Barnes and Noble, Brick and Mortar

Selected Barnes and Noble brick and mortar stores are going to start carrying Frost Moon, possibly within the next month. Hooray!

Things keep getting better and better...

Frost Moon is:

• On the front page of Fictionwise (and #7 on their bestseller list)
• Close to cracking #100,000 on Barnes and Noble's sales list
• Still slowly creeping up Amazon's Kindle list ... at roughly #2300

Dakota's also doing well on the regular Amazon list, bubbling up higher and higher ... and even on her Facebook page ... which has 34 fans now!

And ... I've finished the first book of beta reader's comments on Blood Rock. Only ~6 more to go and then Book 2 will hopefully be on its way to the publisher!

Frost Moon Arrives

One of my oldest friends just got a copy of Frost Moon. And Frost Moon is now available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kindle, Fictionwise. And it's even been pirated! Not going to give you the links to those. :-)

It's really happening. Hard to take it all in...

-the Centaur

P.S. Dakota Frost is also now on Twitter and Facebook, though I can't share the Facebook link. :-(

Frost Moon is on Barnes and Noble

And you can buy it here. Time to rev up that book tour...

Skindancer Book 1: Frost Moon

For those just joining the party, Frost Moon is my first novel, published by Bell Bridge Books and now available on Amazon. A brief introduction:

In an alternate Atlanta where magic is practiced openly, where witches sip coffee at local cafes, shapeshifters party at urban clubs, vampires rule the southern night like gangsters, and mysterious creatures command dark caverns beneath the city, Dakota Frost's talents are coveted by all. She's the best magical tattooist in the southeast, a Skindancer, able to bring her amazing tats to life.
	When a serial killer begins stalking Atlanta's tattooed elite, the police and the Feds seek Dakota's help. Can she find the killer on the dark fringe of the city's Edgeworld? Among its powerful outcasts and tortured loners, what kind of enemies and allies will she attract? Will they see her as an invader, as a seducer, as an unexpected champion ... or as delicious prey?

For those who prefer a taste of the text, here's an excerpt from the first chapter:

I first started wearing a Mohawk to repel low-lifes — barflies, vampires, Republicans, and so on — but when I found my true profession it turned into an ad. People’s eyes are drawn by my hair — no longer a true Mohawk, but a big, unruly “deathhawk,” a stripe of feathered black, purple and white streaks climbing down the center of my head — but they linger on the tattoos, which start as tribalesque vines in the shaved spaces on either side of the ’hawk and then cascade down my throat to my shoulders, flowering into roses and jewels and butterflies.

Their colors are so vivid, their details so sharp many people mistake them for body paint, or assume that they can’t have been done in the States. Yes, they’re real; no, they’re not Japanese — they’re all, with a few exceptions, done by my own hand, right here in Atlanta at the Rogue Unicorn in Little Five Points. Drop by — I’ll ink you. Ask for Dakota Frost.

To retain the more … perceptive … eye, I started wearing an ankle-length leather vest that shows off the intricate designs on my arms, and a cutoff top and lowrider jeans that that show off a tribal yin-yang on my midriff. Throughout it all you can see the curving black tail of some thing big, beginning on the left side of my neck, looping around the yin-yang on my midriff, and arcing through the leaves on my right shoulder. Most people think it’s a dragon, and they wouldn’t be wrong; in case anyone misses the point, I even have the design sewn into the back of a few of my vests.

But those who live on the edge might see a little more: magical runes woven in the tribal designs, working charms woven into the flowers, and, if you look real close at the tail of the dragon, the slow movement of a symbolic familiar. Yes, it did move; and yes, that’s real magic. Drop by the Rogue Unicorn — you’re still asking for the one and only Dakota Frost, the best magical tattooist in the Southeast.

The downside to being a walking ad, of course, is that some of the folks you want to attract start to see you as a scary low-life. We all know that vampires can turn out to be quite decent folk, but so can cleancut young Republicans looking for their first tattoo to impress their tree-hugger girlfriends. As for barflies, well, they’re still barflies; but unfortunately I find the more tats I show the greater the chance that the cops will throw me into the back of the van too if a barfight breaks out.

So I couldn’t help being nervous as two officers marched me into City Hall East...

For more, you'll have to get it on Amazon or Bell Bridge. :-)

I hope you enjoy!
-the Centaur

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought...

... "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog DVD ~ Neil Patrick Harris ~ 4.8 out of 5 stars (471) ~ $9.49", according to Amazon's stats on Frost Moon. Which means ... SOMEONE BOUGHT A COPY OF FROST MOON! Ok, I knew that, because friends told me they had. But it's fun to think there's enough traffic for Amazon's machine learning algorithms to do affinity analysis ... and interesting to see what those people purchased. What does that say about Frost Moon? -Anthony

FROST MOON IS ON AMAZON

And you can find it here. If I didn't have one more practice reading to get through and then crash so I can get up at 4am to make it to the radio station in time, I'd have a nervous breakdown or something.

Frost Moon on its way to the printer...

...and should start showing up in Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Ingram, etc., in the first couple weeks of March. The eBooks will start showing up in the last few weeks of March or early April. Woohoo!

Do the happy dance ...

... the final version of the book is on its way to production.

It's Official

Frost Moon: March 2010 from Bell Bridge Books by yours truly. Not that they haven't announced it already and everything, but now it's on the site, all official like. I got chills.

Book Trailer for Frost Moon

Amazing to see some of the concepts in the story brought to life ...

... and many of the "filler" images are actually going to create scenes in future books. :-)

-the Centaur
Crossposted on my main blog the Library of Dresan.

First glimmers of Frost Moon on Amazon...

