Plummet to Soar by Z.A Maxfield
Blurb: Feckless, luckless, and charming,
Mackenzie Detweiler is the author of a self-help book one reviewer calls
“the most misbegotten motivational tool since Mein Kampf.” He’s
maneuvered himself into a career as a life coach, but more often than
not, his advice is bad. Really bad.
It’s even getting people hurt… and Mackenzie sued.
It
falls to Mackenzie’s long-suffering editor, JD Chambers, to deliver the
bad news. He chooses to do so face-to-face—to see if the spark he
senses between them is real when they’re together in the flesh.
Unfortunately, a snowstorm, a case of nerves, a case of mistaken
identity, and finally a murder get in the way of a potential
enemies-to-lovers romance.
There are many, many people
who have good reason to want Mackenzie dead. JD must find out which one
is acting on it before it’s too late for both of them.
Release Date: 5/8/2018
Five things I learned while writing “Plummet To Soar”
*
Last year I was overcommitted, stressed out, and deeply depressed, so
when it came time to decide what kind of book I wanted to write, I asked
myself what kind of book would make me feel better if I read it. All
books include conflict. Without conflict it’s not a story. I was working
on a difficult family saga on one hand, so I gave myself permission to
get National Lampoon levels of silly in Plummet to Soar. Basically, I
started my day with angst and ended with humor. I highly recommend that
as a stress release!
* There’s always a reason why I write a
book, even if I don’t know what it is at the time. Although you’ll see
very little of this in the text, I did a lot of reading about different
types of meditation and stress relief breathing. I tooled around on the
web checking out life coaches. I read Super Better by Jane McGonigal,
and reread Jon Kabat-Zinn. I watched Ted Talks on Flow. Nothing is ever
wasted. As 2017 rolled into 2018, I found myself needing every single
one of these things every time I looked at the news on my phone.
*
I prefer to write ensemble comedy. I like to create characters and
allow them to play off against one another. It’s a kind of writing that
goes fast, and if you’re clear on each of the characters, they move the
plot along and create conflict “all by themselves.” I don’t mean that
I’m not in control of them, I am. It’s just that I’m so used to the free
for all of a large family, I don’t know if I’ve ever written a book
where characters don’t interrupt one another all the time. The EM dash
is my crutch.
* I love writing sex, and reading sex, but not
every book needs massive quantities of (even awesomely written) sex.
This is a romantic-comedy suspense and the entire book comes in at
around 60K, so I couldn’t squeeze too much in, as it were… For my money,
there are two reasons to include sex in a book that is not erotica: to
tell the reader something about the characters, or about the world, that
we could not tell them without sex in the book. Three penises? By all
means, we need to see that play out… Lifelong fear of pubic hair? We
probably won’t find that out until someone drops their pants. Still,
don’t worry! Despite my reticence, between JD and Kenzie sex is a
foregone conclusion, I give them the on-page happy ending they deserve!
(Note the word deserve, and email me later if you laughed at that point,
at all.)
* The characters in the books I’m writing these days
aren’t all awesome people. Sometimes they’re selfish, or prideful. Some
make bad mistakes. I started out writing flawed characters in the
beginning, and I think that concept still drives every story I write.
But lately, I’ve been writing characters that can be kinda unlikable.
Now I find pleasure in creating a character in one book,
*Cough*OfficerHsu*Cough who seems like a douche canoe, and in the next
book, I make him a better offer. I have already discovered the certain
someone for whom my erstwhile douche canoe wants to be a better man…
Stay tuned.
I can’t thank everyone enough for giving this
book a try. Look forward to more books loosely based around the concept
of Plummet to Soar. Thanks again!
*ZAM*
Book Links:
Excerpt
DESPITE THE white noise generated by the heater and the hum of
someone’s television, silence threatened to overwhelm JD after Mac left.
The room was nice—super-dated decor, traditional furniture. The linens,
though, had that “international chain hotel” look—white on white with a
colorful runner and fancy round bolsters to go with ample standard-size
lumps for sleeping on. And right next door, lying on his back, among
all those many pillows….
