New Release Review: Three Vlog Night by Z.A. Maxfield #Review #Giveaway

Title: Three Vlog Night
Series: Plummet To Soar #3
Author: Z.A. Maxfield
Publisher: Dreamspinnner Press
Cover Artist: LC Chase
Publication date: June 4, 2019
Length: 197 pages

Reviewed by Jenn

Synopsis

A Plummet to Soar Story

Ajax Fairchild’s online alter ego has caused him trouble before, but never like this. After multiple death threats, his loaded parents decide he needs an enforced digital vacation and the best bodyguard money can buy.

That would be Dmytro Kolisnychenko, former soldier, former hired muscle for the Ukrainian mob—until he lost his happy home life to an enemy with a homemade bomb. Now he wants only two things: to spend every precious second he can with his daughters, and to provide for them by protecting people who can’t protect themselves—even entitled little asshats like Ajax Fairchild.

But Ajax doesn’t fit into the spoiled little rich kid box as neatly as Dmytro would like. Dmytro doesn’t have time for a romantic dalliance, and Ajax is a client, albeit one with unexpected depths. With one coincidence after another driving them to the sleepy seaside town of St. Nacho’s and away from their planned safe house, they grow to trust each other and find that love follows trust. Now they must learn where the threat to Ajax is coming from and neutralize it… before it’s too late for their happily ever after.

Purchase Links

Dreamspinner Press

Amazon

Review

I am such a fan of the bodyguard trope and was excited to read Three Vlog Night. This is more than just your typical bodyguard story though. The backstory of Ajax and Dmytro makes this have such a full circle feel to it that I really loved.

When Ajax Fairchild’s online alter ego, Ajax Freedom gets him in hot water…his parents bring in the big guns. Ajax is twenty-two and living the life of a famous social media influencer and not really enjoying it. He’s not being himself at all and it takes reading a special book to make him see the error of his ways. The problem is, his public doesn’t want Ajax Fairchild, they want Ajax Freedom. When multiple death threats come in, his influential and wealthy parents step in. They force a social media freeze on Ajax along with two bodyguards. Ajax isn’t happy about this and honestly, neither are the guards. Dymtro immediately catches Ajax’s eye and not just because he’s attracted to him. Dymtro reminds Ajax of someone, someone he misses. As Ajax doesn’t believe the threats have any merit, he’s not the most cooperative client. He will soon see that danger really is lurking and that listening to Dymtro is best bet for staying safe.

Dymtro just wants to keep his client safe and get home to his daughters, he thinks very little of Ajax when he meets him. Even though he doesn’t like him much at first, he can’t deny that Ajax makes him want, makes him desire. Too bad he’s such a brat…or is he? As things begin getting more and more dangerous with the job, things between Ajax and Dymtro also heat up. Denial and not understanding how they could ever work seems to be all that keeps Dymtro away. As he gets to know the real Ajax, it becomes harder and harder to stay away. As things come to a head, both men will prove who they really are. Both are strong, loyal and impressive people. Now they just have to live long enough to see if they can have something together.

I really enjoyed this book. With Dymtro, there is a man who seems afraid to live again. In Ajax, we have a man who really hasn’t lived his true life at all. Together they have this simmer between them that is so much fun to read. The mystery surrounding the threats on Ajax is exciting and the cat and mouse of it all makes for a great thriller. This is a slow burn that will have you rooting for a HEA!

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Random Review: Plummet To Soar by Z.A. Maxfield #Review #Giveaway

Author: Z.A. Maxfield
Title: Plummet To Soar
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Cover Artist: LC Chase
Publication Date: May 8, 2018
Length 200 pages

Reviewed by Michael


Synopsis

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.

Links

Dreamspinner Press

Amazon

Review

If you’re anything like me, your To Be Read (TBR) list is incredibly long, filled with books or authors that you really want to try.  Sadly, time and life get in the way and when taken in conjunction with the sheer number of new books that come out each month, that TBR only grows larger. 

Which was why I was so excited when this book became available for review.  I’ve got a few Z.A. Maxfield books in my TBR that I haven’t been able to get to.  This would give me a chance to read an author that I’ve always wanted to try, and read it to review for the site.  Two birds, one stone if you will.

