Sometimes it’s hard.

Sometimes I feel like my family doesn’t understand that what I’m doing is actual work. Sometimes I think they see it as me screwing around on the computer so I don’t have to spend time with them, and sometimes the guilt becomes too much, so I set my writing aside, spend days on end catering to their whims. Yesterday we decorated the house for Christmas, for example.

Our schedule is weird here. Since my husband’s dad is the CEO, Andres can take off work pretty much anytime he wants. He stands to inherit five different companies; one day he’ll run the pharmaceutical empire. This week we’ve spent a lot of time together, did lunch together yesterday and the day before, we had a proper date without the kids, lunch and a movie. The Departed was very good. But here’s the thing: when he takes off work, I feel like I shouldn’t write. He’s home, so I feel guilty ignoring him. I sit with him and watch TV (shows like What Not to Wear and Changing Rooms) and we talk. I enjoy it but then when the kids get home from school, I can’t shut myself away to work; they want to see me too. So I spend the whole evening with the family and by the time the kids are in bed, all the pets are dealt with (we have two new mixed Siamese kittens, named Dulcinea and Don Quixote, we call them Dulce and Don for short, and the puppy would like nothing more to eat them), I’ve made dinner, supervised baths and homework and what-not, I really don’t feel like writing. I just want to sleep by that point.

You’d think having two kids in school would mean I have all this time for myself, right? And sometimes it does. But more generally it means I’m doing something for them that’s related to school. I’m supposed to hunt down special glass jars, black turtlenecks, all kinds of supplies they need for projects at school. I’m supposed to come to school for this bazaar and that charity function. Hat Day, Sports Day, the International Fair. There are extracurricular activities, presents to purchase and wrap and parties to which they need transportation. Sometimes I’m actually nostalgic for having them underfoot because there was, believe it or not, less to do.

All of this means I’m a trifle frustrated. I think they’d see it differently if I had, at this juncture, some tangible token of success. I need to sell something. I’m tired of feeling this vague guilt for devoting so much of my time to what my family sees as a hobby. I want to be able to point at the income I’m generating (not that we need the money, but it’s the principle of it) and say, “See? It’s my job, my career, my vocation.” I’ll write anyway, I don’t have a choice. It’s in my blood, but I want it validated in their eyes by some measure of commercial success.

Not much writing going on here lately. I’ve been scrambling, lots of kid related activities. Two more parties in the forthcoming week. So I’ve been baking and cleaning and decorating.

So it’s Thanksgiving today.

Nobody celebrates it here. It’s not a holiday. The kids had school as usual, which meant I had to hustle to shop for the things I needed for the feast and then pick them up.

Made roast chicken, baked potatoes, stuffing from scratch, cranberry sauce, and broccoli / cauliflower casserole. We finished with cherry pie and ice cream. Everyone declared it a delicious meal and we ate too much, then watched Monster House. After that we hung some pictures in the living room. Was a decent day, but it rings a little hollow when you’re the only ones observing a holiday. Isolation.

There will be no sales tomorrow. No family togetherness. No shopping. The kids have to be in school. Sometimes I feel very homesick, but home is a person, not a place. I miss you, Sean.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

(or weird stuff you find when you start googling yourself)

I wrote this, my first published romance. Not my first finished one, mind you. I’ve got my share of crap that I eventually decided wasn’t good enough for anyone else. Practice books.

The Last Light came out in 2002. I can’t believe I actually put the Big Mis and the Virgin Widow in the same novel. (*gasp, wheeze*) Here’s something I didn’t know; it was nominated for RT’s Best Small Press Romance Award that year. I had no clue! Guess it’s a pretty good book and you can’t get this at BN, ya’ll. In further Googling, I also discovered that some random person put TLL on her “Most Wanted Books” list. Apparently this book is rare because I can only find a couple used copies for sale on the Intarweb, and they want almost $30 for the cheapest one!

