Since I’m planning on releasing my first novel this month, and it’s crazy enough already, of course I had to add flames to the freak-out fire by trying something new to promote it. In the words of fellow challenge-mate Corrine O’Flynne:
The A-to-Z Challenge is an annual affair started by a guy named Arlee Bird and put on for the amusement of the audience and to form an alliance among all us blog folks around the globe. Join in or follow along, there are over 1600 blogs participating this year. A letter a day, all April, Sundays excluded except today for it is April 1 and what would this challenge be if it started on April 2? Please.
So I’m going to continue my teasing ways and give snippets from the book with such stock photography (from BigStock’s preview samples in this case) to help you get a sense of what I’m talking about. Today’s introduction to Dust to Blood is, appropriately, to show you Anne, the story’s protagonist and narrator. We actually considered using the photo here as part of the cover image at one point, but I think we’ve done much better. Here’s how we meet her in the book:
On top of which, some crazy twist of fate has seated me next to a woman whose name is only one letter removed from mine. It’s a coincidence Ann noticed as we were sorting out boarding passes and carry-on bags. I’ve always thought my parents just ran out of creativity after the initial effort of gestation, so plonked an “e” at the end of a common name for their naming effort. The oddity of meeting someone whose family name is as similar (she’s a Cosby while I’m a Crosby) almost guarantees other comparisons. For my own peace of mind, I’m glad to see she’s my opposite both in looks—she’s much shorter than my own 5’4” and about as wide as she is tall, with blond hair and blue eyes—as well as beliefs—she’s traveling with her church’s youth group as something of a mentor/adviser, as they make a tour of holy sites in exotic places.
For myself, I’ve never been much more than agnostic. I acknowledge the existence of mysteries and a force outside myself, but have never been much on organizations and their doctrines. This is another reason for suspicion: my boss is a real conspiracy nut, so it would be no skin off his nose to manufacture a case that forces me to delve deeper into pseudo-history and related apocrypha. In fact, he would have reams of research for me to read proving that there’s no such thing even as the “coincidence” of sitting next to a virtual name double.
At this point, I’m aiming for an April 21 release, so you don’t have much longer to wait to be able to read the whole thing.
🙂
I had to have a read as my name is Anne and it is very rare to read a book these days with an Anne in it. Good luck with the book. I’m doing the A-Z challenge too.
It’s funny, because I seem to know so many Ann/Anne/Annies it seemed such a common name to me when I was writing. And now it seems an almost-daily posting schedule for blogging is more of a challenge than writing the book…! 😀
It’s a name we don’t hear among young peoplenow. There were seven Annes in my class at school. It is hard to blog daily plus visit as many blogs as possible.