Ann Aguirre

Today, I have so much to report that I don’t even know where to start.

Been a really productive morning. I bought an Ibook on Mercado Libre (Mexican ebay), worked out terms for a Guide ad with one of the Smart Bitches and fixed the stupid animation speed, and put together the beginnings of an awesome Liquid Silver anthology, featuring the delicious Dionne Galace, the brilliant Bonnie Dee and me. Now we just need a title. What would you guys call a paranormal romance anthology that features a demon, a dragon and a scarecrow? Don’t let Bam title this, ya’ll. She wants to call another project we’re developing Fairy Bukkake Gangbang 2007. We’re toying with More Than You Imagine and Body Language, so far. Help us out in comments please, please.

So I put off the best news for last. I’m choking on the squee, so I have to let it out now. Had my second chat with Laura Bradford, who reps such luminaries as Anya Bast, Jodi Lynn Copeland, and Lauren Dane. She thinks my work is really fresh and that I’ll either be a pain in the ass to sell, or “the next big thing.” Let’s hope for the latter. Long story short, I accepted an offer of representation from her, so I’m agented again. Woot! I have more to say but I can’t type for running around my office and screaming, so I’ll be back later. Woohoo!

PS I have a review over on It’s Not Chick porn.

I’ve heard aspiring writers say they’d rather throw a manuscript away than sell it to an epublisher. That startles me. I just want people reading my stuff, I don’t necessarily care what format it comes in. However, the argument can be made that some epublishers are choosier than others about what they accept, some have bigger promotional budgets and such.

The sales are making the big boys take notice, though. Jane from Dear Author writes about HarperCollins taking the plunge. She notes that she advocated authors building an online following via epubs and then leveraging that into larger sales. Do you guys think that’s a viable plan?

One thing she said I wonder about as well:

Having Harper Collins enter the million dollar ebook publishing industry makes me wonder what will happen to epublishers such as Ellora’s Cave and Samhain. My hope is that it raises the standard of what is going to be published while not diminishing the diversity of offerings.

I hope the giants don’t stomp out the little guys, but I’m pleased to see recognition of a fellow author, though I don’t know Delilah Devlin from Adam. Congrats Ms. Devlin!

This post is more about markets, though. If you were going to sub to an epublisher, which one would you choose and why? Who is your dream publisher in NY? How come?

random link — I hope you’re braced for dangerous levels of cuteness. I bring you this thing because authors are all supposed to have a cat that they ramble about. If you don’t (maybe someone in your house has allergies) click until you find the perfect kitten, and then you can blog about your fantasy feline friend. You’re welcome.

random update — Got an e-mail from Agent L, who reports that her colleague liked Guide so much, she read it three times in the last week. Yes, I know, Guide is already sold, but Agent L is perusing a number of my books. I’m still waiting for news on one submission, and I’ve been invited to write a book for Liquid Silver for their Terran Realm urban fantasy line. I’m putting that on my plate along with everything else. After a lot of thinking and some wise advice from Carrie (which I chose to disregard), I’m tackling My Valentine next.

My Valentine is the sequel to Guide, starring Darnell Valentine and Maya Hanoush. I’m scared of this book, ya’ll.

Darnell is black, but I get him better than the heroine. I picture him looking like a cross between Kadeem Hardison and Mario Barrett, but with short dreads. He and I will do okay — he’s a stockbroker and a computer geek. Never had much luck with the ladies until recently. Now he imitates the other players on scene, but it’s not really him, and he’s been in love with Maya since they were 16.

Maya is way outside my experience. I have her look figured out — cross between Shakira and Norah Jones, but she’s tall, almost six feet. She’s mixed Hispanic-Middle Eastern descent, and she has a rape in her past. Maya lives in NYC in the aftermath of 9/11, so I can’t imagine what she goes through on a daily basis. She’s an attorney, working for a big firm, but I don’t think class limits the pain and discrimination you experience. She does pro bono work on the side, in private, helping battered women. Anyway, I’m gonna cowboy up and brave this thing, though. I hope I write it as well as Ann and Olivia, my marvelous Loose Id editors, think I can. If you have any advice for me, I’m all ears.

random endorsement — I’m gonna share another guilty pleasure with ya’ll. I’m a secret Ashton Kutcher fan. He’s like Keanu, only he’s goofy-cute instead of being a block of wood. Funny thing, almost any movie I pick up that has him in it turns out to be better / funnier than I thought it would be. I made fun of Dude, Where’s My Car when it came out, and then I watched it. Uhm. I’m calling it a cult classic. No, you can’t ask how many times I’ve seen it.

