The origins story....
Silver Dagger Book Tours was founded in September 2016 from the creative mind of a book blogger wanting to share her passion for books with new readers.
Maia used to be just an internet crawler looking for new books and giveaways and stumbled upon book tours. After indulging in many dozens of tours, she decided try her hand at blogging in her spare time (with absolutely no blogging experience at all!) to help share the amazing books she was being exposed to. She was a book blogger for several companies and stuck with it for over 3 years. In that time, she learned all the ropes and became a pretty efficient blogger, but there was still something missing- she wanted to make her posts stand out a bit! So, she started creating small special graphics like “about the book” and the other standard graphics that you see in all her tours nowadays and started jazzing her posts up.
It took several months of trying to get the ball rolling and was quite difficult at first to get authors to tour with her. Thus, she had an idea to let everybody pay what they can comfortably afford instead of set rates as she thought what some other companies charged were just outrageous! Authors were so pleased with the idea that their tours would always be completely affordable to every budget, that the same module was in place for over 5 years and worked magnificently!
Unfortunately, COVID hit and everything in the world went into the blender. Too many authors were not paying at all, or took over a year to pay up, or even others paid less than a cup of coffee for a month’s work of time. Maia puts in 90+ hours of work a week and literally never takes a day off (she works holidays and was even back to work in the hospital hours after delivering 3 of her kids!) and the majority of times does all her work with 4 kids running rampant and interrupting every 5 minutes (#MomLife), so putting in all of those hours for literally nothing was not paying bills or feeding the kids. Thus, sadly she was forced to implement set rates as there were just too many authors taking advantage of her honor system. Which, it seems not too many authors mind the rates at all! 🙂
Silver Dagger Tours has done over 5000 tours and worked with hundreds of amazing authors – many who come back for repeat tours! Tours kick off almost every weekday with occasional tours on the weekends and EVERY tour is required to have a giveaway so readers can gain a little something and have fun while they enjoy learning about new books.
As readers loves books in all genres, Silver Dagger Book Tours accepts all fictional genres and the occasional non-fiction book if it is interesting enough. She works with publishers big and small, indie authors, hybrids, personal assistants and of course authors directly that just want to get a promo boost for their books.
**New update – After being with Weebly as a host for many years, SDBT has now transferred to WordPress in 2025!!
The one behind it all...
A third-generation local of the historic town of Fredericksburg, Texas, my real name is Crystal Easterwood, though I adopted the alias Maia Gomez for online affairs many years ago and it kinda of stuck. (Maia after one of my favorite books and Gomez for my fiancée and kids)
I was born, raised and still live in Fredericksburg, TX which is a quiant little town nestled amongst the rolling hills of the Texas Hill Country where the beauty of the landscape is breathtaking and town is famous for the Main Street historic shopping district, the best peaches in the world, wildflowers and extensive wine trails. I really can’t imagine living anywhere else!
A country girl through and through, I grew up hunting, fishing, and digging for Indian artifacts, all the while enjoying the rivers and swimming holes around town and free-ranging in the wilderness practicing survival skills. (When my nose wasn’t stuck in a book of course). I’m a stay-at-home mom with three beautiful boys, ages 15, 8, and 7, and a 4-year-old daughter that keep me on my toes with constant chaos. We also recently adopted a herd of four black kittens that we found…..was going to keep just one but every kid needed their own cat and they’re so cute…so yeah you know how that goes.
A bookaholic from birth, I have always had a deep passion for reading and spent many late nights devouring books into the wee hours of the morning. (Book hangovers are so real) My “real” book collection numbers over 3000 books and takes up an entire small room in our house with custom bookshelves built by my (literally) handyman husband that I call my “book cave”. I’ve been building this collection since my childhood and will keep on adding to it for the rest of my life. Of course, I also have a similar collection of ebooks as well since I finally went digital a few years ago (and eliminates the lamp at night which my hubby is grateful for lol).
In 2016, I took my love of book blogging to the next level and began crafting tours, and never looked back!
In my spare time, I enjoy reading, playing with my kids, coffee, doing DIY renovation projects with my husband, drinking coffee, cooking, working out, repeatedly failing at gardening, and relaxing on my back porch with a good cup of coffee while I watch the massive axis deer herd come through the yard. (When I get an actual moment to relax that is)
And did I mention I like drinking coffee?