The Inside Reader: Z.A. Maxfield
Show me the books he loves and I shall know the man far better than through mortal friends - Silas Weir MitchellEverything good I can say of ZAM is true, but I raise my hands and I admit that I'm biased: ZAM is the first author who wrote me a dedica in one of her books (Notturno), plus she was my unwilling partner during the Yaoi Con (we met and I didn't let her go until the end of the convention) in 2008. Said that, the number of successful novels she wrote in the last two years are proofs enough that she is an author you have to check out. In the meantime, enjoy her "original" (in structure and choices) list.
Z.A. Maxfield's Inside Reader List
I’ve been putting off writing this for two reasons. The first is I’m really not that widely read. There I said it, let the chips fall where they may…It’s true, I’m not a literary writer, and I’m not really that well read. I can blame this -- partially anyway -- on the fact that I took Theater Arts in high school and it fulfilled an English literature requirement or something, because I don’t remember having to read all those books everyone says they read in school.
1) But back in the day, I read a LOT of plays. So while everyone else might have been reading “A Separate Peace” in school, like my daughter, and discovering that they had questions about relationships that seemed to blur the lines between friendship and something more between two men or two women, I was reading “The Children’s Hour” and “Cat On A Hot Tin Roof” and wondering about the same thing. Paperback: 204 pages
Publisher: Scribner (October 7, 2003)
Publisher Link: http://books.simonandschuster.com/Separate-Peace/John-Knowles/9780743253970
ISBN-10: 0743253973
ISBN-13: 978-0743253970
Amazon: A Separate Peace
Set at a boys' boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II, A Separate Peace is a harrowing and luminous parable of the dark side of adolescence. Gene is a lonely, introverted intellectual. Phineas is a handsome, taunting, daredevil athlete. What happens between the two friends one summer, like the war itself, banishes the innocence of these boys and their world. A bestseller for more than thirty years, A Separate Peace is John Knowles's crowning achievement and an undisputed American classic.
Paperback: 208 pages Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation (September 30, 2004)
ISBN-10: 0811216012
ISBN-13: 978-0811216012
Amazon: Cat On A Hot Tin Roof
The definitive text of this American classic—reissued with an introduction by Edward Albee (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and A Delicate Balance) and Williams' essay "Person-to-Person." Cat on a Hot Tin Roof first heated up Broadway in 1955 with its gothic American story of brothers vying for their dying father's inheritance amid a whirlwind of sexuality, untethered in the person of Maggie the Cat. The play also daringly showcased the burden of sexuality repressed in the agony of her husband, Brick Pollitt. In spite of the public controversy Cat stirred up, it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the Drama Critics Circle Award for that year. Williams, as he so often did with his plays, rewrote Cat on a Hot Tin Roof for many years—the present version was originally produced at the American Shakespeare Festival in 1974 with all the changes that made Williams finally declare the text to be definitive, and was most recently produced on Broadway in the 2003-04 season. This definitive edition also includes Williams' essay "Person-to-Person," Williams' notes on the various endings, and a short chronology of the author's life. One of America's greatest living playwrights, as well as a friend and colleague of Williams, Edward Albee has written a concise introduction to the play from a playwright's perspective, examining the candor, sensuality, power, and impact of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof then and now.
2) That said, I think the GLBT novel that sticks in my mind is “Clicking Beat On The Brink Of Nada”, by Keith Hale. Because oh, my gosh that book just took my breath away. I read that, probably, before I was published. Maybe even before I decided to write. It does show up prominently in that first chapter of my first book, “Crossing Borders”, where the character Tristan is trying to get picked up at a bookstore. It may even be the reason I write. I guess I had a simple desire to eradicate the literary presumption that being GLBT means you end up miserable in the end, alone, or insane or eaten by cannibals or something. Jeez.
I kept thinking about my kids, and how I’d want them represented in books if they were gay. (Jury’s still out on that BTW, because they’re young) There are all those young adult books about falling in love and being asked to prom and living happily ever after. I thought, “BLEEP this”. I need to write a romance for kids who are feeling same gender attraction where the boy gets the boy or the girl gets the girl at the end and it’s a GOOD THING.