Anyway, I watched My Boss’s Daughter last night and it was 100% funnier than I thought it would be. It wasn’t a lame romantic comedy at all; it was instead a screwball comedy (and I love those!) If you want to laugh, check it out. Where else can you find an owl on crack?

And that’s it for today. I’ll close with a random quote:

“I discovered that rejections are not altogether a bad thing. They teach a writer to rely on his own judgment and to say in his heart of hearts, ‘To hell with you.’”
— Saul Bellow

When I visit a blog and comment, it’s because I want to interact with the owner(s) and other commenters. Sometimes people turn on comment moderation and then it’s like commenting blind. You don’t know what else people have said on this topic, maybe you’re going to post the exact same thing as the guy ahead of you.

It makes reasoned discourse impossible; I can’t react to what someone else has said until the blog owner “approves” the comment. That strikes me as utterly micro-managerial. I mean, shit, you can delete any comment anytime. So what if somebody calls me a cum-guzzling whore or a no-talent hack? One of those things is true, so I’d let that comment stand. The other one, I can remove. What’s the big freaking deal? I don’t believe in censorship, and if I get spammed, I’ll delete that comment too. Again, not a big deal.

The thing that really honks me off about comment moderation is: some folks turn it on and then don’t moderate. I’ll leave a comment on their blog and then surf back there a week later to find out their thoughts on what I said…and my comment isn’t posted!! Bollocks to that. There is no faster, surer way to keep me from returning than to do that shit. Strikes me as onanistic, for one. If you don’t want others intruding on your self-love, turn off comments altogether, for fuck’s sake. Make it crystal clear you aren’t interested in other people’s opinions.

So I got a sneak peek at Dionne Galace’s cover for her story coming out with Samhain in August because I’m cool like that. Check this out.
I feel wrong for admiring this boy, though. He looks young but he’s trying to be tough, right? He’s got his hair buzzed to make him look serious (or maybe he’s trying to cut the desert heat) but I can’t help thinking it would be fine to lick some wine or whipped cream off that belly. Look at him, so smooth he hasn’t even grown body hair yet. We’re all dirty, dirty women for thinking he’s pretty.

As usual, I’ll have a review over at It’s Not Chick Porn.

Check this out. These panels make me think about the changing nature of language. I wonder how JR Ward’s books will stand up in twenty years? Will her slang hopelessly date her? School kids today find Shakespeare all but unintelligible. English has changed a lot.

Are you more concerned with telling the story / entertaining than producing timeless literature? Do you think genre fiction has the capacity to transcend genre and become a classic? Can you think of any examples where it has? Name authors and titles for me please, ya’ll.

I never read comics as a kid, but I’m starting to wish I had. My favorite is the Joker’s Boner. What’s yours?

Link courtesy of my husband, bored at work

Once in a while, I run across an author who makes everything I slog through as a reviewer worthwhile. Such authors are squee-worthy, and as soon as I develop a powerful new author crush, I immediately run off to my blog because I want to tell the world about it. I’ll write a formal review of The Devil’s Candy for RRT, but I want to gush a bit before I get down to business.

Meet my latest eighth wonder of the world, Lauren Sharman. Not since I stumbled on the Delaney books, written by Iris Johansen, have I had such a giddy feeling of incredulous delight. Ms. Sharman is writing a series of linked single-title books about a clan of rough and tumble men who live in Maryland. With names like Rebel and Blackie, these men embody the Old West style of men who are ready to throw down but also eager to make sweet, sweet love to their women. Imagine being the heroine, formerly alone in the world, suddenly surrounded by a close-knit group of men who love you and will protect you to their last breath. Sound delicious? It really, truly is. I’ve never been to Maryland, but her setting intrigues me so much that I want to vacation there now.

Ms. Sharman has almost reinvented the contemporary genre because she doesn’t write about the rich and the beautiful. These are downhome people, blue collar romances. The heroines fix their own cars and shoot guns like pros. Her heroes have been to prison a time or two and maybe ran with a biker gang back in the day. Her writing style is captivating. I’m so excited by her book, The Devil’s Candy, that I’m running out to buy the prequel right now. I’m sort of anal in that I hate reading books out of order, but she managed to make this book totally stand on its own, so I didn’t feel like I was clueless about all the action that had come before in No Worries. I’m getting it, though. I need to read Rebel and Gypsy’s story now. (How can you not love an author who can make names like this work? They’re part and parcel with her setting, evoking wilderness and the Wild West right there in Maryland). Ms. Sharman’s style reminds me a little of Sharon Sala, if that helps any. She wrote a fabulous book called Jackson Rule, which had an ex-con hero like these McCasseys.

