Z.A. Maxfield Writes

: zamaxfield; May 15th, 16:33

I fixed my Coming Soon page so it will accurately reflect the books that are going to be released this year. As anything comes up I'll add it along with dates and links.

I'm working even as I write this. I'm delighted with the reception for Grime and Punishment and I'm glad people are taking the characters of story to their hearts. The "Brothers" of Grime are the three owners of the trauma scene cleaning company, Jack, Eddie, and Gabe. They're each going to get their own story. I'm also thinking about a Grime Christmas tale and a couple of free stories featuring Skippy and Kim, and the rest of the Grime Gang.

To Find Grime and Punishment, go to Loose ID, All Romance Ebooks, or Amazon.

my cowboy heart-1

It's also almost time to start looking dreaming of cowboys, because My Cowboy Heart is coming out at the end of August. For some reason I don't see the cover on the Amazon site but here it is -- isn't it cool?

You can take pre-order My Cowboy Heart, HERE

My Cowboy Heart has a sequel, already written, with a planned release in December, tentatively titled My Heartache Cowboy, so stay tuned!.

Last but not least, expect a very California-flavored ZAM Christmas tale, Lost And Found, coming from Riptide. Details on that will follow as soon as I have them.

Tags: what's next

Grime and Punishment Snippet

: zamaxfield; May 7th, 12:09

Current Location:

Current Mood:: accomplished

Here's a little snippet of Grime and Punishment, my latest release from Loose Id:

“You think this is about winning?” asked Jack.

“What else?” Ryan crossed the room, picking his way with more care than he probably would if he’d been sober.

Jack followed just as carefully, because he was stiff from standing in one place for so long. He tore off his gloves and bootees, leaving them on Nick’s bedroom floor. “God, I can’t… Slow down. Ryan!”

Ryan waited at the end of the hall, his face a mask of pale fury.

“What about you?”

Ryan frowned at that. “What do you mean, what about me?”

“Why was your cousin living in the maid’s quarters, in a room no bigger than—”

Ryan’s blue eyes turned to ice. “That’s none of your goddamn business.”

“Did you look down on him?” Jack asked, meaning to chide him gently.

Ryan sucked in a sharp breath. “You bastard.”

Tags: grime and punishment, new releases

It's Time for the GREAT HOLIDAY ZAMFEST

: zamaxfield; December 13th, 2012

Current Location:: home

Current Mood:: bouncy

Join me on my quest to give away books and recipes, make friends, and have fun on the I AM ZAM blog, which you can find here:

DAY ONE:

Wherein Poppy shares her thoughts with her diary:

http://zamaxfield.blogspot.com/2012/12/santa-is-coming.html

Tags: contests, holidays, zam i am

Scriptorial Self-Abuse

: zamaxfield; November 11th, 2012

Current Location:: home

Current Mood:: accomplished

Halloooo NaNoWriMo!

And welcome. It is the eleventh day of November, 2012.

At this point, I should be just a little more than 30% finished with my 50K. Here's where I stand:

16173 / 50000 words. 32% done!

None of this is difficult really, the hard part isn't word count, it's making sense. I'm trying to abandon the mindset that this all has to be worthy of publication but at this point, I'm loath to write simply for the sake of writing. I'm cheating on NaNo, because I have a hard and fast deadline on the book I was writing, so I have to finish it, and I'll add the word count I get when I finish this project up, along with the word count I get from the next one.

My goal is to write 50K this month, on those two projects.

Keep your fingers crossed and look for some contemporary cowboys from me around February and the third volume in the Hours Trilogy right after that.

Yup. You heard me right, partner, I said Contemporary Cowboys

In LOVE.

Coming soon.

Tags: nanowrimo

Bring on the Dancing Cabana Boys!

: zamaxfield; September 7th, 2012

Current Location:: home

Current Mood:: accomplished

And then tell them I need all those boxes opened and the stuff inside put away, please.

HOLY COW. Notes to myself from the move:

Yes you really do have a hundred boxes of books. And those don't count the hundred or so boxes that burned. You can either join a 12-step program or just suck it up and unpack them, because if you don't, you'll fill the bookshelves with new books before you even get out the old books, and that will not make the problem go away.

Yes. You really do have that many shoes. See above.

Two words. Kitchen Gadgets. See above.

This! This is why you had all those kids. See? I told you there was a really good reason. Oh, I know for that first dozen or so years it was an iffy proposition at best, but seriously, you have to love how they've stepped up during this whole house burning thing. They're like a lean, mean moving machine with Quadruple Action Teen Power. They can carry stuff. They've got boundless energy! And they can assemble things. Bed frames, we scoff at you! Electronics? Bring them on. As long as it can be done after four in the afternoon because of school during the weekday and sleeping in on the weekend, they're right there, beside you.

