Z.A. Maxfield

 

Due to the amazing kindness of Jessewave and her author spotlights, I have had the pleasure and privilege of answering some interview questions and pressing the cyber-flesh of some of the people who read my work. I had a blast answering Wave’s questions, she really has a knack for getting people to open up. You can read the answers to my interview questions, *cough, cough and see my MLR author pic cough, cough* here.

There’s also a wonderful review on her site for Physical Therapy By Jenre, who was most kind, and you can read that here.

And I thought it would be more fun if there was a contest, cause it’s way fun to WIN STUFF so you can comment to enter a contest for one of three signed print books, here.

Physical Therapy got a review from Scandalous Minx at Literary Nymphs Reviews and I was thrilled and gratified by her assessment of the book. She gave it 5 nymphs and a beautifully written review. Seriously in places I thought it was better than the book maybe…

She said, “Physical Therapy is a clear example of how the underdog can always rise up, that love takes no prisoners or excuses, and true friends love you unconditionally. If you enjoyed St. Nacho’s, you don’t want to miss this fantastic sequel.”

And you can read the rest of the review, HERE.

I am delighted to share the cover art for ePistols at Dawn with you, my July release with Samhain Publishing.

Here’s a little peek:

 

ePistols at Dawn

 

Kelly stood looking at the clock tower. Jae broke the silence. “Originally, I thought maybe we could go to the observatory.”

“Oh, that would be—”

“We don’t have to.” Jae took his hand. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to, I don’t know, gird your loins to come and see me. I don’t want you to dread coming up here.”

Kelly quirked a small smile that was genuine and dazzling and then whispered, “I think it far more likely I’m going to dread going home.”

“Yeah?” Jae used his remote, but instead of entering the car Kelly leaned against the door and smiled up at him in invitation.

“You make me feel like a doll,” Kelly said on a breath, his eyes on Jae’s. For all Jae had been thinking about Kelly’s eyes, he found things in them he hadn’t noticed before, tiny gold and orange flecks inside the hazel irises and coal-colored rings around them. Long, dusky eyelashes caused smudgy shadows when they swept down, either to blink or to hide his thoughts. Kelly lowered them right then and a delicate flush stained his cheeks.

“Do I stand too close?” Jae asked. “Loom too much?”

“No.” Kelly swallowed, and his Adam’s apple bobbed. The first pleasant rush of arousal flooded Jae’s body. For once he didn’t want to act on it immediately. He didn’t want to shatter the delicacy of the moment.

“I can think of someplace to go. Someplace quiet.”

Kelly smiled. Jae could see what he thought. He thought Jae was suggesting someplace where they could act on what Jae was sure they both wanted.

“All right,” Kelly murmured with an expression that defined surrender. Jae opened the door for him and helped him in, sliding a hand down his arm and around to help him buckle up in a gesture that became an excuse for brushing touches on skin that rippled and got gooseflesh with anticipation. Kelly made the most of the opportunity to touch him back.

“I have just the place.” Jae closed the door and walked around the back of the car. While Jae drove, Kelly kneaded his shoulder. Jae had placed his coat in the back of the car. With only the thin fabric of a black T-shirt between his skin and Kelly’s fingertips, he felt the warmth of the man’s hand as it caressed him. He pulled into the parking lot of the Kyoto Grand Hotel, and to his surprise, Kelly asked no questions, just allowed himself to be led.

It was as if Kelly didn’t look at anything but him. That unnerving and frank gaze was serene as he waited for Jae to tell him—to show him—what was going to happen. There was a waiting stillness in him that Jae was willing to attribute to wisdom, to age, to tranquility, to fear. To anything, really, but indifference. When Jae put his hand on the small of Kelly’s back and led him from the elevator out into the garden, he felt the heat coming off Kelly in waves. Not indifference then, far from it. Submission.

Jae had a moment’s regret that he hadn’t taken Kelly straight home to his apartment.

“Wow,” Kelly breathed.

“Yeah.” Jae began down a path rich with mounds of blooming pink azaleas and sprays of ornamental grasses, dotted by bonsai trees. They walked slowly, savoring the scents of late summer flowers and soil and water, which fell in sheets from a waterfall and collected in placid pools.

