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~

Family Unit Is Back!

March 22, 2012 by Z.A. Maxfield

I have a funny story about writing the book Family Unit. Originally, I wanted to tell the story of mature men. I enjoy writing about teens, or college age students, I love describing firm six pack abs and the desperation of youth. But for once I wanted to give a shout out to mature singles, men who might be seen by the modern dating market as a little past their prime.

I talked to one of my best friends about it and we compared notes on the minute changes we’d noticed in our bodies — the ones we could chalk up to aging. My hair was greying, I needed reading glasses. When my friend (who is five years younger than I am) and I are in the yarn store, I have to hold a skein more than an arm’s length away from her so she can read the dye lot. My skin is changing. I noticed I had pigmented and unpigmented spots on my hands. I don’t consider myself old, or rather I do, but I don’t think of myself as decrepit. I created the characters in this book and gave them all my age-related characteristics. I described those changes in what I thought was humorous detail and the number one response I got from readers was Wow! These guys are so OLD. It isn’t something I feel like I should respond to or anything, but I don’t see myself as all that old! The fact that I’ve had four kids may have fast-forwarded my aging clock a little, but anyway, this is a romance for the rest of us — those of us who aren’t in the first blush of youth, because as I said in the dedication to my dear friend Mark C:

Let’s just say I believe no heart is safe from Cupid’s arrows as long as it’s still beating.

Family Unit

A retired marine, Logan is methodical and conservative. Richard is a liberal pacifist who is pathologically afraid of guns. Yet the minute Logan sets eyes on Richard, his heart turns over like an old car engine and it isn’t long before his motor is revved and Richard is in the driver’s seat—even if it seems like each man is driving a different car.

Richard Hunter is parenting his grandson, and the kid— Nick—has had it rough. Richard vows nothing will stop him from creating a loving and stable home. Not even a tempting, red-hot relationship with a very attractive man. However, when Richard looks into Logan’s blue eyes it’s tough to stay focused. It’s never easy to become a family, what with a temperamental eight-year-old, disapproving outsiders, and outright extortion attempts.

But when push comes to shove, both Logan and Richard are committed family men who want to make a loving home for a little boy who needs them. Together, they’re planning to form a Family Unit, and they won’t let anything stand in their way.

~*~

Family Unit is now out as a slightly revised e-book. You won’t find it’s very different from the original version, but I cleaned up some language and got a new cover from my pal Lex Valentine. I’m even going to release it for the first time in print as soon as possible, so stay tuned.

You can purchase it right now, at Amazon HERE.

Welcome NaNoWriMo!

October 26, 2011 by Z.A. Maxfield

Hello, and welcome to November, the one month of the year when Sisyphus ceases to be a myth and becomes a way of life for thousands of people, all over the world.

As October (I am convinced it’s NO coincidence October is also Marie Callender’s any whole pie for 7.99 month) winds to a close and the goings on of early fall: soccer, back to school, and Halloween appear in the rearview, it’s time to dust off that determination, power up that imagination, and buy an extra large thermal coffee carafe because NaNoWriMo is once again upon us.

Like all great holidays, Nano comes with a time of reflection, the promise of redemption, and total chaos. The outcome is uncertain, the reward less than promising, and it requires a great deal of dedication and work. Last year I got about six days into it and pffft. Nothing. I wrote not even a greeting card’s worth of prose or poetry. I sailed into december late on deadlines and cranky as hell. Well for me.

This year, I plan to start out late on deadlines and cranky, and see if it goes any better. I’ve only got one contract left for the year, which I know I will have finished by the time that clock ticks midnight on October 31st. After that, who knows?

All I can say is, I’ve done it once, and I plan to do it again. Anyone who is doing Nano is more than welcome to email me, zamaxfield @ zamaxfield dot com, and play along. Come race me. Come cheer or jeer, whatever baby. Just don’t be full of regret on December first because if you never play, you never win!

A little Nano Music Maestro if you please… Cause who doesn’t like Marky Mark And The Funky Bunch. (And who doesn’t need to kick off NaNoWriMo with the knowledge that even bad career choices have a logical end and a sometimes brighter future.)

HOLY SH*T

May 22, 2011 by Z.A. Maxfield

Very little that I’ve done puts me over the moon (beside my family). I mean, I live and work in a small Orange County suburb. I drive a soccer/jazz choir/orchestra mother-of-four car. I wear stretchy active wear pants. I know you didn’t really want to know all that, but it sets up how perfectly amazing this thing, this impossible thing that happened this morning makes me feel.

Remember when I found out from a librarian at that they have St. Nacho’s in some branch of the Chicago Public Library? ZOMG, that was a great feeling. Libraries are sacred!

Well, I discovered this, this morning:

I know it doesn’t look like much, but this is A Different Light Bookstore’s current homepage, and it has me in the form of Crossing Borders snuggled right up there next to Armistead Maupin. SQUEE!

I dunno. Stuff like that just KNOCKS my socks off. First of all, A Different Light Bookstore! That’s a fabulous bookstore. I couldn’t get arrested in there when I went to San Francisco to check it out the first time. They wouldn’t even order a book for me, going so far as to tell me that it was out of print. Which it wasn’t. I went back to the hotel room and bought it online at Amazon that afternoon.