Blackie was so good. Who doesn’t love a big, tough man who is gentle as a lamb with the woman he loves? He could kill a man with one blow, and he has killed before, but he’d never lay a hand on his woman. For her part, Angel is a killer too; she’s mean as snake, but I adore her. She’s Blackie’s match from the jump. I love this bit:

“If you’re going to continue to do that,” she said, “then you’d better kill me. I may be a woman and I may be small, but I’m evil, and as dangerous as any of you with a gun. Wasting your sorry ass would make my day, Prince. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve killed a man, either. And I don’t have the conscience my brother did, so if you think I’d get cold feet just before pulling the trigger, you’re dead wrong.”

These McCassey men are rough and rugged with dark hair and deep blue eyes. When they’re young, they terrorize Washington County with their wild ways, but once they’re tamed by a woman’s love, they become the ultimate family men, willing to lay down their lives for their ladies. If you’ve read Iris Johansen’s Delaney books or Nora Roberts’s Chesapeake Bay saga, then you know exactly what I’m talking about. You mess with one McCassey, you fight them all. Ms. Sharman evokes this feeling of devotion and family that’s tearfully joyous in its warmth.

I feel like I’m not expressing just how cool her writing is. Best I can do is recommend you check her out for yourself. I could read tons of books about these McCasseys. I hope she never gets tired of writing them.

I am on vacation. I’ve been working like a dog on this writing gig since last July. I jumped immediately from Your Alibi to Good Touch.

That means I’m getting to know my family again because my kids are starting to ask, “Who’s that lady who sleeps with Dad?”, spending more time with my husband, who’s a pretty great guy, and sitting at the desk less, except when I’m playing an awesome computer game with lots of graphic blood spattering when I kill someone. I’m taking a break, ya’ll. I’ll post when I feel like it for the next week or so, but we’re on hiatus from the regular posting schedule.

Ironically my vacation is wearing me out. I’m taking care of everything I let slide when I was a writing machine: grocery shopping, paying bills, taking pets to the vet. So much fun stuff and I have another exciting day of errands lined up for tomorrow. The plus side is that I’m out in the sunshine. I was starting to hiss like Gollum when dragged out into the light. The next step was calling my keyboard Preciousss and walking all hunched over and shit.

I’ll keep you guys posted on my various submissions cos I know you care so much. Anyway, I’m off to enjoy a cool, juicy slice of watermelon. What’s your favorite fruit?

PS I vacationed at that spot, the last time I traveled.

Things are going too well for me to have any bitching to do. Rather than work up a fake rant about stuff that doesn’t really bother me (and you guys could tell the difference, couldn’t you?), I’m going to do something different. Today SBD stands from Smart Blessing Day; I’m going to recount the ways I’m lucky as hell. If this post seems disjointed, it’s because I’m just counting my blessings as they occur to me.

My cover art for Guide is absolutely gorgeous. If that wasn’t enough, my wonderful editors at Loose Id, Ann and Olivia, who helped make a good book great, are interested in a sequel. Ann wants three chapters and synopsis for the secondary characters in Guide. I’m calling it My Valentine and when I have that stuff done, Ann says she can probably offer me a contract, based on partial and synopsis. I’ll have deadlines and everything!

Last week, I sold a book and I hadn’t ever submitted to this publisher. As an adjunct to my 100th comment contest, Tina Burns, acquisition editor of Liquid Silver Books, read some of my material on my website and sent me a personal invitation to submit. I had Your Alibi available, so I sent it her way. Five days later, she offered me a contract. When I accepted, she wrote:

Yeah! I’m so glad. I got goosebumps when I’d read the excerpts on your site and was prepared to send chocolates if I needed to to bribe you to send me a book!

I’m a feedback whore, I freely admit it. Sometimes in this solitary writing gig of mine, I start jonesing for other people’s opinions. Well, that was a happy slice of validation right there. I gave someone goosebumps!

More good stuff. My work is currently in the hands of a wonderful agent, who is close to making me an offer. I’ve checked her references and they’re impeccable. Now I’m just waiting for the magic moment.