Weary of the Dance is the sequel, came out in 2002 as well. Sadly, it didn’t garner as much recognition as TLL, even though I personally think WotD is a stronger book. The reviews were fab, though. I never finished the third and final book, A Crowd of Stars, because the small press that had contracted it went belly up. It’s still sitting around 40K words. Every now and then, I think I should finish it, because it bugs me to have an unfinished manuscript. Reason I didn’t - I was a bit disheartened to have my publisher tank and the historical market was in heading for the toilet as chick lit made its rise. The good news is that historicals are on the upswing again. Maybe this series will get new life someday. They’re quite yummy and angsty, just the way I like historicals.

Bonus fact: my cover art was designed by the delightful and multi-talented Linnea Sinclair.

Would anyone be interested in acquiring these rare gems? Holla in comments if you are, and I’ll think up a contest.

Sometimes when I’m listening to a song, I could write a story, just based on the lyrics. I’m not a melody person at all, but I remember lyrics, sometimes all too well. Here are some songs that beg me to write about them:

Chasing Cars - Snow Patrol
Run - Snow Patrol
Desert Rose - Sting (with Cheb Mami)
Girl from the North Country - Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash
If I Could Be Where You are - Enya
Longshot - Antigone Rising
Come Away With Me - Norah Jones
If God Made You - Five for Fighting
Far Away Boys - Flogging Molly
Feel Good Inc - Gorillaz
Almost anything by Coldplay

What are yours?

Dear Dad,

In November of 1998, your hands were frail, paper thin skin drawn tight over swollen knuckles. You had liver spots, although you were only sixty-eight, not old by today’s standards. Old is eighty-something. Old is for other people.

That day, you struggled to breathe and disdained the oxygen the doc wanted you to use full time, but smoking a pack a day for forty years had finally caught up to you. You thought because you’d quit the year before, it couldn’t hurt you anymore, but past mistakes never lose their power to injure. Echoes roll forward through the years.

You were glad we came, but you were so tired. I saw it in the hollows of your eyes. Even though you never yielded in your heart and mind, never doubted the doctors would find a way to save you, your body was giving up for you.

I knew you were gravely ill, but I didn’t want to deal with it. That’s how I function, push it back until I don’t have a choice anymore. On December 24, 1998, that flashpoint occurred. You collapsed while everyone was trying to celebrate the holiday around you, pretending you weren’t dying. Pretending we were full of good cheer and this was a holiday like any other.

But it wasn’t. And holidays would never be the same again. You stayed in the hospital on life support until January 2. I held your hand while you died.

In September of 1999, I bore a son and I named him after you. He was conceived the night we put you in the ground. You never saw him or held him, but he is your namesake, not of blood, but of love.

Eight years later, it is your birthday. Remember how I always bought you a box of peanut brittle and two copies of the same book? Generally a spy novel. You liked Ian Fleming and John le Carré. I bought our books from a bargain table because I was a poor student back then. We would read it, and then discuss it. That gave us some common ground, something to talk about, because we didn’t have much in common otherwise. We were the only two people in the family who liked to read. Now I’m the only one.

You didn’t speak much. You wouldn’t talk about the war or how you won the Purple Heart. You wouldn’t talk about the Japanese woman you lived with, briefly, in Okinawa. You were a John Wayne sort of man, few words, powerful actions. I don’t know what you thought about, most times. I know you loved your lawn with a passion. You loved puttering outside. You worried about me and made me carry a cardigan sweater in April, made me keep jumper cables in my trunk. You fretted because I never wore shoes. You came north from Kentucky and you didn’t want me behaving in such a backwoods way. I still don’t wear shoes, you know. I guess you can take the girl out of the hills, but you can’t take the hills out of the girl.

After you died, I discovered you aren’t my biological father, and it explained so much: why you seemed to prefer my sister and why I had to work so hard to earn your love. Because you knew I wasn’t yours and you raised me anyway, provided for me materially, and you were never unkind. I don’t blame you for that distance. I know it must have hurt everytime you looked at me, knowing I was proof of an infidelity.

