Maya Banks's Blog, page 9

2010

How time flies. It hardly seems possible that what seems like such short time ago we were all ringing in a new millennium. And now we're already a decade, a DECADE into it. It makes my head hurt!

But this has been an awesome decade for me. So many things changed in my life and career. It was in 2002 that a friend of mine and I decided to take up the pen (or keyboard) and write with the goal of becoming published.

Now at the beginning of a writing career, everything is new and shiny and you have big dreams. The thing with those big dreams is that you aren't really certain, or even halfway convinced, they'll ever come true, but it doesn't stop you from daydreaming about "one day."

So much of my writing career didn't go as I planned. Okay, none of it did. I look back on how things have gone and I just shake my head and have to laugh because nothing went the way it was supposed to.

And that's a good thing.

You see, if things had gone the way I planned? Well, I probably wouldn't even have a career at this point.

I never planned to publish predominately under Maya Banks. It was a pen name I made up on the fly when I sold a book to an epublisher. Even after I sold a few contemporary erotic romances, I still figured I'd publish historicals under my real name. Then I sold a contemporary romantic suspense series and then I sold contemporary romances to Silhouette Desire. All under the name Maya Banks. And well, the final laugh was when I did eventually sell some historicals, and they too sold under my pen name.

Yes, this decade has been exciting. It's been a wonderful ride. But 2010, especially, was a year when I achieved those impossible dreams. The ones new writers like to tantalize themselves with. At least I did.

Earlier in the year, I hit the USA Today bestseller list with a book I wrote for Silhouette Desire. Then in September, The Darkest Hour also hit the USA Today bestseller list and for me this was so incredibly sweet, because this book was one I had waited years to be able to publish. It was a book I started on way back when I was still only writing historicals. But Ethan and Rachel's story came to me and it wouldn't leave. It stuck with me through all those years until the time was right and I pulled it back out. And the Kelly series was born.

To close out the year, the second book in the KGI series, No Place to Run, landed on the NYT bestseller list and remained on for a second week.

It took a bit for it to truly, truly sink in that so many of my goals had been reached. I'd actually done it. My books landed on the USA Today and NYT bestseller lists.

Four years after publishing that first book, I achieved something that I wasn't sure I'd ever achieve. It's still hard for me to wrap my head around it, but I'm more grateful than you can imagine for the opportunity to do something I love so very much.

And I'm grateful to you, the reader, for making it all possible.

My best wishes to you for a happy and safe 2011 as we embark on a brand new decade. May this year and this decade be as sweet and rewarding for you as the past year and decade has been for me.

Love,

Maya

©2010 Maya Banks: Southern Sin. All Rights Reserved.

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Snow and more snow :)

I'm currently sitting in front of the fire watching the snow come down outside my window in Beaver Creek, Colorado. It's gorgeous here. It's snowed ever since we got here Friday. The kids are out skiing with their dad and I'm about to do some writing before I wade out in the snow to meet them for lunch.

Aren't my snow babies cute?

©2010 Maya Banks: Southern Sin. All Rights Reserved.

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A big thank you to all my readers & my glamorous life…

Yesterday was such an exciting day. No Place to Run placed #18 on the New York Times mass market fiction bestseller list. And you guys totally put it there! Thank you so much for pre-ordering it and going out and buying it in release week. *squeeze*

It's a little surreal. I mean every author hopes to hit the USA Today and the NYT bestseller lists. But if feels like a pipe dream when you're first starting out. It's a little weird to think that I've hit both lists with my KGI books. Books that are so special to me. A series that is so special to me. To get to do what I love as my job is spectacular enough but to achieve any level of success doing what I love is just priceless. I can't thank my readers enough for that opportunity. I'm grateful for you every single day.

Just so I never, you know, get too full of myself *snort* As some of you know, my husband is a forester. He buys timber for a paper company. Which means he deals a lot with loggers, good ole boys. (Our kind of people! lol) Anyway we have this friend who owns a logging company and a saw mill. He kept nagging my husband to make me get Word Feud on my cell phone because he thought it would be cool to play against an author.