You don't care when you do stuff as long as it gets done, do you? Hear, hear for the family moving crew!

Now, about that dream...

I dreamed I was being tortured by a mother/son team of serial killers. (I know. Dreams don't really make sense, do they?) They put in an IV line and poisoned me slowly for months, but somehow I got away. Then I found out they had my husband! He waited until the man was gone, and somehow, some way, managed to escape death by stabbing the man's mother before she could inject the final, fatal dose. We shoved her into the back of his car (I don't know why) and headed for home, each driving our separate cars.

On the way home, he was stopped by the police, who found the unconscious, stabbed woman in the back of his car and took him to prison for attempted murder. We tried to explain the situation, but of course, we couldn't prove it and there was no one to corroborate our story.

I got him a lawyer and he made bail, and while we were having a brief family respite (I remember there were cupcakes involved) and playing nerd gun wars with the kids, my children's favorite teacher joined us. She and my daughter were having a pitched battle. We were on top of a building, running around on a flat roof and trying to keep our darts from going over the side, out of bounds. Then my children's favorite teacher ran full tilt to avoid my daughter's shots, garroted herself (her head flew up into the air and floated back down like a snowflake and her body went over the side.)

This was all one dream. And you know what? I'm such a narcissist, my first thought (in the dream) at seeing the teacher's head flip end over end and then float gently down to the rooftop, was oh, fuck. I am going to jail. No one will believe that was an accident.

Tags: moving

Really Briefly

: zamaxfield; September 3rd, 2012

Current Location:: almost home

Current Mood:: bouncy

Really Briefly!

Because today is not only the day before release day, it's the day I move back into my house, (today we're moving from the apartment, tomorrow they're bringing back my stuff!) and tomorrow is also the first day of school, *pant, pant* I'm having a party over at my Goodreads Group, HERE

Several authors have joined me on the spur of the moment to add their own ebooks to the prize pile. There's a giveaway thread -- leave a to comment to win. I'll be giving away three ebook copies of Gasp! as soon as I get them, and more lucky winners will be eligible to win prizes from other authors.

For More on Gasp!

Coming Sept. 4, 2012

click HERE

Tags: gasp

I See You Shiver

: zamaxfield; August 21st, 2012

Current Location:: not home (YET)

Current Mood:: anxious

With anticip-p-p-ation.

Yes. I'm a wreck. There are few things more fraught than waiting until the day you can move back into your house after major re-construction. Add that to the fact that I have to replace everything (basically, anything soft like beds and bedding and window coverings or plastic like appliances and things that I stored food in) that might have absorbed the toxic smoke that flooded my house during the fire I'm a little bit overwrought.

And yes. That's a first world problem, I know. I'm a woman who spends a lot of time on her knees being grateful that my life is good. It's actually wonderful. I've been so lucky.

But I'm due to move home the weekend before my kids start back to school. Soccer season has already started, as has X-country. My four teenagers have all discovered a passion--an obsession--for Magic the Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons so it's not at all uncommon to have six to eight teens in our apartment's tiny combination family room/living room/kitchen shouting things like "Die, demon from the underworld!" at the top of their lungs.

The air conditioner works splendidly, thank heavens, as it's been in the upper nineties here for weeks, and yet...one has to keep the windows closed all the time for it to function. See the above paragraph and then imagine the odor generated by eight over heated teens (and a labrador retriever) and you'll know that keeping the windows closed has done nothing for the ambience around here. Still, I'm grateful we're not living in our travel trailer.

I'm also grateful that we have this kind of abundance, and we're not in a tent. I'm grateful we're not living in a car. I'm not complaining as much as I'm full of nervous energy because I'm ready to dig in and roll up my sleeves and return my regularly scheduled life. It's TIME to go back to normal. It's past time.

But seriously, I'm an over fifty mother of four from a fairly conservative background, who writes gay romance novels. When was my life EVER normal???

On the work front, huzzah! I have finished all the housekeeping I needed to do. Here are the books I've re-released as Maxfield Books. These three are titles you may already have already read, but if you haven't, they've been re-edited and updated.

You can find all those books through the usual channels: Amazon, All Romance Ebooks, B&N.

Family Unit is currently Available in print through Amazon, Createspace, and All Romance Ebooks (through off site vendor Createspace.) The Long Way Home will be available in print beginning the first of September. (or sooner, if I can get it done.)

