Z.A. Maxfield

Happily. Ever. After.

Ohmygosh

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I just discovered The Long Way Home is a Kindle Edition at Amazon!  I have a Sony eReader which I only purchased a week before the Kindle came out, what rotten timing!  It’s not that I don’t like my reader, it’s just that the Kindle sounds so much sexier.  I’m a Kindle Edition, Rawr.  Kiiiiiiinnnndle, like ‘light something on fire’.  Hmm…

Don’t forget you can still be one of the first folks join my Yahoo Group, here, so you can tell everyone you knew me when (I wasn’t a homeless old woman living in her car and talking to statues. 😉 ) I might have mentioned that I’m having a drawing on January first and everyone will have the chance to win a signed print copy of Crossing Borders, and eBook copies of The Long Way Home and St. Nacho’s.

I Do Anthology

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I’m delighted to announce that my short story, “Tango and Temptation”, was accepted by the team of writers who were making the decisions for the charity anthology “I DO”, spearheaded (and I don’t think that’s a metaphor, I think she really has a spear, 😉 ) by Alex Beecroft.  This book will be released in February by MLR Press, and all the proceeds will be given to Lambda Legal to support marriage equality.  

Alex is such a terriffic person and a wonderful writer.  I wish I had all the names, but I know some of my favorite writers are involved which makes me feel like I was picked for the cool kids team at school. When there’s more to follow up with on this story I’ll be sure to share it.  

Yes, now you know why all those YouTube tango embeds…

You can see from the ‘Freebies’ page on my website that marriage equality is a cause dear to my heart so you can imagine how delighted I am to be able to participate in this way.   

Hey! This just in… for those of you who have been following the Freebies Uber Couple, Barry and Ethan, sometime before Christmas Eve, I’m going to share the story of their first Christmas together, in “The Cursed Noel”.   

Their love was new and the boys were poor!  Ethan’s family had disowned him and Barry’s wanted him home for Christmas.  Ethan was surly and declared that they were a family and didn’t need anyone else, trying to make Barry choose. Barry was understanding until he had good reason to think Ethan might have made other plans.  Christmas 1978: Karen Carpenter is singing ‘Merry Christmas Darling’, and everyone is still dancing disco, and Ethan’s plan to wrap his lover in beautiful music almost causes the whole thing to end there and then.

Look on my website in the next couple of days as I add to the Barry/Ethan stories, and Merry Christmas!
Oh, and yeah, still **twirling** and still #1 at ARE, don’t know if by the time this loads I’ll still be there though!

My day in the sun!

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I woke this morning to discover, alas, that my day in the sun is over.  Still, considering I never imagined in a million years I’d ever make the top ten of ANYTHING, at all, getting to number one at All Romance Ebooks for twenty-four hours was more than fun.  

Did you ever have one of those days when every news headline from “Jellyfish Gone Wild” to “California Plans to Control Emissions” just cracks you the hell up?  Or a simple misreading of something or being interrupted makes them seem funny?  Like “Protect Your Most Valuable Asset“.  

My family is putting up Christmas lights, and naturally, all four of my men are screaming at each other.  It’s kind of that time of year.  “Shut up, don’t know you know this is a dang joyous family event?!!”  During the annual lighting of the house, my daughter and I hide in my bedroom like the family Frank.  I’m sorry, now, that I didn’t write a Christmas-themed story.  I am sure to rectify that for the coming year, because I like Christmas and have always made an effort to make it as special as possible.  Now that the children aren’t little anymore that has become harder, what with everyone wanting to go everywhere with their friends and liking their music better than carols.  It’s becoming more difficult to involve them in family activities that don’t have to do with them getting cash.  

It’s fun to remember though, back to my own childhood, that when my parents were saying the same things about me I wasn’t gone, I was just different.   

So, tomorrow, the TREE.  Yep.  This will mean housecleaning and possibly cookie baking.  In the mean time I have finished the rough draft, (actually this time I think I really did) of the sequel to St. Nacho’s, and next week I will be working on my one other WIP, ePistols at Dawn and then, perhaps, I can submit them and spend Christmas doing something else besides worrying about work. 

And for Aidara because Christmas just wouldn’t be Christmas without Korean boy bands or colorful scooters…

This is my favorite…

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This is probably my favorite scene in any movie about dance, ever, although the scene in Strictly Ballroom, where our hero slides on his knees across the floor in the final Paso Doble probably comes in a close second.

I love this movie, Shall We Dance, but I’ve only seen the Japanese version.  I should probably watch the American version, but it’s a movie with such a quintessentially Japanese mind-set that I can’t imagine it translating.  I can see that you could make an American movie about a shy guy, or someone really repressed letting himself blossom on the dance floor, but the element of ‘otherness’ that is almost seen as perversion with regard to a man dancing with a woman who is not his wife doesn’t have a cultural equivalent here.

