As some of you may have noticed, we have a cool new location. Everyone needs to put their hands together for Cynthia and her gifted husband, Nick. I’m really tickled that we’ve made the move. But you may want to update your bookmarks and links to us. We’re at http://www.thebradfordbunch.com now.

And lucky me, I get to make the first post! I’ll have to make it a good one.

Well, first I need to announce a winner. Last week y’all gave me some title help. I’m happy to report that my editor now has a list of the best ones I could think of, and I’m waiting to hear what she decides. That’ll be a while, but as soon as I know, I’ll tell you guys which one tickled her fancy.

Anyhow, I promised someone a copy of Boundless and the lucky winner this time is Catslady. Make sure you email me at ann.aguirre @ gmail.com within the next two weeks. Oh, and remove the extra spaces, of course.

Speaking of contests, I have a couple of them running right now, here and here. Make sure you stop by those before Monday, October 15th at high noon. That’s when they’ll wrap up.

And that’s it for contests… so moving on…

Every now and then, I get questions from readers. So today I’m going to answer one here. The other day, someone asked me, “Is there a kind of book you’d like to write and haven’t yet?”

The short version of that answer would have to be, “No.” But you know I’m going to give you more than that, right?

See, I write genre fiction, and I’m proud of that. I have no interest in doing anything else. Now sometimes my books do somewhat blur the boundaries. I’ll throw in magic, mystery, and a touch of romance. I did exactly that in my Corine Solomon stories.

Why? Because those are my favorite genres. It’s like those Amazon ads where they’re trying to get you to buy two books: Better Together! I just take a step further and put it all in the same book.

In the past, editors wouldn’t have looked twice at my ideas. Too much romance in my sci-fi series, starring Sirantha Jax. Or too much sci-fi in my romance, depending on how you look at it. I tried to interweave it so thoroughly that you wouldn’t have a book without the setting or the relationship. And I really think it works.

Thank goodness times have changed.

But it’s important for romance readers to know I can be trusted, though. I’m a believer in the happy ending. I wouldn’t write a series, only to kill off the hero or heroine. No matter what I put them through along the way, at the end of the ride, they’ll be safe, happy, and together. That’s a promise.

How do you guys feel about cross-genre books?

Well, I’m trying to come up with a new title for my urban fantasy novel. I’ve thought of so many names that I’m starting to dream about it. It’s not easy encapsulating all the elements of a story into one pithy phrase.

So I figured I’d pick your brains. What sort of names snag your attention in the bookstore (or while you’re browsing online)?

Help me out! A random commenter will win any book they want from my backlist.

What do you think about wedding epilogues in books?

I generally have mixed feelings about them. Sometimes I feel like it’s too fast. The book takes place over an action-packed couple of weeks and I’m not convinced the lovebirds should be at the altar just yet. When you add a baby to the mix, I start getting twitchy on the newlywed’s behalf.

People have different opinions on the subject. As for me, I think more and more, I’m okay with a HFN in place of a HEA. HFN stands for Happy For Now, in case you didn’t know. Because when an author convinces me the couple is in love and they want to be together, at least for now, that’s enough for me. I can envision my own HEA down the road if I want to. I just have to be persuaded they love each other and it’s gonna be okay down the road. Marrying and having kids too soon actually works toward the opposite end for me because I know how such stressors can doom a relationship.

I went to a wedding this weekend. Beautiful. We drove all the way to a mountaintop, where we went into an open chapel. The simple stucco church was decorated in white netting, ribbons and lilies.

Once we were inside, the rains came, so we had the rush of water against the pavement, and the boom of thunder right outside in accompaniment to their sacred vows. While the priest gave the mass in Spanish, I watched everyone’s faces. Nobody wept. It was such a quiet, solemn occasion, further blessed by the elements.

It was a beautiful ceremony, and I was much struck when they used a white ornamental rope to bind the bride and groom while they spoke their vows. Symbolic, no?

What’s the most unusual wedding you’ve ever attended?

Estella, you won a signed copy of Stone Maiden! Email me with your address, please!

In addition to being an author, I have a number of other jobs around here, including wife, mother, and family physician. Women often wear a number of hats, so I expect that’ll come as a surprise to none of you. Y’all probably do six jobs before breakfast as well.

My daughter invited a friend over to our house this weekend, and she spent the night with us on Friday. Of course that obligated me to be the Coolest Mum Ever. Have you guys ever done that? Gone the extra mile (or extra hundred for that matter) just to impress your kids’s friends?

Now that I have some distance from it I wonder why I felt so driven. I mean, I’m not sorry I made the effort, but I just wonder at my impulse; I guess I just wanted my daughter to say, “See? I have the best mom in the world.” And she did say it over the course of our adventures. So my work wasn’t in vain.

Friday we went to our usual family luncheon, out for Italian at Macaroni’s. That’s a long meal so it was gone five when we left. The kids then took a train ride at the mall and then we bought them Häagen-Dazs. After that, we went to another mall, La Cuspide, where Stardust was playing in the VIP cinemas in English. But we’d just missed the five showing, so we went downstairs to the arcade to kill an hour. Our guest was incredulous with delight.