... though it is from my loyal publisher:

Immortal70 says: Does anyone know of any Fantasy or SciFi titles with bisexual women or lesbians as central characters besides the Hollows series? I love them, but I've read them all so far.

Deborah Smith says: Hi, I'm trying to get the word out among GLBT fantasy readers for a new urban fantasy series coming in March from my small press. SKIN DANCER, Book one: FROST MOON is by debut novelist Anthony Francis. Dakota Frost is Atlanta's finest magical tattoo artist. Tall, gorgeous, bi-sexual and enormously skilled as both the magical ink arts and the seduction of skin dancing, she walks the line of Edgeworld, the local community of non-human beings, mages, witches and illusionists. When the Atlanta P.D. need help tracking down a serial killer who slices tattoos from his victims, Dakota is thrown into dangerous intrigues and old alliances, including seeking the help of her ex-girlfriend, Savannah Winters, who is now a vampire.

Still, I got chills...
-the Centaur

More on Dakota Frost from Bell Bridge Books

Now announced on the Publishers Marketplace website:

Last but not least, our new fantasy series, SKIN DANCER, by debut author Anthony Francis, is careening through production and drawing absolute, total RAVES from early insider reads. Filled with adventure, humor, edgy characters and an incredible alternate reality, this story of a "magical tattoo artist" in modern Atlanta is going to rock the fantasy readers' world. Book one, FROST MOON, introduces the coolest heroine evah: tattoo specialist and "skin dancer" Dakota Frost, a tall, gorgeous, bi-sexual twenty-something whose tats are admiringly known as "Frost bites."

Ahem. I'm very flattered. I hope Frost Moon lives up to that description!
-the Centaur

Crossposted to the Library of Dresan blog...

Bell Bridge Books has bought Frost Moon

Check them out at http://www.bellbridgebooks.com/. Estimated publication date: March 2010. I'm so excited. More news as it happens.

UPDATE: The announcement is on their twitter stream...

Frost Moon: Back at the Editor

Frost Moon is back in the hands of the editor. We've gone over the first 12 chapters together and we're both on the same page. Things are looking good...

-the Centaur

P.S. Unfortunately their fall schedule has filled, so the earliest Frost Moon can come out is Winter 2010...

Frost Moon: Chapter 1 Excerpt

Each time I entered the National Novel Writing Month, I posted a good chunk of the start of each book on the Nanowrimo site - but it was never a complete excerpt.

Now, however, all of Chapter 1 of Frost Moon is online - check it out!

-the Centaur

Frost Moon: Coming Fall 2009

The publisher and I just talked, we're on the same page, and assuming we are both happy with the next edit we're working on, Frost Moon should hit the shelves in Fall 2009. There is a chance it could be delayed to January 2010 or that we can't come to agreement on the last few edits, but after our conversation I think the chance of serious problems is vanishingly small.

Keep your fingers crossed!

-the Centaur

Synopses of Book 1 and 2

I've fleshed out the synopses of Frost Moon and Blood Rock at the Books page. Hopefully this will give more context than just the excerpts. Enjoy!

-the Centaur
Pictured: the first draft of Frost Moon, moments after I finished it and copied it to a USB key for safekeeping.

Skindancer Book 1: Frost Moon

Skindancer: Frost Moon was my 2007 National Novel Writing Month contest entry - my response to the challenge to start a new novel in November and to write 50,000 words of the first draft before the end of the month. Skindancer describes what Dakota does and is the tentative name of the series; Frost Moon sounds cool and is the full moon that happens in November.

And now, the beginning of Frost Moon. Enjoy.

Frost Moon I first started wearing a Mohawk to repel low-lifes — barflies, vampires, Republicans, and so on — but when I found my true profession it turned into an ad. People’s eyes are drawn by my hair — no longer a true Mohawk, but a big, unruly “deathhawk,” a stripe of feathered black, purple and white streaks climbing down the center of my head — but they linger on the tattoos, which start as tribalesque vines in the shaved spaces on either side of the ’hawk and then cascade down my throat to my shoulders, flowering into roses and jewels and butterflies. Their colors are so vivid, their details so sharp many people mistake them for body paint, or assume that they can’t have been done in the States. Yes, they’re real; no, they’re not Japanese — they’re all, with a few exceptions, done by my own hand, right here in Atlanta at the Rogue Unicorn in Little Five Points. Drop by — I’ll ink you. Ask for Dakota Frost. To retain the more … perceptive … eye, I started wearing an ankle-length leather vest that shows off the intricate designs on my arms, and a cutoff top and lowrider jeans that that show off a tribal yin-yang on my midriff. Throughout it all you can see the curving black tail of some thing big, beginning on the left side of my neck, looping around the yin-yang on my midriff, and arcing through the leaves on my right shoulder. Most people think it’s a dragon, and they wouldn’t be wrong; in case anyone misses the point, I even have the design sewn into the back of a few of my vests. But those who live on the edge might see a little more: magical runes woven in the tribal designs, working charms woven into the flowers, and, if you look real close at the tail of the dragon, the slow movement of a symbolic familiar. Yes, it did move; and yes, that’s real magic. Drop by the Rogue Unicorn — you’re still asking for the one and only Dakota Frost, the best magical tattooist in the Southeast. The downside to being a walking ad, of course, is that some of the folks you want to attract start to see you as a scary low-life. We all know that vampires can turn out to be quite decent folk, but so can cleancut young Republicans looking for their first tattoo to impress their tree-hugger girlfriends. As for barflies, well, they’re still barflies; but unfortunately I find the more tats I show the greater the chance that the cops will throw me into the back of the van too if a barfight breaks out. So I couldn’t help being nervous as two officers marched me into City Hall East...

-the Centaur