2014

February 2, 2014 by Z.A. Maxfield

Today’s Sunday Brunch Blog has been moved to next week on account of FOOTBALL! I finally got my entire family interested in watching the commercials…ER…big, important game with me, and we’re spending the morning making chili and whatever else those guys want to eat. That’s right. You heard it here. It takes massive bribes of food to make my men watch football.

Am I the only one who wants to watch the damn GAME around here???

**crickets chirping**

This weeks questions is for the readers!

What’s your Superbowl Game Day routine? Do you have special foods you like to make? Do you watch just for the commercials? Do you take the opportunity to go shopping while the mall is empty?

Or like me, do you imagine watching your heroes pull off all that dirty, sweaty equipment at the end of the day so they can grab a hot shower and get warm!!! Oh, how I wish I could offer them all a cup of hot cocoa because the game is going to be so gosh darn cold!

Stay tuned for your regularly scheduled Sunday Brunch with my author pals Next Week!!!

Musing about Muses

June 12, 2013 by Z.A. Maxfield

I have this guilty pleasure thing with BBQ places. At home I drink all kinds of healthy freshly squeezed vegetable juice and green smoothies and eat whole foods, but when I’m on the road, I have a positive weakness for barbecue places. One of the best things about Kansas City wasFiorella’s Jack Stack Barbecue, which seriously? Amazingly tasty. Another guilty pleasure was Pappas in Houston, where I took in some barbecue with my son and the Houston Comicpalooza gang. (More on that to follow.)

So I was on the road yesterday on my way to pick up my daughter from school, and hit up a Famous Dave’s. I asked for a table for one. I had my kindle, and I was reading Mary Calmes book cause yeah, who can resist a book with a motorcycle racer on the cover. (Heart of the Race)

I don’t exactly know how the subject came up but my waiter asked me what I do, and I said I’m a writer. He was delighted. He writes, he’s been writing since he was a kid, and has even been published.

But lately, he said, he has had a hard time feeling inspired.

I’d just come from an RWA meeting a couple days before, where Elizabeth Boyle talked about moving out of your comfort zone so it struck me that I had a bit of advice I could offer, especially having heard her talk, because I’m not the only one who would offer it. (Mentors, in fact, have offered it to me.)

Muses are all very well and good. They’re like a lot of convenient things. Like napkins and cell phones and cars. It’s a wonderful thing to have them. They make life a great deal easier when you need them. But when they’re not available, it’s not an option to say well, too bad, I don’t have that, I can’t therefore wipe my face, call my mother, or drive to work. When these modern conveniences are unavailable, one must Make Do.

Muses are often unavailable. It’s unrealistic that in one’s long tenure as a writer, the muse will remain seated coyly waiting for you to ask her to dance every morning. It’s especially unrealistic if say, life has called and you’ve had to attend births or deaths or graduations. You’ve raised children. You’ve undergone colonoscopies or MRIs. In fact, you’ve had to attend any number of events at which the muse is not happy to be a plus one, like unfulfilling day jobs or changing tires or waiting in line at the DMV.

These are the times when a writer places his or her butt in the chair and writes anyway. Because writers knows one thing for certain. They have words. Words don’t belong to any specific entity. A writer can arrange them any way she likes, she can stack them up and knock them down. A writer can use all caps or all small letters and he can assume as he fills the pages, that if he doesn’t like what he’s written, he can hit that magical delete key and they will all go away. We’re free to a-muse ourselves.

To become a writer who always has words, a writer has to be using words, all the time.

Writers write. Period. Full Stop.

Professional writers know that on average, they must write a certain number of words daily to make books happen, whether or not those books are a success. Writers stay focused on words. They stay in the moment. The don’t look at past successes and they don’t borrow future problems.

What happens is that eventually, the words themselves become the goal.

The plaything.

The shiny bauble.

The writer says, hey, look there, I’ve said something interesting. I’ve created something new to me. I’ve begun something I can finish as long as I keep going because it really is that simple.

A writer takes all the qualifiers out of his work ethic and simply assumes he will write, whether or not he feels like it.

Does this mean writers don’t schedule much needed breaks, attend family functions, or go on hiatuses where they don’t write? Is taking time off the kiss of death?

No, of course not. It wouldn’t be much of a life without those things. Every professional needs down time. Sometimes it takes longer to get back into the swing of things, into the routine of writing, but that’s true of anyone who’s been away from the job. It takes time to get up to speed.

I guess what I’m saying — the advice that I offered my waiter was — the professional writer takes responsibility for his words. She knows they don’t come from outside her. They come from within her, she owns them, and she can’t afford to wait for inspiration. A professional writer must work with or without it.

Given that, there’s never a time when a writer has to stare at a blank page.