“Oh, good, good place.” Kelly seemed to examine each and every plant and rock eagerly as he passed the large chunks of rosy-colored stone imported from Japan. Beds of sand had been meticulously combed into swirls and patterns, like south sea island tattoos, evocative representations of the ocean. “You could hardly believe anything like this existed if you were simply down on the street looking up.”

“I come here when I need to think.” Jae didn’t mention that he’d come here once or twice to think about Windows, and how to draw out the writer and expose what he’d thought was the woman who’d mishandled his sacred text.

“It’s wonderful.” Kelly let him lead the way. “I like to garden. At home, I have a kind of gazebo in the middle of mine, where I like to sit. I’ve found over the years that it’s important to me.”

“You garden?” Jae couldn’t equate the act of gardening with the seeming grab bag of phobias that manifested themselves in Kelly. “Isn’t that kind of…”

“Dirty? Messy?” Kelly laughed. “I had a friend growing up whose mother had a crippling case of OCD. She had to bleach anything, and I mean even my friend, before she could touch it. It was actually kind of sad. But for some inexplicable reason she used to eat at fast food restaurants whenever I went to visit.” Kelly shook his head. “It was as if whatever made her phobic about germs hadn’t quite presented itself logically and said, here, germs are everywhere. She would go for miles to avoid touching a child’s toy, but drove through a chain restaurant for lunch without giving it a second thought.”

“So what you’re saying is it makes no sense?”

“Yup.”

“How do you stand it?”

“The very fact that it makes no sense is how I stand it,” Kelly explained. “It’s like…being allergic to something, only you don’t know what it is…or maybe it changes every day. You go through all the motions, and you think, well, crap. Here we go again.”

“You’re very well adjusted for—”

Kelly barked a laugh. “For someone who is so obviously not.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Jae said, taking Kelly’s hand and leading him along the path beside the sand ocean.

“It’s all right. Sometimes I feel so old. I didn’t always have this, but it didn’t happen overnight. The panic attacks came on gradually, and at first…well. I don’t want to talk about that. I just got some help dealing with the physical manifestations and worked on trying not to avoid or anticipate the events.”

“That’s almost…heroic.” Jae stopped him. “I doubt if I could be that sanguine about it.”

Pain flickered briefly in Kelly’s eyes and Jae wondered if he’d accidentally said something wrong. It was there and gone so quickly he might have believed he’d imagined it if Kelly hadn’t tightened his grip on Jae’s hand.

“That’s the joke. Everything extraordinary that I’ve ever done has occurred entirely in my head.”

Jae touched the back of one of his fingers to Kelly’s cheek. “Surely not everything.”

“Well—” A loud cough from someone on the path nearby caused Kelly to begin moving again, and Jae was sorry Kelly never finished his thought. They spent the rest of the early afternoon sitting in the rooftop garden, and then they wandered over to the section of Little Tokyo where they explored the shops and found another Japanese garden next to a community center. They walked around that for a while. Kelly sat on a stone bench near a lotus pool. Jae joined him there, enjoying a lengthy companionable silence.

Eventually Jae’s stomach rumbled loudly and they both laughed.

“Hungry?” Kelly watched schools of tiny fish darting back and forth in the water.

“I am.” Jae sighed, getting up.

“What a spectacular place to spend time, thank you so very much.”

“It wasn’t the most exciting afternoon.” Jae took his hand again and began to lead him back the way they’d come. “I’ve been known to show a date a better time.”

“Different,” said Kelly. “But I doubt better.”

“Thank you.”

Kelly turned to him, looking up. He had to shade his eyes as the afternoon sun slanted over them. “Well. Not if you didn’t think so. It might have been less than exciting for you. I’ve been known to bore more outgoing people to death.”

“I don’t ever think I could find you boring. You take such interest in things. It’s fun to watch.”

Kelly smiled as Jae led him back to the car. In the dark and isolated cool of the parking garage, Jae pulled Kelly in and kissed him, smoothing down the crisp white fabric covering the smaller man’s torso. He didn’t stop until his hands cupped each of Kelly’s tight ass cheeks. He lifted Kelly up to his toes in an incendiary embrace, from which they eventually broke apart, dazed and panting.