JD,
You can call me anything you
want. You contracted the book, man. People have called me
everything—Mac, Mackenzie, Z, and shit-for-brains.
I’ve never let anyone call me Kenzie.
Mac
Why’s
that? Breathlessly curious about the odd new writer—the goofball his
colleagues laughed at and jokingly called Humpty Dumbass behind his
back—he switched to text.
Mac texted back, Dunno. I think I’ve been saving that one for someone who loves me.
JD
thumbed, I love being inside your head during the journal entries. A
long hesitation. Oh, God, was that too much? He always gave away too
much, goddammit. He typed like lightning—I mean that’s how I felt when I
first read it. I love these ideas, finding resilience. It resonates
with me in a way I can’t really explain. I loved being in your head,
reading words as you thought them. Wrote them.
My book is me, distilled. Maximum me. Call me Kenzie.
Like whisky, the words, the book, the man went to his head. All right, then, Kenzie.
JD
loved their secret nicknames, loved knowing what it meant. He connected
with Kenzie daily, over the minutiae of publishing his book and well
beyond that, into late-night emails and intimate text conversations
about the meaning of life. But while he coyly obscured all but a few
details and kept his face, even his voice, hidden for no reason but his
fear that if he broke the fantasy, he’d lose it, Kenzie was transparent.
Since Kenzie Detweiler had become the single most important thing in
his life, and since JD had nothing in his life to compare the experience
to, he was ill equipped to handle such a thing.
Kenzie was made
of minutiae, it turned out. He’d spent endless, generous time explaining
how he saw the world and why he saw it that way and what it all meant.
Chambers
Lighthouse Publishing published books by authors with whom JD had never
spoken a single word. His name was on the door, but he had people for
interacting with the authors. But the Lamplight line was his sole
purview. He was its acquisitions editor and its executive editor.
Lamplight,
started by his grandfather, put out almanacs, books of prayerful
sentiment, and the journals of thoughtful, barely known but highly
influential men. He’d kept his output to three or four titles per year.
The authors were thought-provoking but never controversial—Norman Mailer
and Truman Capote and Joan Didion need not apply.
His father
changed all that, publishing astonishingly sexy memoirs and books by
people who really set society’s hair on fire, becoming the enfant
terrible of the legacy publishing world for about five minutes. And now,
no matter how many pairs he tried, JD could fill neither man’s
two-tone, lace-up, wing-tipped oxfords. Shortly after he took over, he
vowed to publish books he liked, and people called him sir, or Mr.
Chambers, or they got out of his way.
But not Kenzie, who called him JD.
Somewhere
between the contract and the first marketing campaign, Douglas—oh, who
was he kidding with the fake name and this ridiculous trip—Jacob Douglas
Chambers IV—fell in love.
That Kenzie didn’t know who he was?
Was both a godsend and a curse. A godsend because he could choose the
perfect time for The Big Reveal, and a curse because if he was wrong
about this? There was no perfect time.
He really expected Kenzie
to know him. That was the thing. He told Kenzie that he was allergic to
cameras, but who stops there? There were exactly five pictures of him
online. One in a morning coat, top hat, and tails at a wedding, even. JD
could have told Kenzie who he was at any time.
Why hadn’t he?
He’d
foreseen the moment for so long. What was he protecting himself from?
He’d developed a deep, unhealthy emotional attachment to the man who was
taking a shower—if the running water was anything to go by—in the room
adjacent. There was a gap under the connecting door, and every sound was
amplified through it.
Kenzie, singing “Despacito.” The sexy slap
of water on the tub floor. He didn’t dare take his imagination further
than that. He’d believed in Mackenzie Detweiler, trusted his words, his
thoughts, his heart.
And it seemed as though he’d been deluded,
along with all the other saps who bought Mackenzie Detweiler’s spiel.
But maybe that wasn’t fair, because even tonight, even in pain from an
injury he got—not while following Kenzie’s very well-meaning advice, but
Kenzie didn’t know
that—right up until the moment he’d seen
Kenzie face-to-face, JD wanted to believe that what they had was
foreordained or somehow magical—celestial.
