country hostile to differences of religion.

When I wrote the Jive Hive it wasn't about love at all. It was about a teenage boy and his quest to save the world in the only way he knew how, through music. Love permeates the book in spite of my intentions. There is love between Jason and his parents, between Aadab and Iodine, between Jason's parents and his little brother, even between Jason and the young man Aadab Ali. At the end there's love in a sitting room in Burma.

Love doesn't have to be sexual to be real. Even the Wasp General surprises us at last. He surprised me. And I wrote the book.