“It’s official, I will never find you boring,” Jae stated shakily, taking Kelly’s hand. To his surprise, he felt a sharp tug of resistance. He turned. “What?”

“I don’t know.” Kelly glanced back the way they came.

“Problem?”

“Kind of.”

“Can you tell me?” Jae put his hand on Kelly’s shoulder, experiencing a protective surge somewhere in his chest, which felt tight and expansive all at once.

“I just…” Kelly’s eyes rose to meet his. “I wanted to freeze that. Get it right here.” He fisted the front of his shirt. “So I would never lose it.”

“Kelly…”

Kelly began moving toward the car again, catching Jae’s hand as he went. He shot Jae a smile over his shoulder that was at once sweet and sheepish. “I wanted to hang on to that a little longer, is all.”

 

I got a great review from Emmyjag at LiveJournal for Physical Therapy, and I don’t mind telling you I was worried about what she’d have to say about it. First Emmy really enjoyed St. Nacho’s which is great, but then there were some expectations that I could pull it off a second time… er… I dunno. Anyway, I was also concerned that it’s kind of a emotional read, and Emmy’s not known for her great love of the emo character.  Yes, sometimes my guys get a little… well emotional. 

Anywhoo, I couldn’t have been more pleased or proud when she posted this review where she said:

The overall impression is of a solid, believable, relatable story of two guys who capture the hearts of readers. Physical Therapy is full of win on many fronts, and had me cheering for Jordan, Ken, Jordan’s mom, and the rest of the town. Definitely a recommended read for fans who loved St. Nacho’s as much as I did.

You can read the rest of the review here.

 

Thanks Emmy.

I’m thrilled to say that I’ve got my first review of Physical Therapy, from Elisa Rolle, and once again I really believe she just nailed exactly what I was trying to say. Elisa is the woman who reviewed my very first book, Crossing Borders, and the thrill I got when I saw that she’d taken the time to read my book hasn’t ever left me.

I’ve enjoyed reading her blog, and her Reviews and Ramblings at LiveJournal, and get a great many book recommends there that eventually (though it doesn’t put a dime in her pocket) cost me money.

Elisa’s blogs are an encyclopedia of romance literature, both m/m and m/f and she always has something fascinating to read about the writers, cover artists, and history of romance books.

Of Physical Therapy, she wrote:

It’s hard to be disappointed by a Z.A. Maxfield’s book, she has a faithful and growing readership, and I believe that this one is nicely up to the previous one, St. Nacho’s, maybe not so angst like that one, but still a book that will move the sentimental reader. 

For the rest of the review you can go HERE.

 

 

Meraehl

 

Let me know what

 

format you prefer.

I’m holding a contest for a free copy of my newest book, Physical Therapy, which is the sequel to St. Nacho’s. All you have to do to enter  leave a comment. That’s it. Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy. Tomorrow, May 12, 2009, at midnight EST. 

I’ll put the names into a hat, and have one of my kids draw them out. The lucky winner will get a free copy of Physical Therapy, the eBook, from me! Along with a chirpy little congratulatory and probably painfully grateful little thank you email. Run, don’t walk to my website now!!! (If no one does this I’m going to feel like an idiot and start opening email accounts just so I can write to myself to make it look like I have takers, and you don’t want me to go through all that trouble do you???)

Comment on any one of the Physical Therapy posts to be entered. Be sure to check out my baby girl’s vid. She’s awesome!

 

Guess what I got for Mother’s Day?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rPSPWvko-M[/youtube]

Z.A. Maxfield

Physical Therapy

http://www.loose-id.com/prod-St__Nacho_s_2__Physical_Therapy-936.aspx

Available May 12, 2009

When Jordan Jensen moves to St. Nacho’s he has one goal in mind.  Starting over.  He wants to reconnect with best friends Cooper and Shawn, yet is uncertain of his welcome.  He has the skills to get a job, but isn’t sure any prospective employer can get past the time he spent in jail for an alcohol-related death. He’s past the worst part of his life, but knows it will haunt him forever. Jordan plans a life of quiet service.  One thing he knows: finding love is entirely too much to ask.

