Earlier this week on twitter I promised that I’d share the opening of The Dark and Hollow Places.  Then I got this in the mail:

And opened it up to find these:

Which made me realize that OMG THE PAPERBACK OF THE DEAD-TOSSED WAVES IS COMING OUT IN A LITTLE OVER A WEEK!!!  Ahem.  Somehow, this event totally snuck up on me.  It’s only ELEVEN days before release!!

And then after I spent the proper amount of time petting my new abundance of paperbacks, I flipped open to the back of one to find this:

Yes, that’s right — in the back of The Dead-Tossed Waves paperback you’ll find the opening scene of The Dark and Hollow Places.  And then it occurred to me that if I just went ahead and pasted that opening here on my blog, y’all might not want to run out and grab the paperback of The Dead-Tossed Waves when it comes out on February 8th.

And yet, I did make that promise so… here’s the fist line to The Dark and Hollow Places:

Tricky, tricky, I know!  I’m thinking of running a contest for The Dark and Hollow Places that will involve QR codes (that blocky little thing above).  So this is me testing it out and playing around.  Basically, all you need to do to read the first line of The Dark and Hollow Places is download a code reader to your smart phone (I use the app i-nigma but I’ve read you can also direct your mobile browser to scan.mobi) and then point it at that QR code above.  Viola!  Instant first line!

For those of you without smartphones, I’ll post the actual first line on Monday!  For the rest of you, thanks for indulging my experiment with QR codes (and feel free to drop your thoughts about QR codes in the comment)!