A writer simply writes.

And I can assure you, as anyone who has ever met a muse knows, the best way to get a muse to hang around is to show you could be having fun without her.

Time Passages

May 17, 2013 by Z.A. Maxfield

When I was graduating from high school in 1978, the song Time Passages by Al Stewart was on the charts. I love that song so much. When you consider that album and the popularity of Stewart’s 1976 “The Year Of The Cat” my entire high school life was scored by two albums. Disco was just beginning to come along and suddenly, Saturday Night Fever was everywhere. I had the only boyfriend in the entire school who could swing-dance well, although he dumped me before prom and I had to scramble to find another date.

I’m thinking about all this today, because my son had his senior choir concert last night. I charged my phone, because while I have a video camera, I don’t really know how to use it. I actually own three different cameras. Unlike my dad, I never could get the hang of being behind the camera, distanced from the life I’m living by metal and plastic and glass. I never had a knack for filming what my family was doing because I preferred to participate.

My dad used to set up the cameras and make us wait upstairs on Christmas morning while he fiddled with lights and reflectors and when we opened our presents — because his camera recorded no sound, he directed us, “Give me some more surprise, honey.”

I don’t really think I have a value judgement to add here, I don’t think he was less involved, or less invested in us as kids than I am with mine. He preferred to capture things, he wanted the reassurance that they wouldn’t disappear, while I have a pretty terrific memory and I believe, even with the best intentions, you can’t really hold on to anything.

So anyway, of course, my phone ran out of space just before my son marched onto the stage in a military coat, singing the Enjolras part of the One Day More song from Les Miserables. Which made me cry anyway, as it always does. I only say this to illustrate how life works. I had charged my camera, uploaded my pictures, but alas. Sometimes good intentions just aren’t enough.

But I guess what struck me most about the evening, besides the great music our small suburban high school puts out, is that time passes, whether you like it or not. When my son was eighteen months old, he went to Montessori preschool. I mostly put him there because I could work in the office, get a break on two kids’ tuition, and we’d all get something out of it. He went in the early mornings, and came back to me at naptime. My daughter Zoe who was four at the time, had been going since she was two and was turning into a first rate reader.

That year they did a Christmas program, and the under twos all got Jingle Bell Bracelets they could rock out with while singing Jingle Bells to a prerecorded track. My son didn’t want to leave me, and he put up a fuss, until I told him while he was up there I was watching, and at the end, I’d give him a special sign to tell him I love him, I’d snap my fingers on both hands and then give him the thumbs up.

I gave him that same sign, automatically, after his number from where I was seated in the front row.

I know what you’re thinking. How poignant, she still does that, she still remembers it and probably someday he’ll really appreciate it. Cause that’s what I was thinking. I was thinking, yeah. Wow. I have surely come full circle.

Last night, after the finale, The Impossible Dream my son Max who was sitting next to me nudged me and said, “Hey mom, did you see, he gave you the sign.”

No, I had not seen. But now I know he did it.

Years go falling in the fading light
Time passages
Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight
by Alistair Ian Stewart

RT 2013

May 12, 2013 by Z.A. Maxfield

It takes me about a week to get my legs back underneath me when I return home from RT. I flew into Kansas City on Tuesday, April 30th and met up with some of my dear friends, people I only see once or twice a year but who have become so close to me through email and Twitter and Facebook they feel like family.

Yes! That’s me in the middle, in the bronze colored skirt. And Yes! I will be having a word with my hairdresser about his love of the Asymmetrical Fringe. In fact, it’s possible that this characteristic, that defining flop of red hair over one eye that I sported in EVERY SINGLE picture of me taken at RT will become the title of my next standalone novel.

You wait!

Oddly enough, when I’m looking through it, it’s in no way quite as daunting as when someone is looking at me. WHO KNEW???

Here’s a selfie of me and author Belinda McBride, (Belle Starr, Blacque /Bleu, and An Uncommon Whore) when we got there. Just off the plane, no makeup for me…

I miss Bel so much between conventions. We get together when we can, and since we both live in California, I get the opportunity more than I do, say, with Lynn Lorenz, who’s my sister from another mister in Texas.

RT gives us the opportunity to catch up, talk to readers, dole out swag to the fans, and make trouble in cities where the local PD doesn’t (yet) know our names.

OH, who am I kidding. I was in bed by ten most nights. We started off with the PIMP Your Badge event again to kick off RT in style, a workshop with all kinds of bling to tart up your convention badge.

I was on several panels, like this one, the very first panel exclusively about m/m Romance at any RT, ever.

That’s left to right, (WRITE, haha, get it? Sorry.) Damon Suede, Me, Belinda McBride, Tara Lain, and Amy Lane.

