Category: Maya’s Older Posts

Are Jennifer D, comment #25

Tracy D, comment #83

Congrats! Email your address to mayaATmayabanks.com and I’ll get your book preordered for you :)

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It’s been nutty around here for the last two weeks. Finished up the stuff we needed to in order to get our house on the market.  (check)  Went on a hell of a writing binge to get the Scottish historical done (check) Working on edits for a project and and am also writing the third KGI book (Garrett!)

The kids were out of school on Monday, coincidentally the day I needed to be done with the historical. Let’s just say I was up awfully damn late that night. My daughter got sick which sucked because she spent her entire day off feeling like crap. She’s been out of school ever since so today she’s curled up on the couch with me while I work.

Neither of us slept last night (or the night before) so right now, a good snuggle in bed followed by a nap sounds like heaven!

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And no, I do not refer to my daughter. No, my oldest child, the boy, has the honor of that title.  This morning I had to take him to the dentist. Now mind you, I wondered WHY I was taking him in at 8pm on a school morning. You see, his father took him to the dentist last, and so it was his father who was conned by oldest child when asked if they wanted “morning or afternoon”  because in the oldest child’s mind, if he had to miss an hour of school, well surely mom would let him stay home for the rest of the day.

Wrong.

He comes out of the dentist office with half his mouth numb and he gestures dramatically at his lip and says, “I can’t BELIEVE you’re making me go to school like this.”  GASP oh the horrors…

Then he says, in a very hopeful voice, “Can’t this be one of my mental health days?”

See?  Total drama queen.  I didn’t tell him that,  no, this is MY  mental health day which means he can’t  be at home. You know, disturbing my mental health. Because I have work to do and dealing with the Drama Queen is quite exhausting!

So DQ is unhappily at school and I put in a call to his gullible father about scheduling “morning” dental appointments in the future.

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I had a few questions in the comments on the Colters’ sequel thread.  If all goes well and the creek don’t rise, the first sequel, Colters’ Lady, will release in ebook format this coming June.  I do not have a definite print release date yet but it’s looking like early 2012. This is a bit of a longer wait, but my 2011 print schedule is already bursting at the seams.  I could have waited to release the ebook until closer to the print release, but I didn’t want to make readers wait that long after announcing that I was doing the sequels.  So for my print readers, I hope you’ll bear with me.

We’re doing new cover treatment for the original Colters’ Woman and we’ll be doing the cover art for the sequels *soon* So as soon as I have it, I’ll pass it along as well as blurbs etc :)

At the Writeminded Readers Group, we’re having a party today and through the weekend and I’m giving away lots of books, including titles from Stephanie Tyler, Larissa Ione and Jaci Burton as well as a few ARCs of Sweet Temptation. If you aren’t a member, there’s never been a better time to join!  We love to dish books there and our readers always get the first peeks at upcoming releases.

AND, if you can believe, it the carpet installers at at my old house RIGHT NOW and they’re actually, FINALLY, installing my carpet.  It’s been a trial and yesterday afternoon, one my husband’s buddies played the FUNNIEST practical joke on him of all time. I still wheeze when I remember how furious my husband was. To make a long story short, his buddy had a guy call my husband up pretending to be someone from Lowes and told him all manner of things that nearly made my husband burst a blood vessel. I laughed so hard that my ribs are sore today! And my husband has sworn death and destruction and ultimate revenge on his buddy. lolololol

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I posted to the Writeminded Readers Group earlier today that I would be writing two sequels to Colters’ Woman.  The first, Colters’ Lady, will release in ebook this June from Samhain Publishing.  I don’t have a firm release date for the second, Colters’ Daughter, but it’s my hope to have it out as soon as humanly possible.

This is largely due to the emails I’ve received over the last four years of readers who wrote to tell  me how much they enjoyed Colters’ Woman and would I please pretty please write a sequel. Well, it’s because of you all that I’ll be publishing those sequels :)

So lots of love to those of you who bought that first book and took the time to write to me. I do listen! (most of the time hehehe)

*smooch*

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and holy hell where did January go? I usually hate January. For me it’s the absolute longest month of the year and it usually draaaaggss mercilessly.  Apparently January got the whining memo I sent it because damn, I blinked and it’s gone.

The contractor woes continue.  Carpet was supposed to be done last week. House cleaners were due to come in today.  Well, carpet not only wasn’t done last week but won’t be done until the END of this week (I’m not holding my breath)  The guy measuring for blinds didn’t even show up.  Now, I know what you’re thinking. Why do I need a guy to measure windows?  Well, I don’t. I measured. I brought measurements in but oh no, they won’t accept MY measurements. They want their guy to do it. You know, the one who didn’t show up.  And now the housecleaners are pushed back to next week.

At this rate, it’ll be NEXT January before we get all this crap done, and I have to tell you, I’ve spent the last week running back and forth between new house and old house and it makes me grumpy when I sit there forever for someone who doesn’t show up after telling me he will be there at 8:15.  Do I sound grumpy?  I assure you I am as sunny and as cheerful as ever. (Yikes, that lightning bolt was close…)

I wonder if my editors will accept an excuse of “I couldn’t write because I was too busy cursing Lowes”

Works for me!

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As most of you know, we bought a new house and moved over the holidays. Yes, that’s me, the dumbass.  But apparently? I’m not the only moron who moves over the holidays because hello? We couldn’t find a moving truck in a 50 mile radius. Not one. Luckily I wasn’t moving that much stuff.  Years of kids who double as household pets made it necessary for me to say oh hell no I don’t want to move the furniture to the new house….