Mac (Kenzie) is kind of a free-bird.  A near death experience left him with the notion that every minute is to be lived to the fullest.  He also wrote a book based on these ideas, ironically titled the same as this one, and has developed a following.  He travels the world holding seminars he calls “plummets” (he did plummet from a helicopter, after all) where he espouses the virtues of taking each day as it comes and not looking into the rearview mirror

Mac’s was discovered by a publishing houses' group editor, JD.  The publishing house is a family owned business left to him by his father.  While somewhat younger than Mac, JD struck me as being quite older, perhaps because of the responsibility of running the business.

Mac and JD develop a relationship that is purely online.  Now, some people may argue the legitimacy of any relationship that is only on-line, but, speaking from my own experience, as long as both parties are completely honest with each other, it can be almost as fulfilling as a person-to-person relationship.  Sometimes it’s easier for some people to communicate from the safety of a keyboard.  It’s also incredibly convenient over long distances.  This is especially handy to Mac and JD given that Mac travels so much.

What Mac doesn’t know is that there have been threats, both legal and physical made against him.  Add to that JD has been charged with delivering some rather bad news, which he decides to do in person.  The two (along with a small group of people) end up snowed in at a hotel, and what ensues is something akin to a whodunit, or, as I call it, a “murdermance” (coined that one all on my own)

There were times that the character’s made decisions that left me scratching my head (I’m looking at you, bathroom scene after someone shoot’s into Mac’s hotel room).  But I also liked that secrets weren’t kept until the very end of the book as a way to create huge drama that ultimately tears them apart.  Mac and JD work together to overcome adversities, both within their relationship and from the outside.

Overall, I was glad I read this, and will definitely be reading more from this author.

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Blog Tour: All Wheel Drive by Z.A. Maxfield ~Guest Post #Giveaway

Author: Z.A. Maxfield
Book: All Wheel Drive
Part of the Bluewater Bay Universe
Publisher: Riptide Press
Cover Artist: LC Chase
Publication date: July 10, 2017
Length: 326 pages



Synopsis

Healey Holly is battered, depressed, and looking to go to ground in his childhood home. He wants to rent the garage apartment, but it’s Diego Luz’s place now, and the last thing Diego wants is to share it.

Diego is recovering too—from the accident that put him in a wheelchair and the death of his mother shortly after. The garage apartment is where he’s keeping his mother’s things, and as long as they’re up those stairs and he’s down on the ground, there’s no way he can deal with his loss.  And that’s just how he likes it.

Healey believes in science. Diego believes in luck. It will take a blend of both, and some prayer thrown in besides, for these two to learn that it’s the journey and the destination that matters.

Buy Links

Riptide Press

Amazon

Guest Post

Hello to all the folks at Diverse Reader! Thanks so much for allowing me to spend some time talking about my lastest release, All Wheel Drive. It’s my second book in the awesome Bluewater Bay series from Riptide Publishing.

Healey Holly--twin Brother of Nash from the book Hell On Wheels—returns to Bluewater Bay looking for comfort after a bad break-up and an accident.  Like a lot of wounded creatures, he tries to go to ground in the last place he called home, the only problem is, it’s not his home anymore. His Pop sold the house, and none of his family is even in town.

Healey gets lucky and the new owner takes pity on him. A little, anyway. Enough to let him stay the night and hopefully change his mind.

Healey’s rebounding and he’s attracted to Diego immediately. He’s a nuisance, but a likable nuisance, and in spite of himself, Diego is drawn in.

What I loved best about writing this book is that I had to work so hard to play against my nature. I don’t think I’ve ever written a character as taciturn as Diego. Many, many times, I gave him some lengthy, revealing dialogue and had to hit the delete button because he’s just not a talky guy. It was like I needed a rubber band, POP! Stop talking already, ZAM!

Everyone who knows me just rolled their eyes because this is not going to happen.