He wanted to believe there was some sort of there… there.
I’d ask your definition of freedom.
Kenzie
always had a comeback. There was another reason not to get sucked into
the happy complacency of letting someone else do his thinking for him.
JD had tasted the Kool-Aid, siphoned a little to see how it felt, and
then guzzled it. And when the unthinkable happened, and the scythe came
too close to miss him, he didn’t have the revelations he’d been
promised. He simply felt… pissed.
Yes. That was it. Pissed,
because in no way did he believe Mac lied in the book. In Mac’s case a
near-death experience solidified who he was. He seemed happy. Fulfilled
and content. His weird personality traits and his inchoate yearnings had
incubated—hatched into someone fierce and proud and unfailingly kind.
JD would stake his life on the fact that Kenzie was legitimately happy.
JD was pissed because he felt goddamn nothing.
Stupid for hoping that, if he embraced the worst, his fears would go away.
Stupid for asking for more than he had when he was arguably the richest, luckiest person he knew.
Stupid
for trying out any advice he got from a dumbass like Mac, who had
turned out to be just another fucked-up human being after all—even if he
was a delightful one.
They were all lucky no one had gotten killed. Yet.
Everyone
from editorial to corporate had put in a word. Plummet was going to be
pulled off the shelves the following Monday. Press releases had been
written. Lawyers were on standby. And he had to tell Mac about that too.
Sorry. I’m the man you trusted with your career, and I’m here to pull the rug out.
It
wasn’t right to keep it from him. Years back, they’d pulled a book on
canning while the author reworked the section on food safety. Those
things happened. But they wouldn’t offer Mac a chance to rewrite and
rerelease. The ideas JD had embraced so fully only alarmed them after
his ludicrous brush with death, though it had nothing to do with the
book.
No. The board didn’t want anything to do with Mac anymore.
JD
had argued at first. Thrown his weight around. What happened to him
didn’t result from Plummet to Soar. All he’d done was attend a
contentious co-op board meeting. Those were a bore but not normally
dangerous. It wasn’t like he’d run with the bulls in Pamplona. No one
could have foreseen his ex catching him in the parking garage alone.
JD
absently rubbed his knee. And why, when his leg was broken on one side,
did the other knee hurt so much? JD made a mental note to call his
doctor and find out.
His eyes snapped open when the water shut
off. From the other side of the door came the sound of more humming and
rustling noises. Curiosity was killing JD truly. Killing him.
How
did connecting doors in hotels work, anyway? Were there two doors or
just one? It seemed kinda old-school—a knob, a dead bolt.
Is the lock engaged?
As
though it heated before his eyes, the lock seemed to glow with some
inner fire. The knob was the only thing he could focus on. God, his leg
hurt. The buzz from the flight, from the bar, was fading. If he took a
pain pill, it would knock him out too hard.
JD laid his cheek
against the door and put his hand on the knob. Nope. Nope, Nope. Nope.
The door between their rooms felt cool. He let go of the knob, as though
it would brand him, but that was just more melodramatic bullshit. He
could hear his mother’s voice telling him to get a grip on himself.
Which, really, anyone who ever met him would have known that having a
grip on himself was part of the goddamn problem.
Try the door.
It was almost as though the door were talking to him—or was that wishful thinking?
He
wanted to try it anyway, and what was it they said about confirmation
bias? You generally fall in with the data that supports what you already
believe?
No. It wasn’t all a scam.
The doorknob turned in his hand. The door opened in his direction. He had to step back to get out of its way. And then he was standing there, staring at Kenzie Detweiler, who wore nothing but a towel.
Author’s Bio
Z. A. Maxfield started writing in
2007 on a dare from her children and never looked back. Pathologically
disorganized, and perennially optimistic, she writes as much as she
can, reads as much as she dares, and enjoys her time with family and
friends. Three things reverberate throughout all her stories:
Unconditional love, redemption, and the belief that miracles happen when
we least expect them.
If anyone asks her how a wife and
mother of four can find time for a writing career, she’ll answer, “It’s
amazing what you can accomplish if you give up housework.”
Readers can visit ZAM at her
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