The Press Room.
Welcome to the press page of Avery Lane Maxwell, novelist and innkeeper in Frisco, Colorado. The facts, the author, the books, and the doors, given plainly.
To request information, a photograph, or an interview, please contact Mr. Maxwell's PR counsel: Courtney DeWinter, DeWinter Marketing & PR, Denver · DeWinterMarketingPR.com
Avery Lane Maxwell is a novelist and innkeeper in Frisco, Colorado, with nine years in inn and resort hospitality, most recently Resident Innkeeper and Director of Guest Experience and Brand Performance at a historic Frisco inn. His novels were written there: early mornings at the front desk, between arrivals, in the off-season quiet of a mountain town at nine thousand feet.
His debut is Still, by Design. Its companion, Good Little Innkeeper, tells how Elias came to the inn. Both are works of fiction, built on a single conviction: the way something is built is the way it is felt.
He writes under a pen name, acknowledged as such. Longer and shorter bios, and a one-page backgrounder, are available from Courtney DeWinter.
- Title
- Still, by Design. (the comma and the period are part of the title)
- Author
- Avery Lane Maxwell
- Publisher
- Galena House · Frisco, Colorado
- Formats
- Jacketed hardcover, blue cloth hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook
- Hardcover ISBNs
- 979-8-9937250-3-1 · the jacketed hardcover, for bookstores and libraries through Ingram and on Bookshop.org
979-8-9937250-0-0 · the blue cloth hardcover, through Ingram - Paperback ISBN
- 979-8-9937250-5-5 · trade paperback, for bookstores and libraries through Ingram and on Bookshop.org
979-8-9937250-2-4 · the Amazon edition - eBook ISBN
- 979-8-9937250-1-7
- Amazon
- a.co/d/04YmykOA
- One line
- A man moves to a beautiful place expecting it to fix him. It does not. What he builds instead is the book.
- Audiobook
- Read in the author's own voice. $12.99; the first chapter is free at galena.house/reader/audiobook.
- Status
- Literary fiction, complete at 81,000 words. Seeking representation; world rights available.
- Position
- The companion to Still, by Design.: how Elias came to the inn. Elias is the protagonist of both, and this one stands on its own.
- One line
- A man who has spent his whole life making strangers feel at home, and has never once let himself be one, learns, slowly, how to be seen.
- Provenance
- Avery published Still, by Design. himself, under an imprint he founded and still runs. Good Little Innkeeper is unpublished, and its rights are clean.
- Materials
- The query, a one-page synopsis, the first fifty pages and the full manuscript, on request: avery@averylanemaxwell.com
“I run a fifteen-room inn on Galena Street in Frisco, Colorado, and I make a podcast from its front desk before the guests wake up.”
Podnews, the daily read of the podcast industry with more than 33,000 subscribers, featured the show and quoted the house at length, scone line included. The story also aired on the Podnews Daily podcast.
“Author uses Banks roots in his novels, podcast.”
The hometown paper, in the county where the author grew up, on Maley Road between Homer, Jefferson and Commerce. Angela Gary wrote about both novels and the podcast, and about the rural Georgia boyhood the second book opens on. The county has a habit of producing people who leave and then write the place down.
“Frisco innkeeper turns journals into authorial debut on life, healing and hospitality.”
The county’s own paper told the whole story: the early mornings at the front desk of a historic Frisco inn, the years of journals that became Still, by Design., and the hope the book carries. “I just wanted to be able to see it on a shelf somewhere,” Maxwell told the Daily. “I wanted to be able to share a part of me and really what the inn has done for me.”
- Sep 13, 2026
- Featured in The Banks County News, the hometown paper in Georgia: the Banks roots in both novels and in the podcast.
- Sep 4, 2026
- Featured in Podnews, the podcast industry daily, and on the Podnews Daily podcast.
- Sep 11, 2026
- The Edition · No. 4: the trail through the gold, the water between places, and a second book still looking for a home.
- Sep 4, 2026
- The Edition · No. 3: the letter of the paper, the portraits, and the readings returning.
- Sep 1, 2026
- Episode Two, The House That Didn’t Save Me. 26 minutes, with the scone recipe in the middle. The Edition · No. 2 announced it to the list.
- Aug 25, 2026
- The podcast launches with Becoming Avery. Every episode scored with original music, and every episode also a film.
- Aug 2026
- The Still, by Design. audiobook arrives on Spotify, read in the author’s own voice.
- 2026
- Profiled in the Summit Daily News: the journals, the inn, and the debut.
- 2026
- The Epopteia Reader, the house’s own reading app, free on the App Store.
The readers are being read.
If Still, by Design. did something for you, the most useful thing you can do is say so where another reader will find it. Two places. Both help, and the second one helps most.
Reviews are read before they are hung, and only ever appear with the name you give above. Your address is never shown.
Amazon is where a stranger decides whether to take a chance on an independent novel. It takes two minutes and it matters more than anything else you could do for this book.
Available to media on request: the author photograph in high resolution, both covers, the twenty-one-second film for Still, by Design., and the ALM monogram. Write to Courtney DeWinter and say what you are working on; the files follow the same day.
A scored essay podcast, written and read in Frisco, Colorado. Every episode is also a film. All episodes, with the films, at averylanemaxwell.com/podcast.
No. 1 · Becoming Avery. · No. 2 · The House That Didn't Save Me. · No. 3 · The Water Between Places. · No. 4 · Let Them Have Their Version. · No. 5 · The Amber Thread.
Sent when there is something worth sending. Ask for them by letter, at averylanemaxwell.com/letters.
Press, photographs and interview requests go to counsel. Everything else begins with a note to the desk.
Press · Courtney DeWinter, DeWinter Marketing & PRWrite to Avery · avery@averylanemaxwell.com
Agents: the query packet is ready and travels the same road. Ask, and it is yours.