SOME IMPORTANT HOUSEKEEPING!

Because I didn't get my print version completed (until my daughter was able to format it for me, because I'm a typing monkey) Here is the winner of the Family Unit Print Version Contest from way back in APRIL. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. (Sorry for the interminable delay. Prize winners should never, ever have to wait this long!)

Congratulations to: Lisa Lisa! I've sent you an email.

Tags: new, new releases, real life

How do you "Like" me?

: zamaxfield; August 6th, 2012

Current Location:: home

Current Mood:: cheerful

I spent the weekend re-evaluating my promotional situation, and I came up with some good ideas, so if you're a ZAM fan, and you would like all the news that's fit to print, I thought I'd let you know know a couple ways you can be "in the loop."

First off, you can add this banner to your blog or webpage with a link to mine at www.zamaxfield.com

Okay, I know that's asking a lot. But if you'd like to exchange banners with me, I'll add yours to my links page. Just email me.

Also, I have a Yahoo Group, which it used to be really busy (when I had more time to be talkative.) Hundreds of people have come and gone, some are talk a lot and some lurk. I really do read each and every message on that loop, though, so if you want to see my news or share your own, if you want to talk about books or writers, or share your favorite recipes that's where you can do that. I really like it when people read a great book and they let me know so I can read it too.

I want to get back to book chat. I miss it, especially when I'm writing. The funny thing is, a lot of the readers who were on that group became writers and established groups of their own. You GO Zammers! There's plenty of room at ZAM's Cybercafe. Here's the addy:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZAMaxfieldsCyberCafe/

You can "Like" me on Facebook, on my author page at Facebook, on my author page at Amazon, on any one (or all) of my individual books at Amazon or anywhere else. You can follow my blog here at blogger, just push that little orange button, I think but the mysteries of RSS feeds and things are just that to me still. You can follow me at LiveJournal, or you can just drop me a line at zamaxfield at zamaxfield dot com.

A gentle plea, dear readers: Please, oh, please "like" me anywhere you can. That means finding that little "Like" button and pushing it. It does make a difference, each and every time. Plus, it's the only way I can convince my children that I'm not making all this shit up. Also, if you can, agree with the book tags on my books, or add your own, at Amazon. Find out more about tags here. That's a sure and certain way for readers to help authors get more readers.

And I'm sure we all want that, don't we?

I have a Newsletter, which you can subscribe to, HERE.

You can rate me, review me, or "fan" me at Goodreads. One note about that: I never feel I can review books on Goodreads. Part of that stems from the facts that I think authors reviewing books is like political pork, somehow. Or it's a little incestuous. You can follow my reviews but I don't review much, if ever. I started out rating books with the best of intentions, but then I stopped. I thought, what do I know? I just write 'em. I don't even play a literary critic on TV.

Goodreads thinks I've been reading Shoeless Joe for a couple years. Of COURSE that book gets a 5-star rating, but I never reviewed it. I'll be sharing what I'm reading more at Goodreads and on my Yahoo Group, and I hope to hear what you're reading too. I won't share about books that weren't my cup of tea, and I don't really want to encourage criticizing books or authors. I just want to know what folks are reading out there so I can read good books too.

And finally, you can follow my tweets or tweet me at @zamaxfield. Don't worry about having to listen to endless blasts about my day or my lunch or my traffic problems. I'm not very loquacious on Twitter. I mostly use it to announce new books and to point out that I'm standing next to other, more important people at conferences and on trips. (LOVED RWA's literacy book signing by the way. So exciting to ~~stalk~~ meet my long time idols.

So that's it, And hopefully, as they say: That's more than enough about me... how do YOU like me?

Tags: promotion

Through The Years

: zamaxfield; July 24th, 2012

Current Location:: home

Current Mood:: artistic

My latest project, a retooled, re-edited ebook version of the short story serial I wrote about Ethan Holmes and Barry Moffit, is available at Amazon for the low, LOW price of .99. The book includes all the short stories I've been offering for free on my website. 1978, 1988, 1998, 2008, and The Cursed Noel.

For several years, I've shared these stories in an unedited web only version, and it finally occurred to me that it was some of my favorite work, so it deserved professional editing and a nice cover so people could load the entire series onto their ebook readers at one go.

For those of you who have read the stories, they really are a piece of my heart and it might be like a visit with old friends. For those of you who haven't, at this price point it's an excellent way to dip a toe into the Mind Of Maxfield, as it were. Part of the proceeds will benefit the folks working toward marriage equality at HRC, for whom I wrote the stories in the first place. You can find the book at Amazon, HERE