A compulsive woman takes an abandoned teenaged hitchhiker on a road trip to stop the wedding of the woman's British therapist/ fantasy lover.
Ended
To thank you for supporting ANNA INCOGNITO, I want to let you in on a little secret (thanks to my friend and fellow writer, Dan Tricarico, who suggested this).
Most of you have only read, at most, the first couple of chapters of the book. Some of you may not have read any of it yet and are just super supportive. Either way, I wanted to tell you something about Anna, my main character, and why I chose to tell her story.
I have a friend who suffers from some of the same conditions Anna does, specifically trichotillomania. My friend is absolutely brilliant, funny, a great conversationalist, and if you met her in person you might not even know she has this issue. But it has made her life very difficult, and it's not something that is easily controlled. Trichotillomania is a compulsion to pull at your hair and pluck it out, from your head, from your arms, from your eyebrows....it's very difficult to stop it. I don't presume to know why my friend has this condition, but it made me consider that for some people, at least, some trauma may have led to it. Not always. But for purposes of my story, it did.
The other reason I felt compelled to tell this story is that I, too, suffer from a compulsion. It is not as visible as pulling all the hair out of my head (I don't do that), but I have what is called dermatophagia, also called wolf-biting. I literally cannot stop myself from nibbling on my fingers. It's not exactly nail biting; it's more like a drive to try and get the skin to be even, but it can never be even since I pick at it constantly.
I always have to have neosporin and bandaids available to cover this up, because when it's bad, people notice. I usually say I've cut my fingers while cooking (which, if you know me, you know cannot be true!)
So, when I write about Anna's very real struggle with this affliction, I know what I'm talking about. And I know it's just a quirk that I have and that she has, and it's part of being human.
For those who pay attention to such things, this is a holiday of resurrection and rebirth. I like to think that Anna's story fits right in. I can't wait for you to read it.
Pax!
Laura