The summer just before I turned 14, we watched the Cubs together. They were making a pennant run and I learnt about baseball as a way to get closer to you. It means more that you came to love me anyway. God knows I tried because I didn’t understand. I made your lunches and your coffee. You always said mine was better than Mom’s. I learnt to cook because I wanted to please you. You loved my scrambled eggs and my cookies and you said my potato soup was the best you ever ate. Twenty years later, I still see cooking as a way to please a man.

I wasn’t part of what happened at my conception, and no matter what my mother says, you are my dad. You were in every way that matters. And I miss you. Eight years gone and I miss the way you fussed over whether I had jumper cables, if I had an emergency kit in the car and a pair of comfortable brogan shoes. When I graduated college, you said you were proud of me. I’ve made so many mistakes over the years; I hope you still are. You wanted me to teach as well as write, and I think I’d like that too.

Happy Birthday, Dad. I wish you a good book and peanut brittle, wherever you are.

Love,
Annie

Bitch 1: porn wannabes
Why is it when some romance writers are choosing their pseudonym, they go with something that sounds like a pornstar? See, I realize you’re unleashing your inner wanton by writing erotic stuff but does naming yourself “Jemima Luscious,” “Sinn Sweet”, or “Tawny Love” help the industry? C’mon, ya’ll. Show a little class. I picked Annie Dean because it’s easy to remember / spell and it’ll put me near the front on book shelves. My real name, Ann Aguirre (also at the front on the bookshelves), is nice and ethnic, so I’ll use it for my darker stuff. My agent is convinced we need to brand under different names. Me, I don’t care so much. I think readers will pretty much read whatever as long as it’s good.

Which leads me to

Bitch 2: LKH
The bitches of SBTB led me into darkness by suggesting I read some Merry Gentry novels. I was a LKH virgin before that (I miss those days). Well, I’ve read all four now (have mercy on my soul) and I’m feeling like a salmon somebody clubbed, and now I’m laying in the bottom of the boat, trying to figure out where it all went wrong.

Adult faerie tales, dark, dangerous and sexy. Such a way cool idea, right? The series started out out with a lot of potential. I liked her ideas, loved Sholto, Doyle, and Frost. I was just starting to get into the Sholto / Merry relationship (mutual alienation, quite poignant, even though I’m not into hentai and she said something that annoyed me since I’ve swam with dolphins, she said his tentacles were rubbery like dolphin skin, which is astonishingly delicate and silky, if you’ve actually petted one — still, she made it work). Then she bait and switched on me and suddenly Merry was making Doyle come in his pants without touching him.

But I understood why she sold books. I kept reading because I wanted to know where she was going.

Well. Fast forard to book four, where she’s slowing down time so they can fit in all the fucking. In one scene, she has Nicca doing her, she’s sucking Galen off and Kitto is humping the back of her neck (he comes all over her hair). As far as I can tell they’re in a bathroom on the floor too, which makes it even hotter — not. The door and wall explodes when they all orgasm (at the same time cos Merry has a magic cooch) and nearly kill all the tinkerbell voyeurs in the next room who are waiting for their wings. (When Merry Gentry comes, an angel gets his wings!)

To make matters worse, LKH changes characters, almost randomly to suit her needs: in book three (or was it two?) she had Frost turn into a pouting, whiny bastard (for no reason I could figure). In book four, she has Doyle sobbing like a woman more than once at the thought of losing Merry. I could only stare in horror.

As for Merry, the bitch is more MerrySue, if you ask me. She has a magical hoo-hoo for God’s sake and everyone either wants to drink her blood or fuck her. I’m shaking my head, asking myself, how did this happen? And yet, even after reading about how a midget-goblin-sidhe came to orgasm while humping her neck, it’s like a train wreck. I can’t look away. I might even buy Mistral’s Kiss (what’s WRONG with me?). She’s not a writer, she’s a sickness. I paid hardback price to download Stroke of Midnight. Sigh.