Paperback: 190 pages
Publisher: BookSurge Publishing (February 19, 2007)
ISBN-10: 141965991X
ISBN-13: 978-1419659911
Amazon: Clicking Beat On The Brink Of Nada
By turns funny, romantic, erotic, and sad, this evocative novel brilliantly recreates the landscape of late adolescence, when friendships seem eternal and loves reincarnate. Set in Arkansas but first published in The Netherlands, Clicking Beat on the Brink of Nada quickly won praise from reviewers and readers across Europe and North America. The back cover blurb written by the late William S. Burroughs reads: "A haunting vision of young friendship shattered by an outrageously cruel world. Keith Hale's novel aches with adolescent first loves. It is tender, funny, and true." The book was published in the U.S. as Cody and remained on the amazon.com bestseller list for gay titles a year after it went out of print. Now Clicking Beat on the Brink of Nada is back in print with its original European front cover and title.
( books from 3 to 10 )
I suppose I could just keep writing until I run out of books. I mean…the world is full of great reads. I haven’t gotten to all of them yet. And if you were to ask me on a different day, there would probably be a different list. Maybe even an hour from now I’d change it.
Anyway, thanks, Elisa, for asking. Thank you so much for bringing all these wonderful posts together. Thank you for reviewing, cataloging, exploring the cover art, and promoting the books I love to read. I probably found out about most of these from your LiveJournal blog. You really are a scholar of the genre and from the bottom of my heart I want to say Brava!
About Z.A. Maxfield: How It Happened…
I have no excuses. I started reading Yaoi when my kids decided they had to read every manga ever published and I got tired of little ninja boys and magical girls. I sat in the corner with Descendants of Darkness and my world was officially rocked.
I started to read love stories between men, and my official position is that if one hot guy in a book is good, then two is arguably better. If you add to that the fact that I believe everyone should have a happy ending? Well, this is the end result.
I hope you enjoy reading these stories. Each one is carefully hand crafted with love, humor, and just the right touch of… er… touching.
Drawn Together by Z.A. Maxfield Paperback: 360 pages
Publisher: Loose Id, LLC (February 9, 2010)
Publisher Link: http://www.loose-id.com/Drawn-Together.aspx
ISBN-10: 1607374021
ISBN-13: 978-1607374022
Amazon: Drawn Together
Rory might just be a simple southern boy from St. Antoine’s Parish Louisiana, but he knows what he wants. He’s been in love with the girl of his dreams, reclusive and mysterious artist Ran Yamane, since junior high school. And now he has the chance to meet her. He’s going to chuck everything and travel 1,500 miles to Anime Expo in Long Beach to tell her, and no one and nothing is going to stand in his way.
Ran Yamane is not a girl, but he gets that a lot. People come to him with teddy bears and chocolates and disappointment by the truckload. He’s trusted fans in the past and been tragically wrong. So when he meets Rory he’s understandably wary, but resigned. What he’s not prepared for is his magnetic attraction to the young man, Rory’s apparent willingness to overlook his gender, and the fact that their lives are both thrown into chaos when his number one fan (and psycho stalker) shows up to get revenge.
1) But back in the day, I read a LOT of plays. So while everyone else might have been reading “A Separate Peace” in school, like my daughter, and discovering that they had questions about relationships that seemed to blur the lines between friendship and something more between two men or two women, I was reading “The Children’s Hour” and “Cat On A Hot Tin Roof” and wondering about the same thing. 
Paperback: 208 pages 
2) That said, I think the GLBT novel that sticks in my mind is “Clicking Beat On The Brink Of Nada”, by Keith Hale. Because oh, my gosh that book just took my breath away. I read that, probably, before I was published. Maybe even before I decided to write. It does show up prominently in that first chapter of my first book, “Crossing Borders”, where the character Tristan is trying to get picked up at a bookstore. It may even be the reason I write. 
Drawn Together by Z.A. Maxfield 