 

On the first day of his new job, Jordan meets Ken Ashton. Ken has every reason to hate Jordan for his past and only one to seek him out.  For some reason he can’t explain, Ken needs Jordan’s touch. Ken finds healing within Jordan’s warmth and strength. Jordan wants to give Ken everything he needs. Without entirely understanding it, Ken and Jordan develop a powerful emotional and erotic connection, but Ken must help Jordan find the faith to trust it. Unexpected help comes from the people of Santo Ignacio–and the town itself–a place where Physical Therapy can be a path toward spiritual healing and love.

 

Ken barked a laugh and oh, shit, how I liked the sound of it. I was so glad to be the guy who made it happen. “You’ll love the living room; it has a sweet fireplace. The kitchen isn’t big enough to hold a spaghetti pot.”

“Can you afford to buy a house?” I asked. “Think about if you don’t have a roommate, or if one stiffs you.” He raised his eyebrows at me. “For the rent.”

“Ah. Well, I have money from the insurance settlement, and that will make my monthly mortgage just about…nothing.” His eyes lit up for a minute. “Did I mention this house is going dirt cheap? There’s still the cost of fixing it up. I’ll play the invalid card and get lots of small town compassion in the form of free labor.”

Little by little, his enthusiasm persuaded me. There was no reason that he shouldn’t buy himself a house if he wanted one. No reason he shouldn’t want to fix it up and live there or rent it or sell it or burn it down. We walked to the living room together, and something scuttled across the floor. Lots of somethings. Burning the place down started looking like a really good idea. I tried hard to keep myself from reacting, but my skin was crawling so I shuddered.

“Yeah, it’s…lived in.”

“I wonder if it’s haunted too. That’d be like hitting the real estate trifecta, wouldn’t it? It’s falling down around your ears, it’s infested with…crawling things…and when you least expect it, the walls will drip blood.”

He watched my face intently. “You like it!” he said after a second or so, looking triumphant. “You like it and you’re covering it up with disdain.”

“How could you tell?” I turned away. I was still trying for disdain, but if the truth were to be told, I actually almost cracked a smile. “The place is completely hopeless.”

“So am I,” he said softly, coming up so quietly behind me that I wasn’t even aware of it until I felt his breath on my neck. His solid presence at my back sparked a host of erotic images in my mind that made my breathing quicken. Yeah. Yes. If he’d put his arms around me and pushed me to the ground I’d have gone willingly. When he spoke again I got goosebumps along my arms. “But I think you like me too.”

I froze. “That probably isn’t a good thing.”

“It is for the house,” he pointed out. “It is for me.”

I stepped away on the pretext of studying the fireplace closely, leaning over and tugging at the vent in the flue to see if it worked. Things I didn’t want to even think about fell onto my arm, feathers and great balls of fur and dust, and I jumped back in dismay, knocking Ken off his feet. We both landed on the hard floor, and I hope it was my imagination that I heard a kind of crisp, sickening exoskeleton crunch sound under my ass.

“If I don’t get out of here right this second I’m going to start screaming,” I said.

“Is that a no?” I stood and pulled him to his feet. On what I suspect was the phony pretext of catching his balance, he grabbed for my shoulders and pulled me flush against him. For a minute I was too stunned to react; by the time I got my bearings, his arousal was as obvious as mine. I hung there, caught between two impulses, grinding against him, all the while eyeing the open front door as my only means of escape. When he lowered his head to kiss me I thought of a thousand reasons why I wasn’t good enough for him and broke contact, leaving him puzzled, I guess, in the middle of the living room alone.

Once I was back in the fresh air, I took a deep breath. I wasn’t going to mention what happened if he didn’t, but I wasn’t going to be able to stop thinking about it either. He maneuvered down the porch steps carefully and not for the first time I wanted to call the irony police and turn myself in. Ken was hot. He burned me up with those blue eyes of his and then played in the ashes. I was totally fucked.

“Ken I think moving in with you is the worst idea I’ve ever heard for a lot of different reasons. And that house is a total nightmare.”

“So the answer is no?” I hated the way he didn’t look me in the eye. I wanted him to trust me. I wanted him to laugh again. I wanted to answer all of his questions, both spoken and implicit, with a resounding yes.

