A Nod from The Gadsden Times

The Gadsden Times did a notice on "Brilliant Disguises" last week before our signing at Gadsden Christian Bookstore. Here it is:

The Gadsden Times
Friday, January 8, 2010

Thornton to be signing debut novel
By Matthew Martin
Times Features Editor
To everyone around Cameron Leon, he is a perfect man. But instead of being perfect and truthful to those around him, Leon has many faces.
That's the world author William Thornton has created with his fiction debut, “Brilliant Disguises,” which was released about a month ago.
In his book, Thornton's protagonist is leading a double life, pretending to be a Christian.
Leon gets hired for a job on one condition: that he join a church. But instead of really joining the church, he pretends to get “saved.”
His act becomes so believable he starts to deceive himself and winds up hollow and longing.
Thornton, a Gadsden native, said several things inspired him.
“One was how, at times in church, you'll find a person who comes forward to make a profession of faith who has been a fixture there for years, sometimes decades,” Thornton said. “They may be the Sunday School superintendent, or the lady who works in the kitchen for meals, or a volunteer in the nursery who never misses a Sunday. Everyone in the church knows them and looks up to them, yet they make that walk down the aisle and say they've never felt like they were saved. They may very well be a Christian, but doubts are eating away at them.
“I was interested in how that could happen.”
Even though the novel is considered a Christian book and being sold in Christian bookstores, the appeal has a broad base.
Through Leon's self-made life and the psychology that comes with that, the personal shortcomings become universal. Thornton said that is what drew him to write the book.
Thornton finished the book about two years ago. He said it only took him about six months to write the novel.
He is a former staff writer for The Gadsden Times who now works for the Birmingham News.
He will be signing copies of the book at 2 p.m. Saturday at the Gadsden Christian Bookstore on Broad Street.
It can be purchased there, as well as at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Books-A-Million Web sites. Copies also can be bought at brilliantdisguises.com.

The book also got mentioned in Atlanta Christian Family Magazine last month and can be seen on page 8 here.