I recently wrote a dance story, and I’m subbing it for the I Do Anthology, Alex Beecroft’s brain-child, which will be a charity anthology with the proceeds going to Lambda Legal.  I have little hope of it making it in.  First off, it’s too long.  Longer than I planned.  Big surprise there.  I’m a wordy person.  Who knew? 😳 Second, and most alarmingly, it has no sex in it.  At all.  What the heck was I thinking?  Not that they wouldn’t take my story because of no sex, but that it just isn’t my usual style to write a romance without showing the long-awaited coming together of my protag and love interest.  So it being not my usual style is probably a problem.  But it proves that I actually do have more than one style.  I’m going to put a couple of paragraphs as a sneak peak in my Yahoo Group, just for giggles, because membership has it’s privileges.

For the record, I am now #6 on the All Romance Reader top ten best sellers, here, but I seem to have dropped off the list of reader rated books all together leaving me to believe that it was a fluke, or a typo, or one of life’s cruel hoaxes… *Sighs*

I’d still like to take the opportunity to thank everyone who has read my books and been so kind, and to invite you to check out the free short stories on the website (which means click on the little blue linky thing on the bottom if you’re reading this on LiveJournal, navigate around and leave comments or questions here or anything else you like.  You can join my Yahoo Group both on the About Me page of my website and on the Contact page.

Thanks again for reading!

I WON!

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Okay, so you don’t really win anything.  It’s more like, I BEAT IT!  But then I think, no, given what I write, perhaps that’s not the wisest choice of words out there either.  Whatever it is, sound the trumpets, let the festivities commence, I have completed my 50,256 word, and while I still have a way to go on the novel, which I’m trying to complete before midnight on the 30th, I have completed the NaNoWriMo challenge.

Now I’m up for a good cup of tea and to try my hand at a short story for Alex Beecroft’s Manthology, I Do, in support of Marriage Equality.

Happy Thanksgiving all, and for those not reading this in America, Happy final days of November, gird your loins for the holidays, and may all your challenges be as fun as NaNoWriMo!

I Have New Cover Art!

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I couldn’t wait to share this!  It’s the cover of my new novel, “The Long Way Home”, coming soon from Aspen Mountain Press…

Isn’t that cool?  My daughter is making me a book trailer for it, which will debut RIGHT HERE on my blog as soon as she gets it done.

In the meantime, here’s an excerpt:

The Long Way Home
Z.A. Maxfield

Ever since the accident that cost him his job on the Seattle police force, Kevin Quinn has been living with psychic abilities he refers to as the ‘gift that keeps on taking’.  His attempts to use his talents to help the police have met with limited success.  Yet, when teenage boys start going missing from the beach cities of Southern California, Kevin gets on a plane.

Connor Dougal has every reason to believe all psychics are fakes and charlatans.   He’s still numb from the disappearance of his first love, a boy who went missing ten years earlier.  Everything he aspires to is a direct result of that tragedy, even the acquisition of his detective shield.  The irony of having to babysit Kevin Quinn is not lost on him.

These two suspicious men must develop trust and respect for one another to solve the case and, on the way, maybe fall in love.

*****

“Wait, back up… Carl wants to see me at the office?  Again?  Crap, that can only mean one thing.”  He sighed, knowing it was the beginning of the end for him.  Carl would have him brief the investigators and he’d be mocked and ridiculed,  “What’s the Mary Liz?”

“My dad’s boat.  You know, you’re not very observant.  It’s written right there on the stern.  We’re going to spend New Year’s Eve in the harbor, and probably hook up with other like-minded water-enthusiasts and party.”  He got the cheesiest chili fry seconds before Kevin grabbed it.

“I’ll have you know I was on that boat, not looking at it from behind,” he slapped Connor’s hand when he went for the next one Kevin wanted.

“I thought you had the all-seeing eye though, Kev.”  Connor smirked.

“You’re trying to distract me from the sure and certain knowledge that I’m going to be the main course at the unbeliever’s buffet Carl is holding tomorrow.”

“You don’t know that for a fact.  Anyway,” Connor slid his now shoeless foot up Kevin’s bare ankle.  “Is it working?”

“Not yet,” said Kevin, “but I’ll bet you’ll escalate if I resist, so I’m resisting with every fiber of my being.”

“Ooh, then let the games begin.”  Connor smiled a wolfish smile and took a large bite of his burger.  The man did have lips, Kevin thought, that were to die for.  Connor licked them as if he heard Kevin’s thought out loud.

“You live here, let’s go dancing,” Kevin said suddenly.

“What?” Connor asked around the straw in his shake.

