Bonus Monday post!

For the last ten months, I’ve been co-authoring a novel with nine other writers (seven from the UK, one from Brazil, and one from Washington, DC). The project is called Ten to One, and it has been an amazing experience to write a novel with this talented crew.

 

The premise of the project is that, as a group, we produce ten chapters, each of us writing a section of each from the perspective of a single character. The catch is that after every chapter is written, we post the sections on Facebook, and the audience (and a panel of judges) vote. The character with the fewest votes (combined with the lowest judges score) is eliminated after each round (hence the name Ten to One!).

My character, Nell, is a young widow trying to escape her past who has recently moved to Skegness (a small, dingy seaside town in England) from Virginia to live with her aunt and waitress at a chip shop. She’s an amateur boxer and a former EMT who has gotten mixed up with murder and mayhem through the thugs running her gym (and an illegal fight club), and while her situation is getting messier, the lives of those around her, including her only real friends in town – a sword swallower and a dangerous mafia wannabe – are falling apart.

Unfortunately, the chapters are extremely difficult to read on Facebook (the spacing is all off and it’s not collated with the other writers’ sections, so if you’re interested in a better reading experience, check out the archives here. If, however, you would simply like to vote for me (and Nell), all you have to do is go HERE (or I might be reduced to truly humiliating levels of begging. Scroll to the bottom of the post and click LIKE to cast your vote. Don’t be fooled by the LIKE button on the top of the post – it’s connected to the Ten to One page instead of my specific post (I have no idea why – Facebook is a mystery to me).

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking your vote doesn’t matter, or that others will vote so you don’t need to. Not true! There are over 11,000 of you hanging out at Books j’adore, and last round, I think I had 92 votes. The guy in first place had 164. Take a minute to ponder the arithmetic there, and then go vote. I promise it only take twenty seconds and would mean the world to me!

Besides, how can you say no to this face?

Nell, as envisioned by one of my ridiculously talented best friends, Jeannine