“I want to think about this. It’s still a long way from even being yours. You need to think carefully about it as well. I can’t promise I’ll move in here with you. I can’t promise that in the long run you’ll want me to. But if you get this house, if you move in, and if you ask me to, you have my word that I’ll work as hard as I can, as often as I can, to help you make it habitable.”

“Promise me you won’t sign a lease with anyone else in the meantime,” Ken said suddenly. “At least give us a chance.”

“Us? You and the Norman Bates Motel there?”

“Yes. We’re both fixer-uppers and we both need friends.” We stood looking back at the dismal little place for a minute. I sneaked a look at his face. In profile it was strong and resigned and hopeful. He clenched his jaw, and I could practically see the wheels turning as he made plans in his head. This was Ken attacking a college course or hitting a slider or climbing the tallest mountain in the world. I knew right then he could do anything, and I would probably kill to be by his side when he did it.

“I am your friend.” I put my hand on his arm, just below the place where his crutch cinched his forearm. The muscle was rock hard, and I felt a little thrill hit me, traveling from my fingers right to my dick, as his muscle flexed when he began to walk.

“That’s a start.” He headed for the car. “I’ll make all the necessary calls. You just get a tool belt, preferably one of those leather jobs that hangs low on your hips, a hardhat, and a pair of work boots.” He unlocked the car door and tossed his crutches into the back seat. As he climbed up next to me, he turned on that impossibly engaging smile again. “And it would be twice as nice if that’s all you wear.”

“You haven’t even told your family yet, have you?”

“Nope.”

“Then don’t start counting your naked handymen yet. I have a feeling you’ll run into more opposition there than you’ve bargained for.”

“Probably. But it’s a funny thing. Sometimes when you feel like you have nothing left, you also realize you have nothing to lose.” He pulled up a few minutes later in front of Day-Use, and just let his SUV idle to let me out

“You can always lose more,” I said grimly, but I put my hand on his. “I am your friend.”

“I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear it,” he said sincerely. His eyes told me he was thinking about kissing me again. “Really, really glad.”

I left the car and he pulled out of the parking lot. He didn’t look back or wave, but for some reason I watched him until he was completely out of sight. It was hard to think clearly when I looked at his face; it was always such a mixture of hope and dismay, dignity and playful self-deprecation. Sometime, I wanted to ask Izzie about his state of mind. I wanted to ask Izzie about a lot of things. Had she known he considered himself gay? Is that why she had told him I was? Was she matchmaking?

I went back into the gym and went right to work, giving the men’s bathroom a good disinfecting and wipe down. I was using bleach wipes on the weight benches when a group of firefighters came in to work out with free weights.

I left them to it and looked for Izzie to see if there was anything specific she wanted me to do. I found her in her tiny office working on her laptop. As I got closer, I heard the unmistakable sounds of the game “Portal.”

“Giving the brain a workout?” I asked.

“If you must know –” She broke off and stared at me for a whole minute before I looked behind me to see if there was something there.

“What?” I asked her.

“What, what?” She was still staring.

“You’re staring at me.” I crossed my arms. “Are you trying to freak me out? ‘Cause it’s working.”

“Of course not,” she said, humming a little. “I was just enjoying your aura.”

“Right, my aura.” I still wasn’t ready to admit that I believed in such things.

“You are currently emanating a rich cerulean blue with spikes of vibrant pink. Just so you know.”

“And what does that mean?” I asked, neatly caught by curiosity in general and a certain tendency to believe the worst, specifically.

“I don’t know. It’s a color combination I often associate with people falling in love. And, oddly enough” — she looked back at her computer and grinned like a stupid person — “I saw it just today on someone else… What was his name again? Oh yeah. Ken Ashton

For a while now I’ve been writing back and forth with my yaoi-loving kindred spirit, author Katrina Stauss, because I’m a fangirl of hers. It turns out she’s one of the nicest people I’ve met on the web. So when she told me she’d gotten a copy of Drawn Together and was reading it, I did a little hand wringing, worrying whether it would measure up. Imagine my delight to find out that she’s put it on her blog as a recommended read! Thanks so much Katrina! You can read her recommends, as well as all about Katrina herself, HERE.