Tremendous Thursday: A New Release: Maya's Vacation

We are getting back on it. Please celebrate with us as we welcome Becca Gomez Farrell. She's has created a fun and original work with Maya's Vacation. Keep scrolling down to find out more about her and Maya's Vacation.

Blurb

Twenty-year-old Maya knew as she watched Dean walk away from her front door distraught at her silence and her father's threats, that she would never love anyone with the intensity that she loved him. He was her painter, her artist, her soulmate and being apart from him hurt too much. She tucked those feelings away, determined to enjoy the safe and secure life her parents approved of: business school and a marriage to Chuck, a successful real estate agent.

Thirty years later, Chuck has cheated on and divorced her. But when he comes back, begging for reconciliation, Maya takes a vacation to think it over. Her love of art, food, and wine combine at this retreat in the woods, and she prepares for a week of making new friends, tasting exquisite wines, and learning to paint again. What she hasn't prepared for is the familiar voice she hears the first morning at camp...a voice that makes her skin tingle and brings back memories of who she was before Chuck. Has Maya buried her passion too deep to find love with Dean again?

Interview

A random fact about your story.

Scrabble is not a recommended matchmaking method.

A random fact about you as an author. 

I’ve been writing stories since I mastered handwriting—though whether I’ve ever actually mastered cursive is up for debate. My first stories involved the La Brea Tar Pit and taking a ride on a unicorn with She-Ra. It was horror and fantasy from an early age.

Favorite line in the story (can be funny, romantic, etc).  

My favorite line in the story is actually the very last one, which I dreamed—or rather, I dreamed a version of it that needed some editing. But I can’t share that one! Instead, I’ll pick this: Maya thought that interesting, but Dean’s soothing voice, like jazz spilling out of a sidewalk café, distracted her from giving it any further consideration.

How did you get the idea for your book?

I dreamed the last chapter of it! Specifically, I dreamed a scene where the two main characters, Maya and Dean, batter and fry chicken together for a group of their fellow retreat-goers. I could feel the passion between the two characters in that scene and in the concluding images of the novelette, and I determined to set them down as soon as I woke up. 

What are you currently working on?

The list goes ever on and on. My two main projects, at this moment, are an epic fantasy about a land in danger from invisible creatures that suck out people’s innards from the inside-out (not terribly, romantic, I know, but there is a love triangle, too!) and a short fantasy story about a thief who washes ashore in an idyllic land that harbors hidden treasure.

Is this your first published book? 

Yes, it is! I’ve had short stories published, but nothing of this length before.
  
Vanilla or Chocolate

Chocolate—it’s a vice for a reason.

As a child what did you want to be when you grew up?

A veterinarian. As I grew up, I realized that involved a lot of schooling and far more bodily fluids than I can handle. I pass out when blood is taken occasionally.

What was the scariest moment of your life?

Cutting to the chase, huh? Honestly, I’ve had moments full of sorrow, heartbreak, and confusion but the scariest one was watching the horror film The Gate as a child. I was scared my parents would become demons and my backyard would grow a portal to Hell for months. 

How do you develop your plots and characters?

It’s a process that I still need to work on. For plot, I know my beginning and my end point, and I imagine the steps that must come between them. I will often have particular scenes come to mind rather than an outline. I write those moments down briefly then return to them at a later date to flesh them out. For characters, I realize while I’m writing a scene that a character who hasn’t existed yet in the work needs to appear. I will take the knowledge of what I need him or her to do and then develop a background for the character from that.

Do you listen to music while writing?

Not usually—it crowds my mind. Occasionally, I’ll play classical while writing fiction, but otherwise, I tend toward silence.

Plotter or Pantser? Why?

I had to look panster up, and apparently, I am one! So I’m a pantser who’d love to develop that plotter habit of outlining. It’d make writing so much more structured, don’t you think? In reality, I do some outlining, but it’s more along the lines of knowing essential scenes that need to happen to move the plot along. I write them down on pieces of paper as I think of them, then if I’m stuck, I pull one out at random and write it. The farther along I get, the more scenes come to mind for later writing.

Tell us about your current release.

Here’s the synopsis:

Thirty years later, Chuck has cheated on and divorced her. But when he comes back, begging for reconciliation, Maya follows her intuition and takes a vacation to think it over. Her love of art, food, and wine combine at this retreat in the woods, and she prepares for a week of making new friends, tasting exquisite wines, and learning to paint again. What she hasn’t prepared for is the familiar voice she hears the first morning at camp . . . a voice that makes her skin tingle and brings back memories of who she used to be before Chuck. Has Maya buried her passion too deep to find love with Dean again?

Tell us the "story" of your book and how it came to be.

 After I dreamed those crucial scenes toward the end of the book, I set to writing them down. My mind loves solving a problem, and having an ending without a beginning certainly is one! I thought about what the back story might be between Maya and Dean and how they would both end up at this retreat in the woods. This brought the concept of Fate into play, and I determined that I needed Maya to be a woman who followed her intuition no matter where it led her for her to even consider leaving a safe, secure relationship with her exhusband for one that’s reckless yet exciting all the same time. It was fun to develop her motivations at her stage in life and then to see all the other characters pop up as the story called for them. I ended up with a smorgasbord of characters in their early 50s to early 70s full of lust for life, thirst for love, and appetites for tasty dishes.

Do you have a writing routine?

Oh, I wish I did. My main job is as a freelance editor, so I spend a good amount of my daily routine working on projects for clients. When I have time left, I force myself to sit down, imagine, and write. Caffeine is essential. Cats that demand attention are not, but they are awfully cuddly.

What inspires you?

Reading great work by other authors! My favorites are J. R. R. Tolkien, George R. R. Martin, Kurt Vonnegut, Mary Doria Russell, and Mark Twain. If I ever write something that draws comparisons to any of those authors, I’ll be content.

What are you working on right now?

That epic fantasy novel, which I’ve been working on slowly but surely for years. I also have that fantasy fable in the works, a horror short story that I need to pay much more attention to, and several creative nonfiction pieces that need to be matched up with the right market. I keep a blog on restaurant and drink reviews, which helped me greatly writing this book, and write commentary on General Hospital. You can bet money on soap operas influencing my romance skills!

Tell us something about yourself that your readers might not expect.

I rarely buy a bottle of wine more expensive than $15 and usually under $10, even though I review wine all the time. All of the wine references in Maya’s Vacation come from my knowledge of affordable bottles.

Favorite Muppet?

Pepe the King Prawn always makes me smile.

Favorite movie and why?

Is it possible to pick just one favorite movie? Here are three, because I can’t choose: The Lord of the Rings trilogy (counts as 1!) because they did such justice to the books and were simply gorgeous to watch; Life is Beautiful because it’s a superb story of how to survive in horrible circumstances and the performances were amazing; and Army of Darkness because I will never tire of its cheesiness and plethora of one-liners that were the soundtrack to my high school years.

What are your goals for this year?

Monetizing my blog is a big one, because I love writing about food, cocktails, and wines, but it’s an expensive hobby—I’d rather that the time and money I devote to it were an expensive career facet instead!  I plan to finish the principle writing on my epic fantasy, and now that I’ve finally figured out how I need it to resolve, I can make progress on that. I have three short stories that I feel deserve publishing, so I will continue researching markets for those. 

Wine, art and skin tingles I'm shivering with anticipation. Maya's Vacation sounds scrumptious Becca. To find out more about Becca check out her bio page here.