A Suspenseful, Futuristic Thriller

Hi Diamond Mine Readers,

Julie Cosgrove hosting today. I am not normally a sci-fi or futuristic fantasy fan, but I have read everything this author has written for Prism Book Group, including her YA series, and I'd probably read the phone book if she wrote it.

 Tell our readers about Anna Kittrell?

I grew up in small-town Oklahoma, in the little city of Anadarko where I still live today. I attended public school, and in the fourth grade, began selling my handwritten stories on the playground for a dime. The summer before my tenth grade year, I met my high school sweetheart-turned-husband Tim. We married in 1989, shortly after graduating from Anadarko High School, and raised two wildly creative children who also earned their diplomas in Anadarko. My husband and I are looking forward to watching our grandson walk across that same hometown graduation stage in the future.

I have worked as a secretary at Anadarko Middle School for going on eighteen years, and credit the many days spent behind the front desk for keeping me young. One of my favorite things to do is to ask the kids how old they think I am—and laugh at their expressions when I tell them my real age. Although I’m surrounded by teens and pre-teens, I tend to draw on my own experiences as a middle school student when creating my young adult tales.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been writing. I currently have nine books in publication. All of my books are available on Amazon.

Selling stories for a dime. Wow, that's about what we make today in royalties on a 99 ebook, isn't it? Seriously how spunky and enterprising of you even back then.  

I loved your YA series on the teenage girls. What made you want to switch to a futuristic

theme in The Commandment?

Actually, the genre chose me. I’ve never written futuristic scifi before, and to be honest, neither have

I read books from that genre. As the story unfolded, I just went with it. If I would have put too much thought into genre, I would have probably talked myself out of writing the story!

The premise for The Commandment approached me somewhat like a dream. I kept picturing a young woman lying in a hospital bed, coming out from under anesthesia. A doctor asked her if she “still remembered,” and she replied, “yes.” This made her mother sob hysterically. I kept wondering why the young woman’s mother didn’t want her to remember. What exactly was it that her mother so desperately wanted her daughter to forget? It seemed like a reverse-amnesia situation, but I didn’t have a clear idea of what was taking place until I began to outline and the story started to take shape. As it turns out, the book takes place 35 years in the future, and is the story of a girl who faces elimination on her 18th birthday because her body rejects a mandatory, God-erasing vaccine.

Wow, I'm hooked already. What do you want readers to take away from reading The Commandment?  (Love that double entendre of the title, btw.)

I hope readers come away from The Commandment with a sense of awareness about themselves as well as society. That they might take spiritual inventory to evaluate what they can and cannot live without. I hope readers find it fun and enlightening to ponder, as I have, the “what ifs” of our future.

Give us sneak peek into the book's plot.

Ten years ago, Briar’s body rejected a government mandated vaccine known as SAP (Serum to Advance Progressivism), formulated to erase God from the mind. Briar was seven years old. She’s been under house arrest ever since. 

Now, just weeks from becoming a legal adult, Briar remains non-responsive to her mandatory SAP injections. Along with her rapidly approaching eighteenth birthday looms a grim reality: by order of the Commandment, adulthood means institutionalization for those resistant to SAP. 

In a matter of days, Briar will become a permanent resident of the ARC—a facility shrouded in dark rumors of torture, experimentation, and death. Her only alternative is to accept a last minute ultimatum to become a laboratory test subject for a new God-dissolving serum. 

With a decade of solitude behind her and a lifetime of confinement before her—what does she have to lose? Except maybe her soul.

OK, the hook is firmly in my mouth and yanking. Reel me in! I cannot wait to read this and I know so will our readers. What is next on your author plate?

I always say my writing style is as eclectic (a nice word for mismatched) as my wardrobe. My collective work is a mixed bag of genres that includes YA, Christian futuristic romance, Christian YA, romantic suspense, poetry, short stories, and my new obsession—screenwriting. Over the past two years, I’ve penned four feature length screenplays in assorted genres, and have absolutely fallen in love with the process. In a screenplay, the writing is sparse and succinct, and the word count is much less than a novel. At this point in my life, screenwriting just makes sense. That’s not to say I’m stepping away from novel writing forever—just for a season. A genre-spanning dream of mine is to see The Commandment on the silver screen.

Folks, Anna will give away one pdf ebook of this novel to a random commentor, so be sure to leave one by clicking below!

Where can readers find out more about your nine books, including The Commandment? 

Buy Links:

Amazon: https://goo.gl/Fuca4k

Pelican/Prism: https://goo.gl/9BbDod

Barnes and Noble: https://goo.gl/UWgq3Y

Contact Links:

Website:  annakittrellauthor (https://sites.google.com/view/anna-kittrell/home)

Author Facebook Page:   https://www.facebook.com/AKittrell

Book Trailer:

The Commandment Trailer:    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRLTQp4S-aA