So I've been playing Word Feud for the last few weeks with him. So last night when I saw it was my turn (these games go on for days) as a teasing way of telling him my news, I sent him a chat message through the game saying "You're now playing Word Feud with a NYT bestselling author heh"

To which he responds: "Yeah, well, you're playing Word Feud with a drunk redneck"

Well there you have it folks. My life. Glamorous huh?

©2010 Maya Banks: Southern Sin. All Rights Reserved.

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Dear Santa

My wish list may be a bit bizarre but it IS a wish list and as such I do a lot of WISHING this holiday season. Can you hook me up please?

More sleep. Or maybe I should say I need more writing done during daylight hours so I CAN sleep more at night. Would really appreciate this one.

Cold weather. Really I just want it to remain consistent. I mean if it has to be hot then let's just go with hot all the way through. This 30 degrees one day and 75 the next is seriously fucking with me. My poor thermostat controls are screaming WTF at me as I go from heat to A/C

I'd really love for people to stop bitching so much, but I suppose that's a lot to ask. Maybe just give me a roll of duct tape so I can do the job myself. I realize you're busy and well, this one's a tall order…

I'm worried about my upcoming trip to Colorado. You see, I figure about the time we land in Denver and depart on the two hour drive to the place we're staying, Colorado will be gripped my a freak heat wave and that the temps will soar to unprecedented, all time highs. Which will cause a massive snow melt and the entire state will become a reservoir. Really I just want some snow while I'm there. I figure since they get a bazilion inches in the mountains every winter that this isn't an overly difficult request, but I DO have evidence to support my paranoia. After all, we traveled to Scotland a year and a half ago and they experienced RECORD heat the ENTIRE time we were there. And dude, those people don't have air conditioning.

And lastly, I need the book writing fairy to somehow place an entire finished manuscript (an awesome manuscript!) under my pillow by January 1.

That would be cool.

Lots of love.

Maya

PS, I think a "mute" button for my children would be most awesome. I'm sure a man of your advanced age and expertise could figure out how to sneak into their bedrooms Christmas Eve night and implant chips that control vocal cords. You can leave the remote in my stocking. I promise not to use it more than once…an hour.

©2010 Maya Banks: Southern Sin. All Rights Reserved.

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Oh lots of stuff to talk about

No Place to Run released this week. A huge thank you to those of you who've already bought and read it. You guys are so fast! And I hope those of you who are buying later will enjoy it!

There are lots of updates to the website this week as well. FInally an excerpt to Colters' Daughter yay! AND I'm SO excited because not only do I finally have blurbs for my Scottish historicals that release next fall, but I also got new titles as well! I didn't like the old ones and the reaction to them was pretty tepid. But I'm so very happy with the blurbs and the titles now. The blurbs are just gorgeous. Gorgeous! I'm so afraid now the books won't live up to the wonderful back cover copy hehe.

But the new titles are In Bed with the Highlander, Seduction of a Highland Lass and Never Love a Highlander. You can check out the blurbs on my coming soon page! And please do let me know what you think :)

Hubby and I went couch shopping tonight. Now the thing is, we just moved into this house a year ago. In fact this very time LAST year we were furniture shopping and I picked out TWO couches for our living room. So why were we shopping for another couch?

Because my children are wallowers.

Seriously. The problem is the couch that my husband and I sit on in the evening… Well it's a large deep couch. I sit on one end and I work. He sits on the other. I sorta stretch out and put my feet on him. Sometimes he'll lay toward me. Sounds perfect right?

Well, back to the wallowing.

My children refuse to sit on the OTHER couch. It's going completely to waste. No, they have to sit with mama and daddy. Or ON us I should say. My two youngest pile on the couch and then wallow all over us as they snuggle and wallow and make their place ON us lol. Cute huh?

