The Coincidence Authority (4th August 2011)

It's 7:45pm on Thursday 4th August and I should take a note of the date and the time because I have just finished work on the first draft of a manuscript that I should be calling 'Book Two'. Actually the title has been subject to so many changes of heart that I'm still not sure what it will be called when (if?) it ever sees the light of day. The current title is 'The Coincidence Authority'. I like that title. It sounds serious - and yet (I hope), enticing. The previous title was 'Azalea Explained', or, 'Explaining Azalea,' but these threw too much attention onto Azalea and not enough onto Thomas Post who is the real protagonist. For a while it was 'Azalea and the Coincidence Man,' but this was a bit Mills and Boonish. Anyway. Maybe they'll change it. I don't mind too much. Whatever the title, this is my first teaser trail for the book: Thomas Post is an expert on coincidences. He's an authority. People come to see him, to ask him if he can explain strange events that have befallen them, and he can always explain these things away. We poor humans, he would say, have a tendency to make patterns out of random shapes, or to construct meaning from the random behaviour of the universe. But one day Thomas gets a visit from Azalea Lewis, and his world will never be the same again. For Azalea's coincidences seem to go off the scale. The lives of Thomas and Azalea become entwined, their destinies entangled. And now, with Azalea apparently dead in a foreign land, Thomas must reassemble the pieces of her life in search for the patterns that drove it. And that means he must try to unravel the coincidences that so afflicted her. There. Will that do? Comments please ....

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