1.- Could you introduce yourself to Jamreads’ readers?
Hi! I’m Maya and I’m a speculative fiction writer from middle America. I used to be a counterterrorism officer but now I stay home with four wild children. In addition to SFF, I write contemporary spy fiction and thrillers.

2.- How did you start writing?
I wrote a little when I was younger but quit in college. I came back to it after I left my career. I thought I could write a thriller based on some of my international experiences. I was wrong! It took another few years of me starting and failing to finally, finally, get in the groove, but instead of a thriller I wrote the science fiction novel that became my debut, Ancient as the Stars. 

3.- Why did you choose to self-publish your sci-fi works?
It’s been a long journey. I wrote Ancient as the Stars in 2019 and immediately jumped feet first into the trad publishing world. In my head, I always knew this particular book was better suited for being self-published, but wasn’t confident enough in my writing ability to market it. I knew I needed time and experience. I was right. 
The trad world has been through some fundamental shifts since 2020, and I have increasingly been frustrated by some of the trends (editors being laid off, which leads to the rest being overworked and then acquiring fewer books, which leads to agents being more selective. Lots of other things too). By the beginning of 2023 I realized I was finally ready to self-publish Ancient as the Stars, and was able to edit the book to my standards. It took another 18 months to publish because I was in the middle of a mentorship for one book and a revise and resubmit for an agent for another. 
After how much fun I had self-pubbing, my default has become to self-pub my other SF as well. 

4.- Could you tell us a bit about the inspiration for your Broken Union series?
Two words: maladaptive daydreaming. I think one of the reasons Ancient as the Stars, in particular, is so fun is that it was already in my head long before it was a novel. Some version or another has been in there since I was a kid, although it’s obviously evolved a lot since. My love of mass media market SF, like Star Trek, Star Wars, Farscape, and BSG shines through, primarily because the storyline began, long ago, as some sort of self-insert fanfic for my brain. 

5.- Would you say it was challenging to write a novel, that, at its core, plays with timelines?
This particular novel doesn’t play with timelines too much, since there’s just one timeline jump where Ren goes 62 years in the future to meet Karenna. I did have to think about what had happened within those 62 years and create the entire concept of ancients (since the story existed as a fun daydream long before the novel, the worldbuilding came second). But a big joke with my friends is that I rarely write a straightforward novel. The Star-Crossed Empire is dual timeline. Another one of my books had extensive flashbacks, although I decided to excise them in a heavy revision. And yet another one of my books is actually reverse chronology. 

6.- How did the manuscript of Ancient as the Stars evolve from its inception?
Hahah, well, a lot. One version or another of this thing has existed since I was 20 (I’m 43 now). The version I wrote in 2019 isn’t horribly far off from what I published. The basic storyline is the same. But I had written it with Ren in the first person and Karenna in third, and with a frame of it being Ren telling the story a year later. That’s obviously gone, with it all in third past. I had chapters with mixed points of view. I didn’t bring Max in until much later in the book. And, as a newbie writer, I didn’t have as deep of a POV as I do now (although I actually still write my deepest POV in first person. My third person works all have a bit more distance to them than my immersive first person ones). 
The title has also been through massive changes. I’m actually pretty good at titles, but this one stymied me. The very first version was called Kara and Karenna. (She was Kara then, not Ren). Not a great title for marketing!

7.- You are releasing the Star Crossed Empire this 14th November, how would you describe it?
The Star-Crossed Empire is a Vorkosigan-inspired dual timeline romantic space opera. The first person sections were influenced a lot by the immersive YA books I was reading at the time! The third person is much more like classic SF. I call it romantic but the romance is mostly a subplot, and she’s ace/possibly gray-aromantic, so it might not even read as a romance to people. 

8.- Do you find much different the experience of writing this romantic story from Ancient?
It didn’t feel much different, to be honest. It flowed as easily and as well as Ancient as the Stars. I think part of it is that both books were written for fun. I had publishing in my mind, but I thought it was unattainable, so there was no pressure. Every book I’ve written since has had that mind-numbing pressure to be perfect in the back of my mind, whether I was focused on trad or indie-pub. 

9.- Why do you like sci-fi as a genre?
I like science fiction as a vehicle for all sorts of stories. My first spy novel was a science fiction one, for example, because it gave me space to explore that genre and that type of story without being hampered by reality. My SF is soft (the Broken Union series is perhaps medium; I did try to think about reality for those! None of my other series care at all about real science). Anyway, whether it’s comedy or women’s fiction or thriller, I like writing through the lens of SFF. 

10.- You do your own covers. Could you tell us more about the process of designing them?
I think really hard about marketing. How can my title and my cover convey genre in a snap. But I’m also really influenced by trad pub, so what I choose is often a medium ground between typical indie covers and the trad pub covers I love so much. But, for example, most of my SF books that exist in space are going to have a spaceship on them, so someone can look and be like, ahhh, SF. Whereas if I were going for a trad look, I might not bother. After I get that sort of basic plan in my head (“what am I trying to convey?”) then I look at other indie books in my genre and subgenre, and I start trolling through stock photo sites to see what I can find. In some cases, like these first two books, I run across a stock image that makes me stop in my tracks and go yes! that’s it! In other cases, I’ve had the vision first and then tried to create it with what I had (that’s because I now have more experience in designing said covers. So my first books have covers that aren’t as altered, which means others might end up using something similar. My later ones are unique). Obviously I have to now do a lot of work to make sure even my stock photos aren’t AI (because they aren’t always labeled, sadly). 

11.- What can we expect from Maya Darjani in the future?
The second book in the Broken Union series, Loyalty to the Max, is coming out in May 2025. It’s my first experience writing a sequel as opposed to a brand new book, which kinda kicked my butt. Likely in November 2025 we’ll have my science fantasy spy novel, A Stellar Spy. There are a lot of other books and short stories and the like in the works, some of which are completed (ex: my contemporary spy novel). Likely I’ll be releasing about two books a year.