Which leads me to

Bitch 3: Use technology, you damn Luddites!
Why don’t authors go digital, even if they got a great paperback deal? Some of us read ebooks because we’re out of the US and we don’t want to pay a gazillion dollars in shipping. I do buy paperbacks, but I buy a whole lot more ebooks because I’m into instant gratification. When I lived in the states, I could indulge that by going to a BN right then. Not so in Naucalpan. Now I’m pissed off at P.C. Cast because I read Bam’s review of Goddess of the Rose and I want to read the fucking book. I do not want to order it from Amazon or Powells and wait a month; I want it NOW.

Feel free to carry on bitching in comments. I’m spent, but I’m listening and in a mood.

Here’s the first chapter, no setup, though Salome has an inside track on this. Enjoy. Post comments.

—

Chance Met

Right now, I’m a redhead.

I’ve been blonde and brunette as the situation requires, though an unscheduled color change usually means I need to relocate in the middle of the night or face people burning crosses on my lawn. I’ve set a new record, going on eighteen months in the same city, no consequences, no demonstrations, and for the last year, I’ve been a respectable business owner to boot. Maybe I should knock wood.

So I do.

But right now, a redhead. I tell myself it goes with the blue eyes, even if my skin is a little too olive for the carpet to match the drapes. And sure, I get a few looks because it’s a true red, Garnier Nutrisse 64R to be exact, not the plum that most women here favor, but I may as well please myself because I will never, ever blend in entirely. The best I can do is to make sure nobody reckons me any crazier than anyone else.

Around here they do call me la Americana loca, but I figure it’s affectionate, as it doesn’t stop them from coming to my shop. Unlike many of the open-air tiendas, I have a front door and a bell that chimes softly when anyone enters my domain, a dim and shady store piled high with junk or treasure, depending on your definition. I have handmade pots and broken radios, alleged religious artifacts and rare books in sixteen languages.

A ceiling fan stirs sluggishly overhead, but it never gets hot inside. The buildings are heavier, solid rock covered with plaster, so it’s cool and shady when the mercury rises and even the lizards are too lazy to move. Sometimes people step in, wanting a break from the sun, or to get out of the deluge during rainy season, but they never leave without buying something. That’s part of my unique gift (and why I always work in retail). At one point I sold furniture on commission but it just wasn’t fair, fish in a barrel.

Ostensibly, I run a pawn shop marked by a simple red and white sign that reads Casa de Empeno, but anyone who lives in Los Remedios along the road to Atizapan will tell you it’s more. They’ll also offer you a fuchsia candy tortilla at the stoplight just before you come to my store; it’s the intersection where a man with a mime’s face juggles fire and a monkey-less organ grinder plies his trade dispiritedly (how he lost the monkey is another story). Don’t eat the tortilla, don’t tip more than twenty pesos, and make a left turn. You’ll find me, if you really need to.

I’m an expert at staying hidden. More than once, it’s been the difference between life and death, so I live lean and keep my head down. So far as I know, I’m doing well here. Nobody knows what I’m running from.

And I’d like to keep it that way.

Unfortunately, our pasts have a way of coming back, time and again, just like our shadows. Oh, there are ways to sever your shadow, and I know a guy who did, but it was a really bad idea. He took sick afterward, died the slow death of a consumptive, and last I heard, his shadow was making a killing in Atlantic City. Literally.

These are dark times, and I just want a quiet place to ride it out.

Unfortunately, things never seem to work out the way I want them.

My first inkling that I hadn’t covered my tracks completely came on a sunny Wednesday afternoon. I was sitting behind the glass case in my shop, eyeballing a pair of hand painted porcelain miniatures I’d bought for two hundred pesos maybe twenty minutes before. Nice, they looked Dutch, and some tourist would buy them by next Friday.

Foretelling isn’t really my thing–well, only as an adjunct to my real gift and only as relates to the object I’m handling. When I touch something, I know what’s happened to an item, who’s owned it, and to a lesser extent, what will happen to it in the future, although that’s less sure, as any diviner could tell you. Such prediction isn’t much use, unless you’re breathless with wondering about the fate of hand painted Dutch miniatures. Most people aren’t.

