Today’s player–and birthday girl!–is Bru Baker.
- Somebody gives you $10,000 with the proviso that you can’t save it and you can’t spend it on anything altruistic or practical. What do you do?
Take my kids to Europe! My 10-year-old son is a huge history buff and has been asking me to take him for years. It would be great to show them where I lived in London when I studied politics at the London School of Economics and expose them to how amazing it is to travel from country to country via Eurorail. My first trip to Europe as a teenager was overwhelming and wonderful and I’d love to experience that through the eyes of my kids.
- Which house did the sorting hat put you in?
Ravenclaw, but I desperately want to be a Slytherin. Can I be a Slytherclaw? Because books, but also deviousness.
- What is your favorite appliance?
Is this a trick question? My coffeemaker, hands down. Any coffeemaker, really. I have a Keurig and I love using my refillable pods with fresh-ground coffee, but I don’t coffee shame—all coffee is good coffee, and all coffeemakers are worthy of praise and devotion.
- What’s the worst disaster that ever happened to you (or one of your characters) while traveling?
Well, I have an entire book set on the premise of the main character being denied entrance to a country at the border because his visa is about to expire, and then being threatened with jail if he steps back into the country he’d originally been visiting. So that’s pretty disastrous! I came up with the premise for Tall, Dark, and Deported while I was at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, plotting how to get to Indianapolis after my flight was cancelled. It was nearly midnight and I had a construction crew coming at 7 a.m. to tear down my (completely unpacked) kitchen to start a remodel, so waiting for a flight out the next day wasn’t an option. I started chatting up the people near me and ended up falling in with a businessman from Alabama traveling to an important meeting and a German exchange student who needed to IU before classes started. We had absolutely nothing in common aside from our desire to get to Indianapolis and a mutual hope that none of us were serial killers. In the end, I rented a car by myself, but the conversations we shared sparked a book that I absolutely loved writing.
- What is your favorite footwear?
That depends heavily on the season. In the spring and summer I live in flats and open-toed heels, and in the winter I’m usually in ankle-length or knee-high boots. But in terms of brands, the one I go back to again and again because of comfort is Blowfish.
- What is your worst habit? Your best one?
They’re kind of related. I am a serial procrastinator, which is definitely my worst habit. I will always, always put tasks off until later. Always. You sent me these questions months ago and I’m doing them a few days before they’re due. So, always.
I’m also a champion to-do list maker, so I’m extremely organized and excel at planning and details. So everything I procrastinate on gets put on a list, usually with the absolute drop-dead moment it has to be done, and somehow even though I’m an absolute ostrich about deadlines things don’t fall through the cracks. Imagine it like Harry Potter and Voldemort dueling in the graveyard…neither force can beat the other, so there’s this constant back and forth in the battle for supremacy between procrastination and über planning.
- Which (living) celebrity would you most want to have dinner with?
I’m listening to Amy Poehler’s Yes Please during my commute to work and she is so inspirational. I find myself sitting in my car in the garage just to finish a chapter on the way home. I expected it to be funny and entertaining, which it is, but I didn’t expect it to be so motivational and affirming. I loved her on Saturday Night Live and Parks and Rec (I’m from Indiana and back in my journalism days I covered the parks board for a small town…the show is so spot on it’s scary sometimes!) and I love, love, love the work she does empowering young girls. I’d jump at the chance to have dinner with her!
- You have just been crowned leader of a small island nation. What’s your first official act?
Forging trade and immigration agreements with as many nations as possible, and then opening our borders to refugees who need a bridge between their home countries and where they’d like to be. We could be a sort of halfway house where refugees could apprentice to learn marketable job skills and build language skills before immigrating to one of the countries under our umbrella of partnerships. I would also outlaw cilantro. Because yuck.
- Which of your characters is going to Vegas with you and why?
Well, the characters from my Dropping Anchor series would probably be the most fun. Ethan and Niall (Island House) would know how to do Vegas in style—I imagine they’d fly us there on a chartered jet. Clare would spend her time picketing strip clubs and interviewing women to make sure they weren’t being mistreated. I’d have fun watching Luke (Finding Home) keep a tight leash on reformed playboy Ian, and I’d probably hang out most with Warner and Frank (Playing House) because they’re the most grounded of all the couples and would totally be on board with eating our way through all of Vegas’s foodie restaurants together.
- What are you wearing right now?
Anyone who has met me won’t be surprised to hear that I’m wearing a dress and heels. It’s not just for conferences—that’s Bru in her natural habitat, too! I’m at work and I’m wearing a burgundy wrap dress, navy tights, and brown knee-high boots because fall has finally fallen in Indiana—it’s the beginning of October and we’re finally saying goodbye to the high 90s. That called for a boot day.
But the day this posts? I’ll likely be wearing jeans, a superhero T-shirt under a cozy sweater, and whatever ridiculous, glitter-and-sticker-covered paper hat my daughter has gifted me with for my birthday dinner because while the calendar mandates I turn 38 on Oct. 10, it can’t make me do it with dignity. *g*
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Book blurb:
Moonmates exist, but getting together is going to be a beast.
When Adrian skipped his “werewolf puberty,” he assumed he was—somehow—human. But he was wrong, and he’s about to go through his Turn with a country between him and his pack, scared, alone—and eight years too late.
Dr. Tate Lewis’s werewolf supremacist father made his Turn miserable, and now Tate works for Camp H.O.W.L to ease the transition for young werewolves. He isn’t expecting to offer guidance to a grown man—or find his moonmate in Adrian. Tate doesn’t even believe in the legendary bond; after all, his polygamist father claimed five. But it’s clear Adrian needs him, and if Tate can let his guard down, he might discover he needs Adrian too.
A moonmate is a wolf’s missing piece, and Tate is missing a lot of pieces. But Adrian is up to the challenge.
Book buy links:
Preorder from Dreamspinner: https://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/books/camp-howl-by-bru-baker-8876-b
Author bio:
Bru Baker has been writing for Dreamspinner Press since December 2012. She believes in Happily Ever Afters but she almost always makes her characters work to get there. She and her husband live in the Midwest with their two young children, whose antics make finding time to write difficult but never let life get boring. Most of her books are written from the sidelines of their various sports practices.
Author contacts:
- Website: www.bru-baker.com
- Blog: www.bru-baker.blogspot.com
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/bru.baker79
- Twitter: www.twitter.com/bru_baker
- Email: bru@bru-baker.com