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.

I wrote a comment over on Dear Author that I thought was worthy of its own post. I’ll include it here and summarize the context for you. They put up an article about a Pulitzer Prize winner sharing with his grad students how his wife is leaving him to join Ted Turner’s harem. The consensus seemed to be that the professor’s behavior constituted an ethical breach. He stepped over the line in writing this long, overly personal email. Gawker has the full text.

Here’s what I said.

Wow, that’s quite a faux pas. I can’t imagine why he thought it was appropriate to share that. Does he think he’s Henry James? But unless I’m mistaken, James didn’t circulate those letters in a university classroom. However unique or scandalous it may be, it’s a mistake for a professor to allow his personal life to take center stage.

I put forth that such a dearth of discretion can be attributed to modern society in general. We concede basic privacies that would’ve shocked people thirty years ago. Between Google Earth, people being chipped for security purposes at work, data-mining Internet adware, and reality shows that think nothing of televising the most intimate of details, we have developed what I call The Cult of Oversharing.

It doesn’t occur to folks to censor like they used to. We’re accustomed to the media telling us that “people have a right to know” and we’ve all but forgotten an older adage related to the right to privacy. This concerns me, and opens questions regarding what it means to be a public figure, like an author, singer, actor or other entertainer. Because I put books out for public consumption does this mean people deserve to know everything about me? Sift through my life as if panning for gold in a river bed? I sincerely hope not. Though I want to be seen as friendly and approachable, I don’t want to join the cadre of folks who think nothing of talking about their sex lives on their blog, as if readers care or have some vested interest in such things.

In some respects, I think I may be turning into a grumpy old woman. That’s ironic because I appear to be getting younger looking as the years roll on. I look at pictures of me in my 20s and I looked positively ancient. Haggard. I blame it on the drain of small children. On the plane back from Dallas, the guy sitting in my row with my daughter and me hit on me all the way back to Mexico City. He asked if we were sisters. In the car, my daughter told her dad about it. She sounded disgusted when she said, “I never thought I’d see some guy hitting on Mom!”

I only mention this because it happened again this weekend. Well, the sisters thing, not a guy hitting on me. Friday I took Andrea out to the salon for some mother - daughter bonding time, manicures and pedicures, stat! I was making small talk with the stylist and told her I had brought my daughter in for a treat.

She goggled at me and said, “Hija? No! Tu hermana.” She was so emphatic that I thought for a minute I had the wrong word. I had to consider for a minute before saying, “No, mi hija.”

“Really? How old are you?”

I told her. Then she was so shocked she called another stylist in. Said, “That’s her daughter! Can you believe it? Your skin, your face, you look so young. I thought you were 20, 22.”

At which point I giggled. Perhaps she was flattering me, but I’ll take it. So twice in the last month, people have taken me and my daughter for sisters. Bev said I look twelve in a picture of my husband and me. I did not look twelve with all my cleavage on Smart Bitches.

However old I look, I feel like a grumpy old lady inside. I’m tired of reality TV shows that prevent awesome scripts from being turned into pilots. I’m tired of celebrity gossip. I really don’t give a shit whether Brad and Angelina are on the rocks, and I’m even more more tired of the stupid nicknames they give high profile couples.

Where can we go from here? As an author, this concerns me. What do you guys think? Is the Cult of Oversharing here to stay? Have we yielded so many of our basic privacies that they’re never coming back? If so, that’s depressing.

PS - Here’s a picture my daughter took on Friday. I’m going to use it as my official publicity photo. Go on and guess my age. The winner from last week didn’t contact me, so I’m raffling off the mystery gift. AGAIN.

“You are my heart, my life, my one and only thought.”
–Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, from The White Company

A man wrote those words. Dialog. In order to write them, he had to conceive them. Think them. Entertain the possibility of someone feeling that way.

That’s pretty romantic, no?

In case you missed it, there’s been a bit of a to-do in Romancelandia over how real authors ought to make their heroes. In one camp, folks argue for hyper-realism. Men don’t talk like they do in romance novels, nor do they enjoy erections that last for ten hours without chafing. But would you really want to read a romance novel about a belching, farting fellow named Lou?

On the other side of the spectrum, we have people claiming romance is pure fantasy. Love doesn’t last. Or if it does, it’s so far removed from the eternal, infinite passion of our beloved novels as to be unrecognizable. It devolves into mounds of dirty dishes, errands, jobs, laundry, and shared reality that seldom lives up to one’s illusions. So why not let us enjoy a perfect escape whenever we find the time?

I fall somewhere in between, myself. I want some edge to my hero. I don’t mind if he’s flawed, crude, or occasionally rude. But he can’t lack some poetry in his soul. Like plucking a wild flower and saying, “It looks like you.” Simple things. Because those precious, powerful moments make up the memories that stay with us.

I think men are capable of being romantic. Sir Arthur obviously was, or he wouldn’t have penned those lines, so many years ago. Most of them wouldn’t be comfortable with the levels we hit in our books, and that’s all right.

How do the men in your life stack up against the romance heroes you read about?

Foxyllady, you won! Email me your shipping info and I’ll get it out to you right away. By the way, it’s a beautiful pearl pendant with matching earrings from the finest jeweler in Huatulco. Maybe she’ll send me a picture of her wearing the new bling!

I’m a book junkie; I freely admit it.