ADL employees weren’t known, like Cecily from The Importance Of Being Ernest, for the sweetness of their disposition. Or maybe they just didn’t want to deal with women? The clerk was distinctly chilly to me, maybe because I had my adolescent son in tow. I was in San Francisco that time to Chaperone my kid’s GATE field trip. We stayed the weekend and decided to brave Castro because I’d read the ADL ad and wanted a copy of this book:

This is an awesome read, by the way.

At any rate, I came home to find it waiting on my doorstep, quickly fulfilled by the Amazon Wonder Elves. I fight the entity that is Amazon, (I picture I’m like one of those Apes at the beginning of 2001 and it’s the monolith) but I can say that when I went to ADL, a brick-and -morter bookstore because they purported to carry this item on their shelves, they sent me away empty handed and feeling like I ought to stick to sunning myself under the blue flashing light at K-mart. I also came home feeling that as a woman and a barely published author I didn’t have the right to walk into that store, and that I had probably never try to go back, even though at the time their best selling book was J.L. Langley’s The Tin Star.

This isn’t sour grapes by the way, because as proprietors of their store, they have a right to maintain any attitude they want. There are plenty of exclusive hair salons, for example, or clothing stores that would exclude me as a customer, (Pretty Woman, anyone?) because their cachet depends on keeping people like me out. That’s sad, but it’s true. It’s also entirely possible I caught the sales clerk on the day his dog threw up on his master’s thesis, his grandmother had a car accident, someone stole his motorcycle, or he was nursing a broken heart and his young lover’s disapproving mother looked JUST LIKE ME. Seriously. Who knows why things happen?

I never imagined I’d sell there, although I know they now carry my books in print at the store as well, or at least someone I know bought ePistols At Dawn there. And I never imagined I’d see myself all curled up with a brilliant author like Armistead Maupin, who I’m sure woke up this morning to the same ad and said, What the F*&K? I’m next to some soccer mom with a word processor and nothing better to do than write romance novels??? It’s all good, folks. Just a delight for me, as a writer, to see my work in that context.

And when you add to that the fact that my kid’s a cappella jazz choir sang the National Anthem for the Chivas v. Galaxy Soccer match last night (Galaxy #23 is hella hot, by the way.)

It’s a glorious day to be me!

You can check out the books at ADL, HERE

What Is Everyone Talking About?

December 29, 2008 by Z.A. Maxfield

The I Do Anthology

An anthology of stories by authors dedicated to Marriage Equality. All the profits from the book will go to to Lambda Legal Fund.

I am so thrilled to be a part of this, and humbled too, by the number of fine writers who have donated stories. (If you see Alex Beecroft, who was the one to propose the idea, that’s me hanging on her coattails and her every written word. Write like the wind, Alex!)

I Do will be available in January. Printing costs and distribution services have been donated by the phenomenal people at MLR Press.

This Anthology defines “Labor of Love”, and I’m so proud!

TABLE OF CONTENTS??

The Lindorm’s Twin Brother by Tracey Pennington??

Desire and Disguise by Alex Beecroft??

The Roaming Heart by Charlie Cochrane??

Outed by Clare London

??Lust in Translation by Storm Grant

??Making memory by Lisabet Sarai??

Swansong by Sharon Maria Bidwell??

Finally Forever by Jeanne Barrack??

Code of Honour by Marquesate??

Tango and Temptation by ZA Maxfield??

The Mistake by Pat Brown

??Holy Macaroni (and Cheese) by Allison Wonderland??

The Snow Queen by Erastes??

Better than beautiful by Zoe Nichols and Cassidy Ryan

??Semi-detached by Emma Collingwood??

Rules of the Game by Mallory Path

??Templeton’s In Love by Jerry Wheeler??

True Love by Moondancer Drake??

Salad Days by Fiona Glass??

Wedding Announcement by Lee Rowan

Jiminy Christmas!

December 24, 2008 by Z.A. Maxfield

I’m running out of stupid exclamations. But really, I couldn’t be more shocked. I was getting my daughter’s friend a book on Amazon and decided to check out… well… MOI, and there I was… # 10 on the gay and lesbian bestseller list for Kindles. Here

This changes hourly, and then, when I showed my husband I was #2. Okay. I’ve been sick for a few days, and now I dunno. I’m just so amazed to see myself there at all! *gasps*

Okay, I’m seriously working on that Ethan and Barry story to have it all wrapped up and under the tree for you by tomorrow night, when even silly google-wanking writers (oh, you knew that’s what I was doing, didn’t you?) will be tracking Santa’s progress with the offspring and searching the sky for a little red-nose-reindeer.

I couldn’t have a better year without accidentally losing four sizes and finding the money for a new wardrobe in the attic. Everyone of the people at my publishing houses and on my flist and in my yahoo group and with whom I’ve had reason to correspond has become very dear to me. Thanks everyone, I’ll post again tomorrow, but right now, I just wanted to say wow. And Happy Holidays.