ZOMFG! Agatha Christie

I totally had a "Holy Crap!" moment today when my agent tweeted something and I realized there were only 56 days until Deathday comes out.  It was only like a year and a half ago that I was having "holy crap!" moments about having an agent.  And then only like a year ago where I was peeing my pants every time I realized Simon Pulse was publishing my book.  Here's my shameless self-promotion for the week:

• If you haven't entered, you have ten days to enter to win a slightly "damaged" ARC of The Deathday Letter.
• You can read the first chapter on my site.
• And you can find out whether I'm down with Madonna or Lady GaGa over at Sarah's blog.

Okay, enough of that.  Does anyone NOT know who Agatha Christie is?  Okay, so I've always been aware of her.  I knew some titles of her books and that she is pretty much the best-selling author of all freaking time.  JK Rowling ain't got nothing on Agatha.  But I didn't know much else.  Until I started doing some research on a personality disorder called a dissociative fugue.  Basically it's when a person up and leaves their life.  They travel away and don't remember who they were.  Often, it's difficult to tell that there's anything even wrong with the person, though when pressed for their identity, they can become confused.  And in rarer cases, people in a fugue state will adopt new identities.

The reason I got onto Agatha Christie is because she famously disappeared for eleven days and it has been postulated that she suffered from a dissociative fugue.  Also, she got all dressed up to write.  My neighbors are lucky if I put on pants.  Anyway, all this reading about the extraordinary woman made me wonder how great a writer she was.  So I picked up AND THEN THERE WERE NONE.  First off, I'm not a big fan of mystery, but I read this at night and had trouble sleeping.  It's not so much that it's scary, but these 10 folk are stuck on an island and some psycho is killing them according to a children's poem!  NUTS!  Getting into the style of the time is a little difficult, but her characters are so fantastic and sharply drawn.  I was happily surprised by the ending and am now reading MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS.

It just goes to show you that some books never go out of style.  I don't know that I'll be reading many mysteries after Agatha Christie, but she's certainly put the genre in a new light for me.

Another book I want to tell you about is THIRTEEN DAYS TO MIDNIGHT.  I read it this weekend and was really surprised.  I expected a predictable thrill ride but ended up with a story about having the power of life and death and all the consequences that go along with that.  My only complaint is that it wasn't long enough.  The writing is solid, the characters well-drawn, and the pacing excellent, but what really makes this book are the consequences.  Read the book and you'll get what I mean.

What's up for the rest of the week?  Who knows.  I'm totally off script.  I might have my brother by though for a segment called: Awkward questions from my brother.   Have a fantastic week!