That’s pretty common for an author. I’ve only known a few writers who say they don’t read much or they don’t have time. I must confess, I always glance askance at those who say such things. Because let’s face it — we make time for the things that are important to us.

So when I hear an author say (s)he doesn’t like to read, I have to arch a brow. Why the heck is this person writing books if (s)he doesn’t like to read them? I don’t suffer from that particular eccentricity. I freakin’ love books, always have.

Books were my best friend when I was a dorky little kid. I’d take an apple, some bread, and cheese along with a book and go up a tree. There was a huge one in my yard that overlooked the road with a perfect, kid-sized niche where I could curl up for the whole day, lost in my stories. I could watch the other kids go by on their bikes, hidden in the foliage. It was like having a wonderful secret.

Do I feel like I missed out on something by choosing to spend my childhood with fictitious people instead of real live playmates? To be honest, not really. I mean, if you’ve spent any time around kids, you know they can be fuckin’ mean. Any hint of weakness or difference, and they’re on you like a pack of wolves. The dude who wrote Lord of the Flies clearly knew his way around the schoolyard.

This weekend, I just shut everything off. I haven’t been checking email as often or surfing the web. I’ve been reading. And I can’t think of anything better suited to rainy season than curling up with a good book and a cup of hot cocoa. Here are some titles that I’ve read in the last 48 hours:

Holding All the Cards
Natural Law
Ice Queen
Mirror of her Soul
Mistress of Redemption
Magic Bites
Blood Bound

Yes, I read that fast.

However, I noticed something in Magic Bites and Blood Bound, something that bugged me. Both authors dissed romance novels in their urban fantasies. Let me find the passages…

Okay, from Magic Bites, page 117:

When writers of sappy romances ranted about “glorious curves tapering to a small waist” and “soft flesh that begged to be explored,” they had her in mind.

I’m not sure what I’m supposed to extrapolate from that. Am I to infer that all romance is, by definition, sappy? How many romances has the author read, I wonder? I don’t think writers of romance, sappy or otherwise, ever rant about a woman’s figure. Rhapsodize, perhaps. I loved this book; don’t get me wrong. I just don’t understand this particular line.

Is there not supposed to be any genre crossover? Are romance readers supposed to stuff their money back in their wallets because clearly they’re too puffy-heart bubble-headed to understand sophisticated urban fantasy? Talk about shooting yourself in the foot and alienating a mess of readers.

Does the author not realize that romance readers account for 55% of all genre fiction sold? You won’t find me writing this in my SF series. There’s romance in it too, and I hope like heck that all the romance readers out there will give my series a shot.

And from Blound Bound, page 93:

“If Jesse hadn’t come in, I would have surrendered myself to Adam, like some heroine from a 1970s series romance, the kind my foster mother used to read all the time. Ick.”

Well, I have a soft spot for 1970s series romance. I like a happy ending. That doesn’t mean they have to be married and breeding up a mess of babies; I just want to know they’re going to be okay, which means safe and happy.

I don’t even mind traipsing through ten books to get there; I’m a series-friendly reader. But if you drag me along for a hair-rising ride, and then off the protagonists in the end, I am not gonna be a happy bunny. I mean, fuck, I might as well be reading “literature,” if everyone dies or learns horrible, depressing life lessons.

In its way, series romance offers as much fantasy as pulp Conan novels. How many women have you known you who married their bosses, who turned out to be Greek billionaires? It just doesn’t happen. And what’s wrong with escapist fiction? Arguably, all of SF/F qualifies as exactly that. So what’s the difference? Anyway, I still love these books, but it did feel like a little smack on the nose because I’m feeble enough to read those “other” books and… *gasp*…like them! Plus, how many times do you read a romance novel and find the heroine or hero dissing fantasy novels? It just doesn’t happen.

Anyway, I move on with a shrug.

There are some authors whose work I want to like, whom other readers rave about. So I pick up the books, excited to see what all the fuss is about. And sometimes I just don’t get it. I mean, I agree the writer has the ability to string words together in an artistic way, but the story doesn’t engage me. I always suffer a vague feeling of disappointment when this happens, like there’s something slightly askew in my head because I can’t get what everyone else does. The sensation passes, of course. Reading is a deeply subjective experience and just because the herd loves something and I don’t, that doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with me. It just means I’m my own person.

Some authors I consistently enjoy, no matter what they’re writing. I become immersed in their books with no effort at all. People like Nora Roberts, Judith Ivory, Laura Kinsale, Patricia Briggs, Linda Howard, Robin McKinley, Patricia McKilip, Connie Willis. I could go on forever, but instead I’ll just say that I’m tickled to add Ilona Andrews to that list. I cannot wait for the sequel to Magic Bites.

What authors have you not liked as much as you expected, based on buzz? And who landed on your auto-buy list? As always, commenters will be entered into a drawing. However, to make matters more interesting, I’m keeping the prize a secret. You just never know what I’ll give away, though. And do you really need a prize to discuss your favorite authors?

I thought not. Bring on the fangirl squee. Feel free to comment on the dissing I mentioned as well. Whatever floats your boat.

Byrdloves2Read, come on down. You won a copy of Your Alibi. Email me to claim your prize!

I had fun at RWA. Lots of fun. It was so cool, being there when the RITA winners were announced, like being part of our version of the Oscars. You can find accounts of my adventures here. But I’m really tired.

What’s the most fun you ever had? A random commenter will receive a free copy of Your Alibi next Sunday.