Thaw out!

We're going to do something a bit different today. A little while ago I decided to enter the Blogsplash for a novel entitled Thaw by Fiona Robyn. Essentially, myself and many other bloggers get to publish the first page of the novel on the first of March as a neat form of 2.0 viral marketing. I may not be an Amazong Associate, but I sure like me some 2.0 swag and with all the e-book controversy going on I can't help but appreciate an author putting it out there for free. As today is the first of March, it's ready and raring to go. Below is the email sent to me by the author in it's entirety. Enjoy! -Kristi(e)-

Meet Ruth. She doesn't know if she wants to carry on living or not, and she gives herself three months to decide. Her diary is my novel, Thaw, and you can read it for FREE, beginning today.

Why am I giving a novel away for free? Because I am a writer, and I want to share my characters and their stories with as many people as possible. And maybe, if you enjoy it, you might want to read more of my books.

Become a follower of the blog page now. Follow on Twitter. Join the Facebook page. Forward this email to your novel-reading friends. Thank you.

Over to Ruth.

*

These hands are ninety-three years old. They belong to Charlotte Marie Bradley Miller. She was so frail that her grand-daughter had to carry her onto the set to take this photo. It's a close-up. Her emaciated arms emerge from the top corners of the photo and the background is black, maybe velvet, as if we're being protected from seeing the strings. One wrist rests on the other, and her fingers hang loose, close together, a pair of folded wings. And you can see her insides.

The bones of her knuckles bulge out of the skin, which sags like plastic that has melted in the sun and is dripping off her, wrinkling and folding. Her veins look as though they're stuck to the outside of her hands. They're a colour that's difficult to describe: blue, but also silver, green; her blood runs through them, close to the surface. The book says she died shortly after they took this picture. Did she even get to see it? Maybe it was the last beautiful thing she left in the world.

I'm trying to decide whether or not I want to carry on living. I'm giving myself three months of this journal to decide. You might think that sounds melodramatic, but I don't think I'm alone in wondering whether it's all worth it. I've seen the look in people's eyes. Stiff suits travelling to work, morning after morning, on the cramped and humid tube. Tarted-up girls and gangs of boys reeking of aftershave, reeling on the pavements on a Friday night, trying to mop up the dreariness of their week with one desperate, fake-happy night. I've heard the weary grief in my dad's voice.

So where do I start with all this? What do you want to know about me? I'm Ruth White, thirty-two years old, going on a hundred. I live alone with no boyfriend and no cat in a tiny flat in central London. In fact, I had a non-relationship with a man at work, Dan, for seven years. I'm sitting in my bedroom-cum-living room right now, looking up every so often at the thin rain slanting across a flat grey sky. I work in a city hospital lab as a microbiologist. My dad is an accountant and lives with his sensible second wife Julie, in a sensible second home. Mother finished dying when I was fourteen, three years after her first diagnosis. What else? What else is there?

Charlotte Marie Bradley Miller. I looked at her hands for twelve minutes. It was odd describing what I was seeing in words. Usually the picture just sits inside my head and I swish it around like tasting wine. I have huge books all over my flat - books you have to take in both hands to lift. I've had the photo habit for years. Mother bought me my first book, black and white landscapes by Ansel Adams. When she got really ill, I used to take it to bed with me and look at it for hours, concentrating on the huge trees, the still water, the never-ending skies. I suppose it helped me think about something other than what was happening. I learned to focus on one photo at a time rather than flicking from scene to scene in search of something to hold me. If I concentrate, then everything stands still. Although I use them to escape the world, I also think they bring me closer to it. I've still got that book. When I take it out, I handle the pages as though they might flake into dust.

Mother used to write a journal. When I was small, I sat by her bed in the early mornings on a hard chair and looked at her face as her pen spat out sentences in short bursts. I imagined what she might have been writing about - princesses dressed in star-patterned silk, talking horses, adventures with pirates. More likely she was writing about what she was going to cook for dinner and how irritating Dad's snoring was.

I've always wanted to write my own journal, and this is my chance. Maybe my last chance. The idea is that every night for three months, I'll take one of these heavy sheets of pure white paper, rough under my fingertips, and fill it up on both sides. If my suicide note is nearly a hundred pages long, then no-one can accuse me of not thinking it through. No-one can say, 'It makes no sense; she was a polite, cheerful girl, had everything to live for,' before adding that I did keep myself to myself. It'll all be here. I'm using a silver fountain pen with purple ink. A bit flamboyant for me, I know. I need these idiosyncratic rituals; they hold things in place. Like the way I make tea, squeezing the tea-bag three times, the exact amount of milk, seven stirs. My writing is small and neat; I'm striping the paper. I'm near the bottom of the page now. Only ninety-one more days to go before I'm allowed to make my decision. That's it for today. It's begun.

Continue reading here. Follow on Twitter. Join the Facebook page.

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Warmest wishes,
Fiona Robyn
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www.fionarobyn.com
www.plantingwords.com

Waiting on Wednesday: Two for the price of one!

Last week was my first WoW post and Marce of Tea with Marce left me a comment, leading me to her posting. This week I'm using the book she selected (Thaw) because now I'm waiting on it, too! It also made me think of this ARC I received at the Baker and Taylor Spring 2010 preview, so I decided to give you that one as well. Breaking the Spine is hosting the round-up.

Both of these books center on people going through difficult depression and their journey as they decide whether or not to commit suicide. As dedicated readers of Purple Polka know, my stepfather committed suicide in the beginning of December last year, so it seemed a timely post for this week's WoW. And on that somber note, the books!

Book One: Thaw (Fiona Robyn)

(description pulled from Fionarobyn.com)

Ruth is thirty two years old and doesn't know if

she wants to be thirty three. Her meticulously-ordered lonely life as a microbiologist is starved of pleasure and devoid of meaning. She decides to give herself three months to decide whether or not to end her life, and we read her daily diary as she struggles to make sense of her past and grapples with the pain of the present. "Thaw" explores what makes any of our lives worth living. Can Red, the

eccentric Russian artist Ruth commissions to paint her portrait, find a way to warm her frozen heart?

--

The neatest part about this book is that Fiona Robyn is publishing it on a blog in March in addition to hard printing. To help spread the word she's organizing a Blogsplash, where blogs (this one included!) are going to publish the first page of the book and a link to the blog.

She's aiming to get 1000 blogs involved--if you're interested in joining her email her at fiona@fionarobyn.com or find out more information here.

***

Book Two: By the Time You Read This, I'll be Dead (Julie Anne Peters)

(found on the back of the book--a plot description was found online, but this compelled me more so I opted to use this instead)

23 Days and counting

Dear

__mother

__father

__other

There was nothing you could do to stop me because:

__I'd already made up my mind

__I have been suffering my whole life

__you were too slow to notice

I offed myself because:

__my life sucks

__the world sucks

__you suck

Goodbye,

Daelyn

--

Author of two books burning a hole in my To Be Read pile (Rage and Between Mom and Jo, respectively) why shouldn't Julie Anne Peters add yet another title to the stack? I'm most excited for the count-down method, where we slowly find out more about our teenage protagonist and find out if she decides to pull the plug.