The kids played games and won prizes until it was time for us to go to see the film, which was quite brilliant. They adapted Neil Gaiman’s book beautifully. Anyway, once inside the VIP theatre, I was amazed. We hadn’t been to it before, but we’ll definitely be back. Sooo luxurious. Instead of cinema seats there were huge leather recliners with attached table and plenty of space between seats. They were grouped in twos, ideal for couples. There were buttons on the side of the chair so you could signal a waiter for more refreshments, even order dinner if you wanted, including steak and sushi. A real restaurant menu!

By the time we got home on Friday night, the kids were ready to crash, another lucky happenstance. And I won the title of Coolest Mum Ever, at least for a day. I expect given a few days, my daughter will be back to huffing over the unfairness of this or that, but I’ll have this memory to smile over forever.

Anyway, I’ll have some exciting news over on my blog this week, so you won’t want to miss it. I can’t wait to throw a party over there.

Cherie J, I liked your advice best last week, so email me! You can pick any book from my backlist.

Finally, a special monthly loop-only contest kicks off today. But you have to be in it to win it.

Subscribe to Action and Attitude

Email:

Subscribe today and then tell me you did so in comments here. I’ll enter you in a drawing for a special prize. If you’re already a member of my author loop, make sure you enter the contest that’s kicking off today. And to enter this contest, if you’re already subscribed to my loop, just tell me what you did this weekend. I’m all about the prizes, baby.

I love the fact that I can sleep in (and my kids are old enough not to bother me). They can fix their own cereal and/or toast in the morning, and they can entertain each other. I do not miss the days of them being three or four and running in to wake me up in the noisiest possible way at 7am. I don’t miss cooking breakfast when I’m half-asleep because I wrote until 3am.

Thing is, my husband half wants to have another baby. Our kids are 10 and 8. That would be a big gap, don’t you think? But he throws the idea out there every now and then, and I can’t tell if he’s kidding. I’m not sure it’d be a good idea. My career is just taking off, and I’m 37, for goodness sake.

What do you guys think? In my shoes, would you want another child?

ChristyJan, you won the free book!

The person who gives me the best advice wins a download of any one of my books. And yeah, it’s totally arbitrary, but you know you want to tell me what to do.

Just as a general note, it makes my job a lot easier in notifying winners if you enable your Google profile and click the box so your email is visible on mouse hover. ChristyJan did this, and I was able to email her myself, thus eliminating the somewhat iffy wait-and-hope-she-sees-she-won strategy.

I’ve been giving this question a great deal of thought lately. Some books we enjoy, put down and forget about. We can’t remember the title or the author a month later, just that it had something to do with a ranch, and a cattle drive, and whatever, but it was good, wasn’t it? But it doesn’t stay with us.

Other books are great. We can more or less sum up the plot if someone asks us, but they don’t make us glow inside. You know that feeling — all your insides light up with awe and wonder and that ephemeral gooey sensation where you just want to hug the shit out of the book, then squee about it on your blog, and send ten emails to your friends about it, and then never, ever part with that book. In fact, that’s one of the things we’d grab if the house caught fire, along with our husbands, kids and pets, that dog-eared paperback. We call those keepers, right?

But what makes a keeper? When I start thinking about all the books that have made it on that list for me, I have a hard time identifying the single unifying trait. Because I’ve loved some very different books. Here’s my top ten list (in no particular order).

Archangel by Sharon Shinn
Sunshine by Robin McKinley
Seize the Fire by Laura Kinsale
Bet Me by Jennifer Crusie
Once in Every Life by Kristin Hannah
Son of the Morning by Linda Howard
Autumn Rain by Anita Mills
Once in a Blue Moon by Penelope Williamson
All Through the Night by Conne Brockway
Bliss by Judy Cuevas

When I look back over this list, I cannot find a lot in common, except the writers charmed and captivated me, and somehow clutched my heart in their fists. They made me feel. So what, then, makes a keeper for you? What qualities engrave it in your memory so you can rave about it ten years later (as it’s been that long since I read some of these titles)?

Maybe we can sort out an answer together. Next week, I’ll pick a random commenter, who will then be able to pick a book from my top ten list and I’ll send it via Amazon. If you haven’t read all these titles, you’re really missing out.

I can always tell when I’ve rested enough. Ideas start coming to me fast and furious about books I need to write. The last one came fully fledged in a dream, and I’m really excited about it, but I can’t write it until I finish the sequel to Guide.

Typically I don’t try to multitask (and write two books at once), but this other idea is really working on me. I think I might hurt myself, though, if I try to do them both at the same time. My brain just doesn’t shift gears like that, which is too bad. I’m dying to get started on this new idea.

How about you guys? Do you work on one project at a time or do you jump around to whatever takes your fancy at the moment? This doesn’t have to apply to writing. I’m asking about any hobby you may have, or heck, even your dayjob. Are y’all champion multitaskers? And if so, maybe you can teach me how.

