Lost and Found : Blog Tour – LYLBTB Advent Event 2013

December 5, 2013 by Pip

First, let me give a big shout out to the posse at Live Your Life, Buy The Book. I had the very great pleasure of meeting Barb in the US at GRL and we had so much fun! I am really grateful to be able to spend time here, what a great blog! Lots of really good information here, I got king of caught up reading…

I thought we could do a Ten Things blog post today. I recently read a little known facts post about an author and I decided to see if there was anything interesting or obscure in my life worth knowing about me.

Everyone is a mixed bag, right? So here, in no particular order, are ten things you probably don’t know (and maybe don’t even care) about Z.A. Maxfield.

• My very first volunteer job was in the Transcendental Meditation center in Long Beach, California. I answered the telephones. I remember my first day there so very clearly. I don’t know why they even let me do the work because I was probably only about thirteen at the time. I was wearing a homemade, pink dotted swiss party dress my mother made for me with knee socks and platform shoes. My dress had some kind of fetching braid sewn onto the square neckline. My mother kept pulling it up, so my budding décolleté was covered. Yeah. No reason to assume I was the weird kid or anything.

• I got my first paying job playing ragtime piano in a pizza parlor. I got to wear one of those straw boater hats, a vest and a skirt. I wanted a pocket watch. You’ll find my desire for a pocket watch made its way into the book Lost and Found. I guess it’s not unusual for writers to fulfill their fantasies in this way. It’s probably also not unusual to name your antagonists after the girl who tormented your daughter in her formative years. Probably not unusual at all… Mweh, heh, heh…

• There’s a great story going around the romance writing conference circuit that I got my skirt stuck in my pantyhose and wandered out into the revolving tower bar at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles with my delicate bits to the wind. There are several versions of the story, but my favorite is the one in which my dear friend Belinda McBride saves me by some really cool act of wire fu, yelling “Nooooooooooooo!” in slow motion like the hero in a martial arts film. That story is true, all of it, even though every time we get together it evolves a little. Sooner or later, I’m sure we’ll all be fighting off grizzly bears, and my exposed granny panties will be long forgotten. But not soon enough for me.

• I get author crushes. I mean, really, like…sit at an author’s feet and totally fangirl them, bigtime, blushing author crushes. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE. (Because I’ve probably stalked you.)

•  I turn fans into friends, ‘cause that’s how I roll. The very first person who ever fangirled me in public is Aurora, followed closely by her best pal Librarian Kate. I will never forget how you made me feel (so nice!) and I will cherish you forever. P.S. Aurora. I missed you so much at GRL I cannot even tell you. Next year Chicago. Be there or I will hunt you down. (And I mean that in the nicest way.)

• Probably everyone knows this, but I’m the mother of four kids including twins. It’s not like a deep dark secret or anything but I put it on this list because it’s my kids who dared me to try my hand at writing. They were my first inspiration, and my best audience (for the non-smexy bits) and my daughter, who is a Lit major at UC Santa Cruz, is also someone I can count on to help with craft. Being a mom is mindboggling. I wake up every day grateful for the job.

• This is also not necessarily a little-known-fact: I met my husband at The Rocky Horror Picture Show on Halloween. You’re probably thinking that explains a lot and you’d be right!

• Apropos of marriage, when I first got my Facebook account, I didn’t know that marital status was something people announced like, TA-DA! I didn’t know that when you change your status it goes all over the world in like… twenty seconds. So, one time I was goofing around and — to tease my hubby — I switched from “married” to “It’s complicated”. If marriage isn’t complicated, I don’t know what is. ZOMG. How was I to know so many people would react to that? Since then, I have left it at “It’s complicated” because I don’t want my status change to trigger wedding gifts and cards and congratulations. But yeah. Married.

• I used to enjoy sewing a lot. My favorite was making costumes for my kids. I probably had a thousand yards of different kinds of fabric, along with a great sewing machine and serger in my garage when it burned down. I haven’t got the heart to buy a new one, but I miss it. I have no time for crafts except for word-smithing these days. Oops. Gotta check my fiery forge for an adjective for how it felt when all my crafting things went up in flames. Eviscerating. That’s a good word.

• My favorite quote used to be “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”  It was supposed to be Ghandi who said that but it turns out, that’s a quote manufactured conveniently out of things Ghandi very nearly said. Just as the quote, “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you imagined,” is supposed to be by Thoreau. Turns out that’s made up from this passage in Walden, which I learned from op-ed contributor to the New York Times, Brian Morton. He says he looked up the passage, from Walden “I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”  And now I can’t stop thinking about all the things I ever believed anyone said, and whether they actually said them at all.

• Bonus Round! An eleventh thing you now know about me… MY WHOLE LIFE APPEARS TO BE A LIE.

About the Book

 

B L U R B

Lost: one dog and two men in need of each other.

Found: love.

RV resort security chief Ringo never believed in love at first sight . . . until he saw Gavin playing his sax on the beach for the tourists. But their on-again, off-again affair—even counting all the great makeup sex—doesn’t come close to the relationship he wants. All he really wants for Christmas is a commitment from Gavin.

Instead he discovers that Gavin has had surgery without telling him, so he lays down a relationship ultimatum while Gavin recuperates. Complicating matters even more, Gavin’s beloved dog Bird runs away, and Gavin blames Ringo for the disappearance.

While Ringo throws every resource he has into finding Bird, he learns deeper truths about Gavin—how hard it is for him to trust and how little faith he has in love. Maybe if Ringo can find Bird, he can salvage Gavin’s faith. Maybe this Christmas, they can all find each other.

You can read an excerpt or purchase “Lost and Found” HERE. Remember, when you purchase “Lost and Found” in either ebook format, which you can find HERE or in the print anthology format, which you can find HERE, you’re helping to support the mission of the Ali Forney Center.

Available for purchase at

About the Author

Z. A. Maxfield started writing in 2007 on a dare from her children and never looked back.  Pathologically disorganized, and perennially optimistic, she writes as much as she can, reads as much as she dares, and enjoys her time with family and friends. Three things reverberate throughout all her stories: Unconditional love, redemption, and the belief that miracles happen when we least expect them.If anyone asks her how a wife and mother of four can find time for a writing career, she’ll answer, “It’s amazing what you can accomplish if you give up housework.”

You can find ZA Maxfield at 

            

$20 Gift Card to Riptide “Lost & Found” Playlist (3 winners will be selected)

Open Internationally

Presented by :

Annnnd another Giveaway!!

Have you lost or found anything that was either heartbreaking to lose? Or incredible to find? Tell us about it and you are into the Secret Santa part of the Advent Event, where we have TWO copies of this story, “Lost and Found” by ZAM – not the entire Riptide anthology. Winners will be announced on December 30th. Good Luck!

Note : this is separate/additional to the Blog Hop Rafflecopter draw – you can enter both! In fact you definitely SHOULD enter both. 🙂

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