It’s September 22, the day DANI NOIR is available in stores!
I’ll tell you a secret: I heard a rumor that Barnes & Noble was stocking early, so I snuck on over to my local branch on Sunday afternoon, just to peek. I went to the middle-grade shelves and looked under my last name and it wasn’t there. I looked under my middle name. My first name. (I know my name is confusing.) And I sighed and I thought, I came too early.
Then I turned around and there it was, face out, on the new releases shelf!
How did I feel, seeing the book in a real-live bookstore for the very first time? STUNNED. I’ve always wanted this and yet… I’m not sure if I ever believed it would really seriously happen!
It did. It did!
And as of today, you can pick up the book and give it a read.
To entice you, check out this interview of me about the book and so much more, by the brilliant and inspiring Courtney Summers!
Here’s a taste of DANI NOIR:
. . . If this were a scene in a movie, it would be full of suspense and dodges and near-escapes and your heart would thump in your chest as you watched it, your heart up in your throat as the detective—you know that’s me—sneaks down the alley. But the femme fatale keeps turning the corner before you can see who she is.
It would be deep night, the only light from a few sparse streetlamps.
There’d be a whole sea of shadows.
It would start to rain and she’d pull out a black umbrella, pop it open. As she does you’d catch a flash of her hair. A quick shot of her cheek. Then the umbrella would cover her up, making it impossible now to find her face.
You’d hear the sound of her shoes even through the rain. Clack, clack. Clack, clack. Clack, clack.
And my shoes, too, fainter but still there.
We’d be in a big city nowhere near Shanosha. We’d be where all the movies take place, where things actually happen.
The streets would be cobblestone, not cracked asphalt with weeds bursting through. The buildings would be way taller than two stories. Up in the sky would be the lights of a city, not the lumpy old mountains that don’t light up in the night at all.
But, soon enough, the femme fatale would realize she’s being followed. She’d lift the umbrella to peek over her shoulder and you’d catch a glimpse of her eyes—dark-painted, narrowed with suspicion, but still calling you closer, drawing you in.
She’d duck down a side passage, and the detective would follow. Only, it’s a trick, a dead end. You’d find a wall, bricked up, no exits. Somewhere deep in those shadows she’d have to be hiding, but as you stand there in the dark, straining to hear something through the rain, you’d swear she got away. . . .
Hope you enjoy the book!