So I told my husband we simply have to get a bigger couch to replace BOTH couches so that everyone can sit (and wallow) together because right now it's just not comfortable because while the couch is PERFECT for me and hubby, it is NOT perfect for 4-5 people.

So we went couch shopping and I brought the kids and made everyone sit and wallow on it to make sure we'd all have room and be comfortable. I think the saleslady thought we were insane, but hey, she got a sale out of it!

I'll have to post a pic of the dogpile when we get the new couch…

©2010 Maya Banks: Southern Sin. All Rights Reserved.

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It's been awhile!

It's been so long since I last blogged that I couldn't remember my login info. Yeah, that bad…

I've been incredibly busy this fall. I don't think I've stopped since August. I've churned out one book after another and the result has been edits on all books coming at me all at once along with MORE books that I'm trying to get done in short order.

But enough about that. It's why you haven't seen much of me, though I tend to check in on my Facebook page more often.

Had a super weekend. Cooked yummy food, put up our Christmas tree, hung out with the kids and snuggled on the couch in front of a fire. Tonight I'm working on copy edits for Sweet Possession. I'm almost done, done, done! I also just finished up Colters' Daughter and Hidden Away. Like I said, I've been busy!

No Place to Run releases in just a week! Amazing how fast the time has gone by. I swear it was just yesterday that The Darkest Hour released. I LOVE this series. I'm already day dreaming about KGI #4. I have a tentative title but can't share it until I get final approval from my editor. I LOVE it though. It fits the story so very well. I'll also let everyone know WHO is in KGI #4 as soon as possible :) I want to make sure I have it all cemented before I let my readers know. Let's just say I doubt it's who you think it'll be ;)

©2010 Maya Banks: Southern Sin. All Rights Reserved.

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Fun news (and I'm back from RAW)

The past two weeks have been a blur! Just two days after the release of The Darkest Hour, I left for Lora Leigh's Reader Appreciation Weekend in West Virginia. Fun times were had by all but man was I tired when I got home!

My inbox looks like a bomb went off… So if you've emailed me, be patient, because uhm wow are there a lot of emails to wade through!

Just yesterday, I found out that The Darkest Hour hit this week's USA Today bestseller list. I've been so excited by the reception this book has enjoyed and I just want to say thank you to all of you for buying, reading and recommending the KGI series. I'm so stoked for the release of No Place to Run in December!

Sometimes the wait makes things all the sweeter, and I've waited a long time to be able to tell Ethan and Rachel's story. I'm just so thrilled that so many people have enjoyed their journey :)

©2010 Maya Banks: Southern Sin. All Rights Reserved.

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Fun contest!

I'm going to be posting this a few different places and I think it's going to be SO much fun. Plus it will allow me to "meet" so many of my wonderful, wonderful readers (I can't wait!)

Here are the details. Take a picture of you holding a copy of The Darkest Hour. It can be at home, at the bookstore, in the car, in a tree or in a recliner hehe. And hey, if you aren't a print reader, just load it up on your Kindle, Nook, Kobo or reader of choice and take a picture of you holding it where it's obvious that the book is The Darkest Hour.

Once you have your picture, post it on your blog, on my facebook fan page, twitter, your website if you have one or any public forum. Then email me the link to maya@mayabanks.com so I'll know of your "entry" If you don't have a place to post it, simply email me your picture, but be sure to let me know if you mind ME posting it publicly. If you don't prefer that, I completely understand and you'll still be entered! These pics would make an AWESOME addition to my website under fun photos :))

Sound easy enough? Here's what you can win.

Winner will have a choice of the following.

Kindle ebook reader

Of course not everyone wants a Kindle and some of you already own one, so I have some other prizes to throw out there :)

100.00 gift certificate to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Borders

PLUS, in addition to one of the above, the winner will receive signed copies of ALL my 2011 releases. A year's worth of new releases sent directly to you :)

For EVERYONE who sends me or posts a picture? I'll give you a choice of one of my backlist ebook titles. Any one you'd like. Now I understand not everyone has an ebook reader but you can easily read it on your computer if you get the PDF or HTML version. So you can at least give it a try!