History, though…yeah, therein lays the magic. And the reason folks never stop trying to find me. If this could talk, people say dreamily, peering at a piece of antique jewelry. In truth it’s generally pretty boring; the item gets worn, and then it goes in a box. Repeat. But once in a while, once in a while an item passes across my palms with a real story to tell.

And that’s where the trouble starts.

Trouble smells like singed horsehair. I’ll never get past that. When I was ten, my pony burnt up in our barn, and I’ll never forget the way Sugar screamed. That was my first look at an angry mob, but not my last. If you think they don’t burn witches anymore, you never lived in Kilmer. And that’s the damnedest thing; those same folks will come creeping after dark to your back door, one by one, begging for the moon, but get them all together, talking, and they start lighting torches.

To this day, when life is about to get rocky, I smell the burning all over again, one of two legacies my mama left me. And on that Wednesday, the shop stunk to high heaven as someone pushed through the door, jingling the bell. I put down the miniatures, already braced to make a break for the door off the alley.

But I didn’t want to leave, dammit. Thanks to the second gift my mama gave me, I made a good living here and sometimes I even went out on Saturday nights. Nobody brought me tiny pierced earrings from dead babies or soiled mittens from missing children. Nobody expected me to do anything at all, and that was exactly how I liked it.

I don’t know if the dark-haired man who walked into my store that day has a name, other than Chance. I’ve heard he came by the tag from the silver coin he likes to toy with, rolling it across his knuckles, tossing it for a hundred and coming up tails every time. Regardless, his presence in my humble shop in Los Remedios, two thousand miles from where I’d seen him last, could mean nothing good.

“You’re a hard woman to find,” he said, leaning up on my counter like he thought I’d be glad to see him. “I could almost be hurt by that, Corine.”

Well, I couldn’t really argue as I’d left him sleeping in my bed when I took flight. “What’re you doing here?”

“I need you to handle something for me, just one job. I wouldn’t have come if it wasn’t important.” Pleading, he fixed his eyes on me, striated amber, knowing I was a sucker for that look.

Or I used to be. I wasn’t anymore.

And Chance wasn’t my manager any longer either. I didn’t want to handle, didn’t want to tell people their loved one had been strangled while wearing that sweater. I didn’t want to do that anymore.

My hormones gave a little kick. After all this time, he still had the power to make my pulse skip. Some genius genetics had gone into Chance’s making: long and lean, chiseled face with a vaguely Asian look, capped by uncanny eyes and a mouth that could tempt a holy sister to sin. I wondered if he’d felt the last kiss I brushed against that mouth, eighteen months ago. I wondered whether he’d missed me or just the revenue.

To make matters worse, he knew how to dress, and today he wore Kenneth Cole extremely well: crinkle-washed shirt in Italian cotton, jet with a muted silver stripe, dusty black button-fly jeans, polished shoes and a black velvet blazer. I didn’t need his sartorial elegance to remind me I’d gone native, a sheer gauze blouse with crimson embroidery around the neck and a parti-colored polyester skirt with an elastic waist. I was even wearing flip-flops. They had a big red silk hibiscus on each toe, but flip-flips nonetheless. It was amazing he could look at me with a straight face.

But then, he’d been raised well. His mother, Yi Min-chin, was a nice lady who made great kimchi and pulgoki, but he’d never say who his daddy was, claiming such knowledge granted too much power over him. And his mom went along with it. I figured it was just more of his bullshit, but with Chance, you just never could be sure. He had the devil’s own luck, and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if Lucifer himself someday came to claim him.

“It’s never just one job with you,” I said then with a trace of bitterness. “I’m a show pony to you, and you never get tired of putting me through my paces. I am out of the life now. Retired. Get it? Now get out and if you ever felt anything for me, don’t tell anybody where I am.” I hated the way my tone turned pleading at the end.

I’d built this life. I didn’t want to have to parlay to keep it.

Without a word, he flattened his palm on the top of the glass case that housed my rare treasures. When he lifted his hand, I expected to see his coin because the item glinted silver. But as I leaned in, I saw something that sent snakes disco dancing in my belly.

Because it meant I had to help him.