Yes, our panel got as irreverrant as you might imagine it did. I was so grateful to be included here, as well as on a different panel with Damon, Heidi and Marie Sexton called From Brutes To Suits about the evolution of the romantic hero in literature. It was priceless hearing Damon talk about Rapey McRapersteen, the classic alpha hero of the eighties, to whom no meant you are cordially invited, clothing optional. Thank heavens for evolution, huh?

I also participated in panels on craft and attended costume party hosted by the Rainbow Romance Writers chapter of RWA (Pic at the top. No, really. It was a costume party.) Check out these lovelies!

Seriously. That FRINGE. My next novel is going to be about a group of solidly left-handed libertines in an ambidextrous world…

One man, locked in a death spiral with society, drummed out of grade school for his inability to say the pledge of allegiance because his very heart lay within his left hand…

One man, whose career as a juggler was destroyed before it was even started…

One man, for whom the words righty tightly, lefty loosey formed the framework of a lifetime of sexual misconduct and despair…Assymetrical Fringe, coming soon…

Okay. Maybe not… 😯

And finally, my best picture, where I wasn’t a writer at all, but a total, squeeing, out-of-control-and-probably-kinda-frightening fangirl:

That’s me with the inimitable, unbelievably brilliant and talented Laura Kinsale, who is my favorite romance writer ever.

I’ve read and reread her books for twenty-five years now. She never fails to delight me. NEVER. Every character she creates is so real they feel like they’re going to leap off the page. Every scene is so vivid it’s like watching a film.

I never in a million years thought to find Laura Kinsale at this event. She’s been a little elusive lately. When I saw that she was signing, I practically hyperventilated. The fact that this is the first year I wasn’t signing at the Saturday event (because they couldn’t get my books) turned out to be a good thing.

Laura Kinsale is so brilliant. And she turned out to be very kind! The Prince Of Midnight is getting released as an audiobook within the next couple of weeks. If you want to swoon, I mean really, really swoon, run, do not walk, to purchase it!!

I keep looking at the audible website, waiting. Now? *taps foot* Now? *taps foot*. That book is to this day, my favorite romance novel of all time and I’ve read thousands.

To show how Laura Kinsale sticks out in a reader’s mind, I participated on a panel at RT (RT 2013, only days before I met Ms. Kinsale) with Belinda Mcbride, Amy Lane, and Kate Pearce called Broken Wings. The topic was why we love damaged heroes. One of the things we decided to do for this event was name our favorite broken hero — that one unforgettable character who broke our hearts and never left us.

I said S.T. Maitland, from the book The Prince of Midnight, and Kate Pearce said Jervaulx from Flowers From The Storm. That’s two readers-turned-writers, talking about their favorite characters of all time, who independently selected Laura Kinsale characters from two different books. Fifty percent of a panel of people who know damaged dudes when they see them. Who’ve gone on to write some damaged dudes of their own. Who cannot get these characters off their minds.

I can’t recommend Laura Kinsale’s work highly enough. I bow, bow, bow before the master. I never dreamed I’d get to do it in person… Biggest thrill of my reading life. Wow. Fangirl moment. Rockstar moment. Best RT moment, ever.

Never mind that it took me a week to recover from all that hard work and travel. I had the best time. For my writer friends, thank you so much for including me in your panels and parties, I always try to bring a little something fun to the table.

To the readers and aspiring writers, I hope I left you with a little something to think about, a laugh or two, and some useful swag!

Thanks to everyone who made the trip and the conference possible!

I love you all, from the very bottom of my heart.

~ZAM~

On The Glam In Philadelphia

August 6, 2011 by Z.A. Maxfield

Happy Friday. You never get too old to glam it up. At least that’s what I say. I’m living proof that inside the heart of every aging femme fatale there’s a six year old girl who just cant WAIT until she’s tall enough to see over the makeup counter.

To that end, I’ve endured some facials, some deforestation, some exfoliation, some dyeing and cutting and fluffing and the foolishness of makeup I would ordinarily never wear to a cockfight. I will either look like um… a well-groomed romance writer or a worst celebrity mug shot. And the best part is… if you’re in Philadelphia next weekend, you can find out which!

I’m going to be with a lot of my fellow authors and friends in Philadelphia — Aug 11 through the 13 — for the Author’s After Dark conference. I’ll be reconnecting with some old friends, writers and readers alike, and I hope to be meeting up with new ones. If anyone is going to be in the area, the authors of MLR Press will be at Giovanni’s Room on Friday, August 12, 2011, from 5:30 to 7:00 p.m.

I’m going to be signing, giving out swag, going on a ghost tour, and checking out The City of Brotherly Love, and I hope I get the chance to see you there!

If you’re attending, be sure to come and say hello ~