But I digress

So after moving out of the old house, we turned out sights to preparing the old house for sale.  This necessitated many trips to Lowes.  Many frustrating, eye gouging, howl at the moon trips to Lowes.  My frustration actually started before we moved.  See, Lowes offers installation in just about every one of their departments. You would think that with a store devoted to so much installing that salespeople would…you know…actually know HOW to go about the installation process.  No. Clearly that isn’t handled in employee training. And that’s assuming you can FIND a salesperson to help you, because many departments have no one.  Which then means you have someone from say…carpet…trying to figure out how to sell you an appliance. Or someone from doors trying to figure out plumbing. And that’s only after waiting an hour for them to get to you.

It took a solid week and three consecutive trips to Lowes just to get them to ORDER a wall oven that we’d already had measured and paperwork set up for.  I’m not kidding. And before you ask, yes, we have a Home Depot. I used to shop at Home Depot. But then came the day when I went to buy several ceiling fans. I took them to the checkout and told them I wanted them installed only to be told they don’t install lighting.  OKaaaay. So off to Lowes I went and I sort of got stuck there.

So I went to Lowes after many frustrating “installation” experiences to see about getting carpet and vinyl replaced in the old house.  Sweet Mother of God… After waiting an hour–and again, this was after we’d already had the house measured, all paperwork done–all we needed was to pick out the carpet and vinyl and PAY for it. My husband went to the service desk and asked for a manager only to be told there WASN’T one in the store. On the premises. Anywhere. Niiice.  So he calls the 1800 Lowes number.  They page a manager, who was in the store by the way, and he comes over to me (my husband is still on the phone with 800 Lowes) and I tell him I am TRYING to give you money. Really, I AM, but you don’t want it.  We finally get our stuff selected, we’re given our quote.  They said they might have to add a little to the vinyl for pattern match, so I say okay, figure it out, call me tomorrow so I can come PAY for it. I needed this done in this millenia.

Did they call the next day?  Or the next? That would be no. I finally went back into the store and again, can find NO ONE to help us in the department. They finally get us someone from doors.  He finds a note on the computer to call me about the ammended quote. Nice. No one called. So then we find out the price went up by 30 percent. I’m not happy but at this point, fine, whatever. We pay and go on our merry way.

The next day? Someone calls my husband to inform him that they “forgot” to charge us for something and they were upping our quote by another several hundred dollars.  At this point, my husband lost his mind. It wasn’t pretty. Sufficed to say, we didn’t pay anything extra.

Now we still have whole house blinds to buy. Plus a door.  Plus toilets. And a lot of other stuff, so I tell my husband we’re going to Home Depot because no way in hell will I go back to Lowes (except for lights unfortunately) and wow. We go into Home Depot? Their salespeople actually know how to process installations!  I went to blinds. 5 minutes later, I am done. Then I go to doors and then I go to plumbing. I was at the service desk paying for my stuff in less than half an hour and I told the manager if ONLY they’d have lighting installation, I’d NEVER have to go to Lowes again.

We grudgingly go then to Lowes because I need two light fixtures. I pick them out, we go to the installation desk only to be told?  They don’t do light installation. My husband points to the big ass sign that advertises installation and she hastily amended it to, “Well, we DO, just not “right now” Huh?  So I give her back the fixtures and tell my husband that I am RELIEVED. Because now I can go to Home Depot to buy the lights. We’ll have a contractor come install the damn things and I NEVER HAVE TO GO TO LOWES AGAIN. :))))

See? Happy Ending.

We won’t even talk about the fact that the vinyl guy calls me yesterday (as he’s installing the vinyl) to inform me that they don’t pull up existing vinyl and that it’s a Lowes policy.  Okay, well I understand that, and it’s certainly not the poor installer’s fault, but uhm do you think that ONE of the FIVE people we dealt with at Lowes mentioned this fact?  Even when I told them we were REPLACING vinyl?

So dear, Lowes. You have lost me forever, and I did used to spend a lot of money in your store.  But it would seem that Home Depot is much happier to take it from me.

xxoo

Maya

I know most people dread Mondays. I can’t say that I do. That’s not to say that I don’t love the weekends. I do. But Mondays are always so quiet and for  me it’s like a breather after a busy and often noisy weekend :)

I always appreciate the silence more on Mondays because it comes on the heels of the weekend. By Wednesday or so, I’m usually looking forward to the weekend again and making family plans.  But ah that Monday morning when the house is completely silent and I have it all to myself and I can sit in my office without any interruptions. It’s a beautiful thing!

Today I’m working on the first Scottish Historical, Ewan and Mairin’s story.  I’ll fully admit, I’m was skeered spitless to write these. It’s been a long while since I last wrote a historical and I was afraid that maybe I’d forgotten how ;)  It’s been way more fun than I anticipated.  I’m loving the characters and my thoughts often drift to the second and third stories in the trilogy (I am easily distracted!) But I take that as a good sign that I’m no longer equating the writing of these stories with the outbreak of the plague *g*

How are Mondays for you?  I can remember living for the weekend and just mindlessly passing the weekdays until Friday. I’ve learned to enjoy those weekdays because damn, I’m not getting any younger, and the last thing I need is to wish away more of my days!

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Isn’t she cute? And already so helpful as you can see by her perch on my keyboard…

We’ve had her for less than a week, but I think she’s settling in nicely, don’t you think?

I wasn’t feeling well last night. (Onset of a cold) and I thought a really hot soak in the tub with a book would do the trick. I select my  book, draw my bath, settle in with an ahhhh.  Then I open the book and start reading. Within three pages, I realized by the reference to secondary characters that this was a book in a series.  Since the current book was ruined for me until I determine which books came before it (and go back to read those first) I had to close the book and set it aside.  And of course I was stranded in the bath with no book to read :(

I guess the lesson learned here is to make sure the book I’m picking for bathtub reading isn’t in the middle of a series I haven’t read! Or just  make sure it’s a standalone.

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