Book Feature with Maia Sepp, author of The Sock Wars

Indie Book Promo is happy to welcome Maia Sepp to the blog. She is the author of The Sock Wars and is here to share some information about her book. If this sound like a book that you would be interested in reading, please pick up a copy using the buy links at the bottom of the post.

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Blurb:

Lucy Tuttle is a workaholic financial planner whose biggest worry is how to line up the sticky notes on her desk just so, until her only relative dies a car accident halfway across the world. Suddenly Lucy (apartment-dwelling, doesn’t-own-a-hammer Lucy) inherits a handyman’s delight on the other side of town. Her boyfriend (a laid-back environmentalist with a penchant for organic vegetables and laundry larceny), convinces Lucy to move into her aunt’s broken down house. The two of them embark on a quest to settle down, renovate her aunt’s home, and start a family—but as it turns out, living happily ever after in a house that’s about to be condemned isn’t so easy after all.

The Sock Wars is a story of love, loss, and sock thievery.

Excerpt:

Everything went to hell on a Tuesday.

It was late and I was finishing the day by balancing the checking account shenanigans of some longtime clients, a charming retired couple whose vices are first-class airfare and international cuisine. It’s probably wrong that I covet their itineraries but I can’t help myself. They joke that someday they’ll take me with them, and I pretend to believe it. Next month, they’re going to Hawaii, so these days we’re pretending more than usual.

After finessing some of their numbers from one column to another, I lined up all the sticky notes on my desk before speed-dialing voicemail. After all the usual noises I hear, “First new message,” and then, “Lucy? I need to speak to you. It’s about your aunt.”

“It’s About Your Aunt” is a mantra I’ve heard for decades. It might mean that my Aunt Maren has lost her passport in Morocco and needs me to sweet-talk the embassy, or it might mean she’s mailed me something that didn’t quite squeak through customs. The caller leaves her name and number, and I sigh as I put the phone down. After a minute, I liberate my feet from the crush of my new and tortuous shoes and pull on a pair of sneakers.

Outside, I turn and walk toward my Murray Hill co-op, 321 square feet of ultramodern real estate, bought a year ago with the help of a lucky investment and financed by a credit union with eccentric staff but stellar interest rates. When I get home I run my eyes over the order of the living room, and something inside me hums a little when I see the angular furniture, the postmodern framed prints on the walls. None of the noise from the street makes it up here, to the fifteenth floor, and the silence is always a welcome surprise.

The phone rings while I’m flipping on the lights in the kitchen and I tuck it under my ear. “H’llo?”

“Hello, Lucy? My name is June. I’m a friend of your aunt.”

“Hi, June. What can I do for you?” I open the refrigerator and pull out the fruity organic energy drink my boyfriend, Oliver, brought me last week, the one that glows a faintly ominous green, and my nose wrinkles as I twist the lid. I really shouldn’t let Oliver buy any more glowing foods.

“There’s been an accident.”

I stop as I’m about to pour the drink into the tumbler I’ve taken from the cupboard, and June, this stranger on the other end of the line, is silent after she makes a coughing sound. “A car accident. In London.” It doesn’t take much for me to imagine my aunt joyriding around on the wrong side of the road, terrorizing the British, but then June says, “I’m so sorry, Lucy…but…she didn’t make it.” It turns out the coughing noise isn’t a cough at all, but the jagged sound of a sob as June cries into the phone.

The Sock Wars can be purchased at

Amazon   *   Kobo

Bio:

Maia has worked in various technical capacities in the IT industry, most recently a technology company involved in the e-book industry.

The Sock Wars is her debut novel. The first chapter of The Sock Wars was published as a short story/novel excerpt titled Irish Drinking Socks, and became a Kobo bestselling short story.

Maia’s next novel, Future Proof, will be available spring 2013.

Maia can be found on

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