And the winner is!

And the winner is... Tabatha Hansen!

Thanks so much to everyone who participated in the blog hop! I enjoyed each and every one of your responses! It's always my pleasure to share my little corner of the world with everyone, so please feel free to stop by any time, you can follow this blog or join my new Goodreads Group I Am ZAM... (yeah. Stuck---->rut) here at http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/76659-zam-i-am

Look for my newest book, Gasp! Coming from Loose Id September 4th: 

Jeff Paxton came home from Afghanistan looking for roots. Instead his pregnant sister talks him into a job babysitting the volatile megastar Nigel Gasp. Nigel is stubborn, needy, and determined to be the center of attention everywhere he goes. Before long, Jeff realizes that something is bothering Gasp, and that keeping him out of trouble might be more difficult than he thought.

Nigel never planned on getting old. He simply assumed a hard drinking, hard partying lifestyle would take care of that. Now that he's turning forty, he's depressed and a little bit desperate. To Nigel, forty seems like a fine age to deposit his DNA and check out while he's still on top.

The last thing Jeff needs is to fall in love with Nigel Gasp. The last thing Nigel expects is a whole new reason to live. But how can Jeff put down roots with a man who is never in the same place twice?

Love can be shocking. Gasp!

I don't suppose I started out with the idea to write GLBTQ literature. The first time I ever really thought about it was back in about 1984-ish when I was going to college and working the phones at a local department store. To amuse myself between calls, I often had a book with me. A friend of mine gave me two of Rita Mae Brown's books, The Rubyfruit Jungle and Sudden Death. I liked the books very much except as an avid reader of romance, I wanted them to have a traditional romance novel ending -- I wanted my happily-ever-after.

The more I read, the more I realized there might be a place for a traditional romance novel with characters who happen to be GLBT. I guess I thought it might be good to write novels where sexuality is simply a characteristic of the protagonist and not necessarily a major part of the conflict of the story.

This was probably a completely naive and half-cocked (no pun intended) idea on my part. It's certainly proven more complicated than that. But I know, I remember exactly how I felt the first time someone wrote a romance novel featuring a zaftig heroine with thick glasses. That was me. And like all people who project themselves into the fantasy of a novel, and especially a romance, it was a pleasure to see myself there.

Of course that's an oversimplification. Life interfered and I went on to have kids and never really gave writing those novels a whole lot more thought -- that is,  until my children challenged me to do it in about 2007. It coincided with my first exposure to manga and anime, to yaoi, or Japanese boylove novels and I thought again, maybe the time is right. At any rate, the time was right for me.

Suffice it to say I love love stories. I love romance, and I believe everyone deserves a happy ending. Gay or straight, young or old, multiracial, multicultural, aliens, werewolves, maiden aunts, or octopus shifters. I am all about the romance, and the happily ever after.

I hope you'll jump around and see what everyone has to offer.

For my contest, one lucky winner will receive a PRINT copy of The Long Way Home! To win, please comment below, and thank you for your support! I couldn't do it without you.

Click Here for your link to the rest of the blog hop! 

http://rainbowbookreviews.wordpress.com/2012/08/22/the-rainbow-book-reviews-blog-hop-is-here/

I See You Shiver

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.

How Can you "Like" me?

Let us count the ways!

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 by clicking on them, 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 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?