Paula Guran of Juno Books is considering Good Touch for their paranormal line. I’m pitching a six book series. My kids are old enough to understand that I’m working when I’m writing, and they’ve gotten great about handling their own issues. I’m so proud of them for that. I have a maid who takes care of the pesky household details so I can work. I have a husband who, even though he’s second in line running a five company corporation, spends his whole weekend helping me whip a project into shape. After reading Good Touch, he also told me who Corine ends up with. I’m not sure he’s wrong.

Is there more? Well, yes. As a reward for staying on task over the last two weeks, I bought a gorgeous black sparkly handbag and a new water fountain. I love those (and so do my cats).

I also have fantastic, supportive writer friends who give me great advice and commiserate with me so that my failures don’t sting too much. All in all, I have a pretty great life and things are going well. Come on, your turn. Count your blessings for me. I think you’ll be smiling when you’re done.

As it’s ebook Thursday, I’ll have a review over at It’s Not Chick Porn.

Warning: serious post ahead

As many of you know, I have a book coming out with Loose Id on April 17. This story happens to be interracial, and as such, I’m opening a discourse on a touchy subject. Please leave your preconceptions at the door and let’s talk honestly for a minute.

I’ve heard any number of things regarding multicultural stories. I’m told that a white woman / black man is a tough sell because white women don’t want to read that, and black women get mad because there’s another brother selling out and hooking up outside the race. Does that make him a race traitor? Why? Well, from a white woman’s perspective, I hold no rancor for a white man who falls in love with a black woman. I’m all about the love, baby, however and wherever people find it.

Let me share with you a moment here. I come from a long line of racially intolerant folks just one generation removed from the Kentucky hills. I grew up hearing my grandparents talk about colored people and yes, the N-word, and how they’re naturally shiftless. You’d think I would have internalized that attitude myself, but from the time I was a small child, their ignorance enraged me.

I remember being thirteen or fourteen years old, having an argument with my uncle, your typical flannel-wearing, deer-shooting hillbilly. I said to him, “I’m going to marry me the blackest man I can find, we’ll have beautiful brown babies, and I will never invite you to my house for dinner.” Needless to say my extended family does not speak to me anymore.

As it turned out, I didn’t marry a black man. I married the man I fell in love with. Of course, I was six months pregnant with his child at the time, and we eloped to Vegas, but then I’ve never been one to follow the rules. My husband happens to be Mexican. Does that make me a race traitor? I don’t see that I’ve weakened the white race by my actions. Hell, most of us are too pasty anyway and could use a little infusion of color. The one thing I liked about remake of The Time Machine was how the future race looked golden and gloriously Polynesian. I used to say all the races should just intermarry and breed out our differences because by the time we realize we all belong to the SAME race, the human race, aliens will be hovering over the earth with a giant laser, ready to blow our stupid, stubborn asses all to hell.

Anyway, I’m sympathetic to the struggle for equitable treatment. I feel the black authors protesting that they’re pigeon-holed and they aren’t getting read by a wide audience like the average white author. That said, I read black authors, not knowing they’re black. I just pick out the story I want and buy it. But after hearing the problems black authors face, I made a point to seek some out and buy their books.

Here’s the thing that struck me. I ran across this paragraph in one of the books I bought.

…wasn’t the type to tolerate being around a whole lot of white folks for long. She didn’t know many white folks who’d put up with being isolated with a whole lot of black folks for very long, but they hardly ever took into account the stresses black folk go through all the time in the same situation.

To me, the white reader, this feels like a slap. Before I moved, I lived in Indianapolis on the West Side. My neighborhood was predominantly black and Hispanic, and that was fine with me. People who know the area (south of 38th along High School Road) can confirm this. These days, I live in Mexico, so I am, in fact, surrounded by Mexicans, all the time. I’m a minority. I know all about being a minority, but I don’t for a minute feel anything like this author describes, even isolated like I am. I don’t see it like that. I’m surrounded by mostly kind, occasionally rude Spanish speaking people who are often amused by my efforts to do the same. We’re all just people, and all the rest is sort of crazy. It’s like fighting because I got vanilla frosting and you got chocolate when we’re all strawberry cake underneath.

So I would offer the following thought. If black writers want a wider audience, they should write to a wider audience. Why alienate people like that? I have black people in my books, Latinos, white folks, Asian, and mixed race people. It’s how I bring them all together that matters, and that’s sort of the point. So to black authors, I say, don’t write your stories for black people, making other readers feel like it’s a club they don’t belong to. Write your stories for people, and people will read them.