Sound fun? I love, love, love the idea of getting to put a face to so many names that have been SO good to me, so I really hope many of you will participate :)

Contest will start now, for anyone receiving early copies and will run until September 21. At that time, I'll draw the winner.

©2010 Maya Banks: Southern Sin. All Rights Reserved.

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Friday confession

Okay so I have a confession to make. And I feel pretty silly saying it's a confession, like it's some tawdry secret I should be whispering or something, but I feel like I'm breaking some kind of unwritten author's code by saying what I'm about to say.

I love my books.

Okay. There. I said it!

It's really interesting because I never see authors expressing pride in their work. I'm not saying they don't. I'm just saying I don't see it. In fact I see the opposite. I see a lot of "this is a piece of crap." Or "I NEVER read my book ever ever ever again after final galleys." or "I never want to see this again. EVER EVER EVER"

I'm not ragging on these authors whatsoever. This is a stressful enough business without me giving people grief or telling them how they should or shouldn't act (okay so that's a whole other topic I'll never get into ;) I'm merely saying that the mindset seems to be it's not okay to love your book. Or at least ADMIT to liking your own book publicly. (I imagine that's more the case than really not loving your book)

But I'll say it again. I love my stories. It wouldn't make sense if I didn't! If I didn't love what I wrote, I wouldn't sell them so that other people could read them. I simply couldn't write a story that I didn't love and have an emotional investment in.

Here's another deep dark secret for you. I reread my books from time to time. To me, there's nothing quite like reading a finished book. It feels completely different than reading a word file a million times and then reading a PDF galley. I like holding it in my hands and revisiting characters that I put my heart and soul into. I mean hell, I lived with them while writing them. It's not like I can just turn off my emotions for them.

Yesterday I was in a bit of a funk so I picked up my first Desire trilogy and read all three books. Know what? I love those stories! :) Book two, The Tycoon's Rebel Bride, is still my favorite, but I love all three.

There you have it. My deep, dark, shameful secret. *snort*

©2010 Maya Banks: Southern Sin. All Rights Reserved.

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Visiting old characters

So here is my question for readers. How do you feel about scenes revisiting characters from previous books in a series? Particularly if their story may not be completely finished. Or do you resent any time spent away from the main characters of the current book?

The Sweet Series, for me, has been a continuing story of a group of friends. All of them, even though each story features a new hero and heroine. In these books while each set of characters achieve their happily ever after, things are not always perfect. That's not the point of this series. It's about two people who love each other and are committed to working out their issues and problems because they want to stay together and have a life together. The series isn't about perfect people who once they make their declaration of love, they have perfect lives forevermore and ride off into the sunset.

Faith and Gray, who kicked off the series, have been featured in each of the subsequent books and they still have obstacles to overcome, but they love each other and so they work it out. Damon and Serena had a tumultous relationship and their happily ever after wasn't quite complete at the end of their book although they loved each other and were very committed to doing whatever it took to make their relationship work.

With each book, the relationships progress and I've had a lot of fun showing that progression. But how do readers feel about it?

I've been thinking about this because I'm currently working on Sweet Possession, and last night I wrote an emotional scene between Micah and Angelina, the hero and heroine from Sweet Temptation. For those of you who've read Sweet Temptation, you know that these two had a very volatile, passionate relationship and that it got off to a rocky start.

So I'm wondering if you as a reader are interested in seeing scenes that further Micah and Angelina's relationship in a book that isn't their own. They certainly aren't the focus of Sweet Possession, but as this is a series about a very tight knit group of friends, it only makes sense that you see them in each of the books.

©2010 Maya Banks: Southern Sin. All Rights Reserved.

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