The one place I figured Diego’d have to be straight up informative is when talking about sex. Men and women with disabilities are unique, and each person’s experience is theirs alone. Each body heals in it’s own way. My husband, for example, lives with the results of an  L1 fracture fracture and a traumatic brain injury  (a contrecoup injury). His prognosis was terrible, originally. I’m happy to report the news of his long-term vegetative state was greatly exaggerated. But had his SCI been complete, as Diego’s is, our lives would have been very different indeed.

In a way, knowing these things, I felt I had to create Diego Luz and give him a specific spinal cord injury (like my husband’s but lower on the spine and complete, in that Diego’s causes paralysis). Then, I researched the outcome of such an incident and made Diego’s physical results consistent.

Diego cannot get an erection from thinking sexy thoughts, for example, because the messaging system from his brain to his cock is broken. But if you brush his cock with your fingers, he might get an erection. He doesn’t ejaculate.

Some physical sensations are more pleasurable than others. Some areas on his upper body are hyper sensitized, for good and ill. Sometimes, touching his upper body will cause a surprising burst of sensation that’s intensely pleasurable, but he can only “orgasm” with strong internal stimulation such as the use of a medical vibrator and he doesn’t feel anything, except for his racing heart and the rush of chemicals that orgasm causes in his blood stream, which is arguably nice.

I wanted to make him internally consistent, as well. He’s sex positive, but not necessarily that into it.  Unless he’s really into the person he’s with it’s a lot of work without a lot of payoff. He likes being touched. He looks forward to human contact. The flood of chemicals after an orgasm with strong stimulation is nice, and he really likes Healey. But a lot of the time Healey is pushing for more than Diego wants to give and there are trust-issues to be dealt with. Allowing someone to touch him in intimate places where he can’t feel pain...makes Diego extremely anxious.

I used the Christopher and Dana Reeves Foundation’s resources, watched a lot of YouTube videos featuring interviews with people talking about their own experiences. I watched hospital documentaries made for newly injured patients, and finally, I asked my husband endless questions about his own experience and that of my husband’s hospital roommate Tim—short for Timothy which he hated—a very young man with a devastating spinal cord injury—a quadriplegic—who married after his accident and has gone on to become a lawyer.

Suffice it to say, I have a newfound respect for human resilience.

Men and women with disabilities are underrepresented in romance, and I am thrilled to be part of a movement to change that!

About Bluewater Bay

Welcome to Bluewater Bay! This quiet little logging town on Washington state’s Olympic Peninsula has been stagnating for decades, on the verge of ghost town status. Until a television crew moves in to film Wolf’s Landing, a soon-to-be cult hit based on the wildly successful shifter novels penned by local author Hunter Easton.

Wolf’s Landing’s success spawns everything from merchandise to movie talks, and Bluewater Bay explodes into a mecca for fans and tourists alike. The locals still aren’t quite sure what to make of all this—the town is rejuvenated, but at what cost? And the Hollywood-based production crew is out of their element in this small, mossy seaside locale. Needless to say, sparks fly.

This collaborative story world is brought to you by eleven award-winning, best-selling LGBTQ romance authors: L.A. Witt, L.B. Gregg, Z.A. Maxfield,  Heidi Belleau, Rachel Haimowitz, Anne Tenino, Amy Lane, SE Jakes, G.B. Gordon, Jaime Samms and Ally Blue. Each contemporary novel stands alone, but all are built around the town and the people of Bluewater Bay and the Wolf’s Landing media empire.

Check it out at Riptide Publishing! 

About Z.A. Maxfield

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.  If anyone asks her how a wife and mother of four manages to find time for a writing career, she’ll answer, “It’s amazing what you can accomplish if you give up housework."

Her published books include Crossing Borders, Epic Award finalist St. Nacho’s, Drawn Together, ePistols at Dawn, Notturno, Stirring Up Trouble, and Vigil.

Readers can visit her website at http://www.zamaxfield.com, and contact her at zamaxfield@zamaxfield.com.

Giveaway

To celebrate the release of All Wheel Drive, one lucky winner will receive an ecopy of Hell on Wheels and a $25 Riptide credit! Leave a comment with your contact info to enter the contest. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on July 15, 2017. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries. Thanks for following the tour, and don’t forget to leave your contact info!