Welcome to Z.A. Maxfield's guest blog

Whatcha Reading?

Sometimes I try to imagine my life without Star Trek, Star Wars, Peanuts, ET, Harry Potter, and my current obsession (OMGosh) Burn Notice. (That man can grin.) I think about what it must have been like for my family members who lived before television, before films and radio, some of who were so rural they even lived out of the range of newspaper delivery.

If you go back a hundred years you can pretty much forget most everything I read. If you go back thirty you lose personal computing so you can forget pr0n because I have little or no imagination for that sort of thing on my own. Just forget fanfic, LiveJournal’s weepingcock sporkable erotica community, YouTube, Wikipedia, Google. I’m already hyperventilating.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that without those things, you can forget Z.A. Maxfield.

I try to make a case that my children can understand. “When I was a little girl”, I tell them, “If I wanted to watch A Charlie Brown Christmas, I had to wait until it was on television, which it was, once a year, every year, with commercial interruptions. And if I missed it, woe betide me, I had to wait A YEAR to see it
again.” When my daughter was little, I bought that videotape for five dollars along with a tank-full of gas from Shell, and she could (and did) watch it, every day, all day for what seemed at the time like years.

Okay, I’ll admit that the current amazing availability of stories doesn’t mean they’re all good. Just because you can turn on your computer and find something new to read everyday, so much that you’d never be able to read it in a million lifetimes, doesn’t mean much in the long run, except that for the price of a mediocre
bottle of wine you can go out on the Internet and buy a book by a professional writer about virtually anything you can imagine, or anything you can’t imagine, but want to.

Oh. My. Gosh.

How cool is that? I no longer watch television by choice, but late at night, when I’m feeling the need for a good story I can spin the magical wheel of ebook publishing and find exactly what I want. Instant and gratifying, PayPal-safe stories of high adventure or lowbrow comedy or sex with strangers and no laundry to do afterward.

No guilt required because there’s plenty to read copyright-free if I’m short on cash.

For me as a reader that’s delicious. For me as a genre fiction writer it’s an absolute coup de foudre, a sudden, intense passion for which there is no cure at all. Imagining millions of readers out there just like me: I’m putting the kids to bed, watching the hubby drift off to sleep early because it’s summer and he rises before the rest of us to go to work, and thinking… hm. What shall it be today? And there are millions who aren’t like me. Men and women from a ton of different places with unique needs and desires and tastes, who can go to the library or switch on their personal computers or even use their phones, to read.

You want shapeshifters? What kind? You want vampires? We got those. You want Large and Lovely or BDSM or May-December? M/m, m/f, or m(s) and f(s) in any combination you choose? You want most all ages and stages in life? You want ninja-vampirefirefighter-
loveslaves who had heinous childhoods and fall in love with suburban housewives twice their age? **ahem… ah, yeah, that was me who requested that**

We got that.

We are the wave, baby. We are the new frontier! We are the tsunami that will float your boat, carrying you across a lifetime of instant downloads, UPS deliveries,< and when they finally figure out how to make it work, brick and mortar bookstore purchases for the price of a decent cuppa joe. And we’re not about to replace books, but I’m sure it wouldn’t kill anyone if we replaced commercial television.

How can I not love niche market publishing?

So, as Z.A. Maxfield, the writer, I probably should ask you, gentle readers…

What can I write for you today?

Z.A. Maxfield
zamaxfield@yahoo.com
http://www.zamaxfield.com
ZAMaxfieldsCyberCafe@yahoogroups.com



Contest:

Three lucky person will get one ebook of their choice from Z.A.'s backlist. The three winners are randomly drawn from everyone who leave a comment. So please stop by and say hello or ask a question.