Category: Maya’s Older Posts

Be With Me hit the BGI and BN trade romance bestseller lists and it’s all due to all of you who bought my book. So thank you. I’m not worthy! :worthy:

I’m extremely grateful to everyone who went out and bought the book. My readers rock. :hug:

and okay so there ended up being three, because A. I have three kids and when I asked two of them to choose a number, the other got miffed so I let them all pick a number and B. I have tons of author copies and I need room on my bookshelves for the books I’ve bought and want to read :lol2:

So here are the three winners of a signed copy of Be With Me:

Emily, comment #19
Monica, comment #7
Brandy, comment #29

If you guys will send me an email to mayaATmayabanks.com and give me your mailing addresses, I’ll get your books out to you this week.

Edited to add: I know some of you have trouble commenting on this blog, and I apologize for that. If you’d still like to enter for a chance to win a signed copy of Be With Me, you can email me at mayaATmayabanks.com and I’ll include you in the drawing.

I’m in sort of a mellow, reflective mood. I’m doing some work and I put on some Hagood Hardy which I tend to only pull out when I’m in a quiet and reserved mood. I’m ready for colder weather. It’s funny that as much as I love cold weather that I’d be such a die hard southerner with no desire to live anywhere else. I mean we only get a few weeks of cold weather every year and yet I crave it every single year.

We’re heading out west (West Texas that is) to go hunting in two weekends. We usually go later in the year or early January when it’s colder than a witches tit. Last year I damn near froze to death and I loved every minute of it. So anyway, we’re going hunting for a long weekend and I plan to let my daughter have more fun than a human being should be allowed. She totally showed up her older brothers last year and she’s looking forward to doing it again. Besides, Amy has decided that it’s my job to feed her this year. She’s put in an order for deer meat, and me being the sap er uh I mean good friend that I am, have agreed to slay some deer on her behalf. It’s a hardship but someone has to do it.

I got lots and lots of shiny author copies of Be With Me on my bookshelf, and so I thought I’d give a couple away. Im terrible at updating this blog since I spend most of my time over at Writeminded or on our Yahoo Reader’s Group so I figure if you actually come by here and read this, you deserve a shot at winning a signed copy of Be With Me :lol2:

So I’ll give away two copies and I’ll leave this up until the end of the week or when I get bored with the entry, whichever comes first. Just drop a comment to be entered.

I’ve posted an exclusive excerpt of Be With Me which officially releases today.

Today, everyone should vote first and then go buy books :lol2:

I’m finally making progress on Amber Eyes, which if you don’t know, is the sequel to Golden Eyes. Amber Eyes is about the “lost” sister, Kaya who is mentioned in Golden Eyes. It was slow going for awhile because shit happens and that’s just the way it is sometime :idontknow:

I also had some smoothing out to do on Piers’ story, which is tentatively titled The Tycoon’s Elusive Lover and is book 3 in the Anetakis Tycoons series for Silhouette Desire.

All of which is to say that the release of Be With Me has completely snuck up on me. It’s not that I totally forgot but with NY print books, it’s not like there is one select day when everyone can get their copy and not a day before. Bookstores will often have books out early. Or online sites start shipping them early. There’s never any way to predict when the books become available and I’ve had readers emailing me since last week to tell me they’d found Be With Me. Barnes and Noble online has been shipping the book for a week now. So the excitement over the “official” release day is just semantics.

At any rate, official D day is tomorrow. I really love Be With Me. I like all my books but I love some more than others. Be With Me is one of my favorites. I had so much fun writing it and hated when I came to the end. I just hope readers will like it as much.

Which starts next week and at last count was going to last for three weeks. We have lots of shit to give away and lots of fun to be had by all :whoo:

To get a start on the festivities, I have some fun news. My new agent and I just wrapped up a deal for the next two books in my “Sweet” series with Berkley HEAT. Sweet Seduction (Nathan’s story!) and Sweet Temptation (Micah’s story!) will release in October 2009 and April 2010 respectively. I’m very happy with the way things shook out.

I also got new release dates and delivery dates for my Kelly series that I sold to Berkley Sensation earlier in the year. These books will be mass market originals instead of going the trade to mass market route which means they won’t release in trade in 2009. They’ll release in 2010 as mass markets and will have a close release schedule for the trilogy that kicks off the KGI series :woot:

So it’s been a good day and I get to settle down and do some rearranging in my writing schedule which will be fun.

Now less than two weeks until Into the Lair releases and just a month until Be With Me releases! Fun times to be had :banana:

to release day for Into the Lair :woot: I’ve re-entered the blogging world and have a post up over at Writeminded today. I’m still busier than a one armed paper hanger, but hopefully things are starting to calm down around these parts.

Starting to get some wonderful reader feedback on Into the Lair and Be With Me. Getting some nice reviews too. These were two books I was worried about for very different reasons. One was a whole lot easier than the other to write, which brings it’s own set of concerns.

Some books are hard. Really hard to write. I put everything I have into every single book I write, but sometimes they come easy and the words flow and the characters speak to me and it’s all I can do to keep up as the words spill out. Other books it’s like pulling teeth. Each and every word is agonized over, second guessed, reworked. I tears stuff up, tell my editor I quit, tell anyone who will listen that I can’t do it and that I’m currently penning the worst piece of shit ever known to man.

It’s THOSE books that are soooo satisfying when they turn out okay and readers tell me they love them. I’m always so surprised, shocked and so very grateful when a reader tells me they enjoyed one of my books, but when it’s a book that I’ve struggled SO much with, it makes me even more grateful that I fought so hard to get it right.

We’re heading home tomorrow, armed with groceries of course. The good news is we’ll be home and can start repairs. Bad news is no internet :crying:

I don’t like being away from home. I mean it’s different if I’m on vacation or gone by choice. I don’t like being away from my little piece of the world when the rest of the world around me has gone bonkers. I’ll be soooo glad to get home to my comfy chair and familiar surroundings. I hate feeling like a guest even though I’m with family.

No word yet on when the kids will return to school. We know definitely not this week. Two of the campuses sustained damage while the other tree got lighter damage. Then there is the power situation. I want to say they were out two weeks for Rita. I don’t really remember to be exact but it was something close to that. At the end of this week our schools will have been closed a week and a half.

So anyway, that’s what’s going on with me. If you don’t see me for awhile, it’s because Im back home and have no internet. But think of all the work I’ll get done :woot:

Ironically my last blog post was about not knowing what day it was, evacuations and kids being out of school and I find myself once again evacuated due to a hurricane. We actually stayed through the hurricane this time. Not something I’d recommend but I honestly felt safer at home than out on the roads with the evacuation crowd. Traffic was just insane here. There were several accidents including a 7 car pile up at the only major intersection in my little pissant town. No thanks…

I’m at my sister’s. We left Saturday morning after the worst of the hurricane was past us. It was still quite windy and rainy and getting around debris in the roadways were tricky, but we made it. The one positive of having stayed through the hurricane was that we knew what damage we incurred before we left. When we evacuated for Rita three years ago, we didn’t know anything, just that our area had been devastated. It was a very stressful time as we didn’t even know if we had a house to go back to. At least with Ike, we know what we’re facing when power is restored and we go back home. (Sooo not looking forward to the insurance claim process *sigh*)

The weather is cooperating better in Southeast Texas this time around for which I’m grateful. With Rita, we experienced record high temps and power was out a long ass time. We had temps well over 100 and it was just bloody miserable. A cool front passed through the area and it brought cooler, drier air so I’m hoping that makes things a bit more bearable for all the people who are still in the area with no electricity.