“Let’s go dancing, someplace we can touch in public and get all hot and bothered.  You know anyplace?  I haven’t lived here in a while.”  He watched the flush creep up on Connor’s cheeks.

“Do I get to drive your car?”

“What?” said Kevin.  “My car?”

“Well, you know, I do know of some places… but I’d only take you if you let me drive your car.”

“Well, you are a sworn officer of the law,” said Kevin.

“And, I have two eyes, which almost makes it seem like I could drive better, doesn’t it?”

“I am going to let that go… if you don’t let me go for the rest of the night,” he said, finishing up the last of his shake.

“What will happen to my career, I wonder, when my brethren in blue see me with you, tomorrow, blushing like a schoolboy.”  He dropped a napkin by his plate.

“Connor, I’m so sorry,” Kevin said, “I didn’t think.  Maybe we should just call it a night, huh?”

“And miss the coolest ride in town?  And an opportunity to drive your car?”  He picked up the tab, leaving money and a nice tip.  “Not a chance.”

* * *

Lights flickered and the boom-boom of the dance music blasted away all conversation in the club Zigazig when Connor and Kevin entered.  The cover was light on a Thursday, which was good, but apparently since it was the winter break at most schools and universities, the place was crowded with college age boys and more than a few half-dressed young women.

Connor, he noticed, appeared breathless and uncertain, so Kevin muscled his way to the bar for two Coronas, and handed him one.  It wasn’t like he could reassure him with words, he couldn’t hear himself think, so he took him to one of the tall tables, and just stood by him, brushing him with his body lightly in time to the music while they drank and checked the place out.

It didn’t take long watching the other couples dance for Kevin to realize that they weren’t doing the Texas two-step.  Not long after that, his body was reacting, asking him to jump into the pile of people rubbing each other and playing in the throbbing, shifting, and anonymous crowd.  He took his time finishing his beer, and let Connor watch the dancers, wondering if the eroticism of their movements was having an effect on him too.

Kevin was standing behind Connor a little to one side, when he lightly slipped an arm around his chest and moved in to sway behind him.  Connor put an arm up over his shoulder to cup Kevin’s head and moved with him, rocking back against him to the beat.  Kevin pulled him to the dance floor and they continued their dance there.

Kevin held Connor close to his body, noticing the minute changes in his breathing, the rapid heart rate, the hint of a flush that was stealing over his cheeks.   Connor seemed sensitive to touch, to the heat radiating between them as they circled slowly together.  Kevin liked the taste of Connor’s skin, the way his hair smelled, and the way he sighed and leaned in, presenting his neck.  Kevin could see the pulse ticking on the long column of Connor’s throat, and wished he could mark him there.

“Mmn,” Connor moaned as Kevin grasped his hand, interlacing their fingers. They left the dance floor and found a small table away from the speakers where they could almost hear each other.

“You dance even better than you cook,” said Connor, accepting another beer.  “It’s been forever since I danced in a club.”

“Me too, people didn’t always dance this nasty did they?” he asked, earning a double take from Connor.

“Where’ve you been?”

“I don’t know, I used to think of these places as more of a means to an end, you know?  I spent more time out in the parking lot.  I guess that’s bad, huh”

“Well, not good, really.”

“If it’s any consolation, I’ve spent the last five years playing ball with my dog.  Tonight I just wanted to go somewhere with you where I could look at you and want you.  Someplace we could flirt.”

“So you brought me to this den of iniquity?” asked Connor.  “With all these dry-humping barely post-pubescent hotties?”

“Um, as I recall, you brought me here,” Kevin reminded him.

“Right.  I forgot.  Well, be that as it may, Kevin,” Connor looked stern, “this may backfire on you.”

“Why?” Kevin was almost afraid to find out the answer.  He took a sip of Connor’s beer, just to wet his lips.  He hadn’t ordered a second so he could drive.

“Because I don’t want to be arrested for sucking you off in an open car,” said Connor, and Kevin did a classic spit-take.

“My car has a top,” Kevin said. “It does.  Have a top.”

Connor laughed at him, and pulled him back on the dance floor, “You, I’m afraid, aren’t going anywhere soon,” He wrapped both of Kevin’s arms around him.  “You have mad skills, and I am only now discovering what they are.  We are here to dance until one of us caves and throws the other against an alley wall.”

Kevin practically had to shout for Connor to hear him.  “Are you issuing a challenge?”

Connor nodded.

“Sucks to be you tonight, little man,” said Kevin tossing his jacket onto a chair next to the bar.  He didn’t care if he ever saw it again.  His man wanted to understand the power of dance, and it was well within his ability to show him.  “Just don’t blame me if you can’t walk out of here, and know up front, that I don’t do bathroom stalls.”

surprise

What she said…

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