3 THINGS TO FORGET - Cynthia T Toney - One Free Book

Welcome, Cynthia. Tell us how much of yourself you write into your characters.

Only little bits. The rest comes from people I’ve loved or known, sometimes only for a short while.

What is the quirkiest thing you have ever done?

As a kid, I liked to walk backwards as fast as I could. That ended when I ran into a street pole.

When did you first discover that you were a writer?

When I started trying to write greeting card sentiments (hoping I’d one day sell them) and to improve product descriptions in advertisements.

Tell us the range of the kinds of books you enjoy reading.

Autobiographies and biographies of people I like or admire, historical fiction of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, contemporary mysteries and romantic suspense, and well-done science fiction. I like to slip a good children’s book into the mix once in a while.

How do you keep your sanity in our run, run, run world?

I deactivate Facebook for weeks at a time. I grow herbs and cook with them. I get down on the floor with my dogs and interact with them on their level.

I didn’t know you could deactivate Facebook for a while. How do you choose your characters’ names?

Sometimes I use place names I’m familiar with for people and people names for places. Sometimes I use a surname for a first name or the other way around. I’ve even created character names that don’t seem to exist anywhere. I really admire the clever character names other authors have created.

What is the accomplishment that you are most proud of?

To have survived long enough to write novels and get them published. I recall a number of times when God must have sent a guardian angel to keep me out of harm’s way.

If you were an animal, which one would you be, and why?

A bird. I’ve always wanted to fly.

What is your favorite food?

If I had to live the rest of my life eating only one ethnicity of food, it would be Italian.

What is the problem with writing that was your greatest roadblock, and how did you overcome it?

My first drafts tend to be sparse, perhaps because I see so much in my mind’s eye but forget to write it all down for the reader. I’ve learned to expand my descriptions and my characters’ reactions.

Tell us about the featured book.

3 Things to Forget is the fourth and final book of the Bird Face series from Write Integrity Press. My main character, half-Cajun Wendy Robichaud, finally makes it to Alaska to see her dear friends Mrs. V and Sam.

In Alaska, Wendy thinks she’s left behind the problems resulting from her mistakes in Louisiana and wants to forget them. But starting the summer at her friend Sam’s house and volunteering with Alaska Wildlife Conservation bring not only strange surroundings but also strangers into her life. And those strangers have a secret involving a troubled girl who threatens Wendy’s friendship with Sam.

As Wendy struggles to understand the Alaskans she meets and gets to know, she must also say good-bye to old friends she might never see again and decide whether to forget the past or to learn from it.

Please give us the first page of the book.
There’s something to be said for escaping 4500 miles to the third least-populated state in America, where no one (well, almost no one) knows me. Otherwise, leaving behind my disgrace from the biggest academic scandal ever to hit my school—resulting in the breakup with my boyfriend on the night he said he loved me—might’ve been impossible.

Surrounded by strangers on the second of two connecting flights to Anchorage, for a total of fourteen hours on a Friday, I summoned teeth-grinding determination to forget the past. What better time for an intense study, a.k.a. cramming, of American Sign Language? Before the plane would land in Alaska, I might become proficient enough in ASL to communicate with Sam and his deaf friends without making a fool of myself.  For the month of June, I’d live with Sam and his family in Anchorage. I’d work with him and other teens, possibly deaf, as a volunteer at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center. And I’d do whatever it took to fit in.

How can readers find you on the Internet?

www.CynthiaTToney.com and my blog, www.birdfacewendy.com  On Amazon, Goodreads, Facebook, and Twitter: Cynthia T. Toney. Always use the middle initial to find me!

Thank you, Cynthia, for sharing your book with my blog readers and me.

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