The winner from last week’s contest is… Anastasia! Email me, and tell me what kind of story you want.

PS - Don’t forget to pick up Boundless when it comes out on September 3. My good friend Dionne Galace is running a contest this week with a great prize.

Tomorrow is my birthday, y’all. Yesterday we had a cookout to celebrate where I ate an awesome burger and made my famous bacon ranch potato salad. I also drank Chivas and danced and listened to some really hilarious stories. I had a good time.

So I’m feeling like sharing the love today. I have two contests running right now. One of them is about to run out, so you need to hustle over to my blog today in order to get in under the wire. It closes tonight at midnight, and I’m announcing the winner over on my personal blog tomorrow. All you have to do is post a question for my FAQ in the comments. Prize is an ARC of Boundless, which won’t be available for sale until Sept 3. You know you want it.

The second contest closes on August 29. But I can’t give you details, like what it’s about or what you can win. You know why? You’re not a member of my inner circle. Isn’t it frustrating to know there’s a contest running that you can’t enter? Well, you can if you join my loop. Do you really want to miss out on hearing my news before everyone else, plus all the regular contests I run? Just put your email in the box and you’ll still have time to enter this contest too.

And here’s my special birthday bash contest. You aren’t gonna believe what I’m willing to do for you. A random commenter will win a free story. That’s way more exciting than it sounds. Why? Because you’re the boss. I will write you a custom story. You get to choose character names, descriptions, basic premise, everything. Is there anything you’ve always wanted to read about, but authors never seem to pick that idea? Well, here’s your chance. I’ll write a complete story to a limit of 10K, based on your specifications. Once you’ve read it, I’ll make it available on my website as a free pdf download with a dedication to you. Sound cool? I’ll post the winner next Sunday.

All you have to do to win is comment about a great birthday. Or hell, just wish me many happy returns. So get commenting. And happy birthday to me!

I’m back from Cozumel just in time. A day or two before we left, we started receiving scary weather reports. They started boarding up all the beach side rentals in preparation for the storm. We got out before the mad evacuative rush of people trying to escape Hurricane Dean. I know people who were stuck in Cancun during the last hurricane, and they spent four days without power or running water. They lived on cookies and warm soft drinks, and I’m glad we don’t have to go through that. I’m concerned about all the people who live there, however. We’ll just have to see what we can do in the aftermath.

Isn’t that a terrible feeling? Knowing something bad is going to happen but there isn’t a thing you can do to stop it? All you can do is be there to help pick up the pieces. If you have kids, you’ve probably had this feeling before. They aren’t real big on taking advice. Most of them seem to think their parents aren’t too bright, and we couldn’t possibly have learned anything worth knowing, right? Like Mark Twain said,

“When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished by how much he’d learned in seven years.”

Don’t you just wish you could take ‘em and shake some sense into them? Not babies, mind, but the kids who’re old enough to give sass-mouth and not old enough to think better of it. But most of them prefer learning the hard way, which is so painful to watch. We hate to see our kids get hurt when we could’ve told them, if only they’d have listened (not that we did either), that it was a knob-head thing to do.

And so it goes.

C’mere, I have a confession to make. I find myself doing this to TV shows and movies I watch on DVD. Stupid blond girl decides to go check out the scary basement where she heard a noise. ALL ALONE. When the power goes out. Well, of course she does. I start talking to the TV, and my husband Andres gives me that out-of-the-corner-of- his-eye look. You know the one — it says, if I didn’t love this woman, I would so have her committed for the crazy shit she does. And then he says, “You know they can’t hear you. Right, honey?” But it never stops me from advising TV characters that they’re acting like dipshits.

I’ve noticed myself carrying it into books as well, when hero or heroine are about to pull some bonehead move. “Well, you’re not smart enough to screw in a lightbulb,” I’ll catch myself muttering. My family gives me a wide-berth when I’m reading. They peer into my office and then run off, like it might be catching.

People just never take good advice when it’s offered. But that never stops us from offering good advice to other people, does it? Even fictional ones. Sometimes I think humans are the funniest animals on the planets. If only we threw poo, there would be a place for us next to the monkey house. Am I right?

Anyhow, I have a couple of winners to announce as promised.

QB(Bev) — you won the re-draw of the Speshul Sekrit prize, after the initial winner failed to contact me. By the way, it’s a beautiful pearl pendant with matching earrings from Huatulco. Maybe she’ll send me a picture of her wearing the new bling!

Stacy S. — you won an ARC of my novella Seven Days to be released on Sept 3 in the antho Boundless with the delicious Bonnie Dee and the delectable Dionne Galace.

Email me at ann.aguirre at gmail.com so I can hook you up.

View from my front door. Having the best time ever. Sorry, nothing more this week. What was your best vacation ever?

2 winners next week. One from last week’s post, and one from this week. I’ll catch up with everyone next week.