Authors and Their Books: Post the first paragraph (only!) of your book

[Jay]

ELDORADO

The streetcar shuddered and pitched to the right as the passengers all rushed to one side to look out the windows. They jammed between the seats and each other, hands pressed flat against the glass, whispering 'oohs' and 'aahs' as they gaped at the spectacle. It was a car – a full-sized, gas-powered automobile – as much a rarity on a Vancouver street as a sighting of the hottest new movie star. A full-throated growl reverberated from under the vehicle’s hood as the driver revved the engine, declaring to the world that he was burning massive quantities of precious, irreplaceable gasoline and didn’t give a damn. A sea of bicycles, scooters, and motorcycle taxis parted deferentially around it as the machine glided through the chaos.

[Kimberly]

Mickey wrote: "Vice Principal Zant’s enraged voice easily penetrated the office’s thin walls, which provided only a token sense of privacy. Kendra inched closer to the windowed partition and took in the unfolding..."

My impression is that Kendra's about to hear and witness far more than she outta. Very well done.

[John]

The American Lawyer: A Novel

There are three ways a pissed-off senior law firm partner can get rid of an irritatingly bright and popular associate who's up for partnership. Two of them do not involve homicide.
THE AMERICAN LAWYER John Martel www.johnmartel.com

[Harry]

Here is the opening paragraph to my memoir 1923 which deals with my life during the Great Depression in Britain and my experiences in the RAF during WW2

Chapter One
The Beginning
When I was born on a cold, damp day in February 1923, we were not a happy family. We were not a well-fed family when I first cried out for my mother’s breast. Nor were we a loving family when I fell asleep in my make shift crib - a dresser drawer beside my parents’ bed. On the day of my birth, my father was not glad-handed by his friends for siring a male. When I came into this world, he was already an old man in his late fifties. If my father had any friends, they would have been elderly and unimpressed at his impecunious virility. As for my mother, she was much younger than my dad. She was only twenty-nine and jaded by marrying both above and beneath her station. My arrival was one more proof to her that she was trapped in a marriage that had long ago lost its lustre. My mother was being asphyxiated by the cliché: too little, too late. 1923: A Memoir: Lies and Testaments

[J.W.]

Here is the opening passage from my novel "Empire's Passing" available on Amazon et al.Empire's Passing:

Earth is going to die.

The phrase hung fluttering in his mind, a banner to the Imperium’s malaise. Duke Alexander Landsman of the planet New Meyer scanned the opened tactical data windows projected through his optic nerves by his neural implant. All of Sol System lay before him. The Goths had breached the thin defenses at the two jump points a month ago and were advancing on Earth like a tsunami approaching a seaside village. Behind the advancing fleet he made out huge Goth tugs towing hundred-meter-diameter asteroids. At least two hundred of them. I watched them gather the asteroids as they closed on Earth. It was like watching the assembly of a firing squad. Five hundred Goth cruisers led the armada, each armed with deadly rail guns and their smaller ship-killing kinetic projectiles.

[Tracey]

Dying is easy; living is the hard part.
From The Survivor by Sean Slater

[Martin]

First paragraph (and Chapter) of Undermind

They say that when we dream all the people we meet are really ourselves. So I'm the woman with long blonde hair trailling at extravagant length down her back is that the beginning of red-gold scales at the hissing ends? with the impossibly pale complexion like a line out of a Procul Harum song except when it's impossibly ruddy and there are rumours amid thickening static on podcasts throughout the city (all cities) of heaped corpses drained of blood with puncture marks at the neck? busy night glider whose gleaming immaculate teeth sometimes show improbably sharp bladelike fangs, a trick of the light surely, is me even when I see her hungrily, one gleaming driblet of red saliva poised to drop through infinite space from each fang, eyeing what I recognize in waking life as my own true form in the mirror? I'm hungry to sink my own teeth into my neck? Not at all, I'm a demure maiden shy and trembling before her potential ravisher what's this? I didn't know I had those take that! foul seducer and bleed for your crimes I suppose it's not impossible, I've also been told the world is round because its gaping maw is firmly closed on its writhing tail. I'm not saying this is a widely disseminated theory--then again, some aspects of me are saying exactly that if my dreams are to be believed, and some of me says "Hogwash! the world is round because of improbable coalescence of gasses! because of gravitational pull! because otherwise there'd be no place to put the North and South Pole! because life forms, especially intelligent life forms, crave the illusion that they're travelling in straight lines when they're really going round in circles! because a slightly irregular sphere is the ideal reflective surface! it has nothing to do with appetite at all, could you pass me a bit of the continent of Africa?"

http://www.amazon.com/Undermind-Marti...

[Helena]

This is the opening paragraph of my novel "Leonidas of Sparta: A Peerless Peer," the second book in a three part biographical novel about Leonidas of Sparta, the hero of Thermopylae.

"How do you choose men for sacrifice? The question seemed to hang in the stagnant summer air, thick with the dust kicked up by herds of sacrificial beasts driven into the city for the start of the Karneia. Leonidas had looked into the eyes of the passing steers, and they had looked back at him with recognition and understanding. “We are part of the same fraternity,” the four-legged sacrifices seemed to say as they nodded their heads and moved on, flicking their tails at flies."

Leonidas of Sparta: A Peerless Peer

[Jeff]

Kirilli and his wife Sasha were enjoying the carriage ride to town. The cool, misty, morning air invigorated their bodies. The smell of the rich oak trees filled their lungs to capacity. The serenity of the mood was blasted away by a loudspeaker coming from the direction of the depot. The words: “Achtung! Achtung!” broke the silence of the pleasant ride, scattering birds from the forests. The voice shattered the calm setting, igniting a sense of foreboding and dread.

[Andrei]

The old Bellstrom gaol crouched above the fine city of Airenchester like a black spider on a heap of spoils. It presided over The Steps, a ramshackle pile of cramped yards and tenements teeming about rambling stairs, and glared across the River Pentlow towards Battens Hill, where the sombre courts and city halls stood. From Cracksheart Hill, the Bellstrom loomed on every prospect and was glimpsed at the end of every lane.

First paragraph of The Raven's Seal.

[Kaylin]

Kenji Ota didn’t fit the description of a bloodthirsty killer. Upon meeting him, it would be difficult to believe he’d gotten away with murdering at least twenty-five men. He was intelligent, intuitive and physically attractive. His black hair was kept short and neat, and from the professional manner in which he dressed and carried himself, he could have been mistaken for a television announcer or successful business executive. He socialized in mixed circles – with stockbrokers, politicians and street-smart hoodlums alike – and his charming, larger-than-life personality drew the attention of women everywhere. However, after meeting Mariko Abe, his taste in the fairer sex had been spoiled forever. No one in his mind would ever compare to Kyoto’s most beautiful geisha or be foolish enough to keep her away from him.

First paragraph of Buried Threads by Kaylin McFarren.

[John]

It was that time of year again. Last week of January. The President was making his much anticipated State of the Union Address. After the usual greetings and initial courtesies, thanking everyone for coming, acknowledging the important players in all branches of the government, and offering gracious regards for a few special invited guests, the President delivered the type of crowd-pleasing line which has been the linchpin of State of the Union addresses for as long as anyone cared to remember.


http://amzn.to/122cnyF

[Peter]

From my historical medical thriller, COTTER:

July 1868

Cotter always wore the same clothes when confronting his opponents. He wore tan buckskin from head-to-toe. The sweatband on his hat had a single polished silver concho off center to the right but clearly sparkling to the person facing him. His buckskin blouse had bib buttons forming an upside down “L”. The buttons on the down stroke of the L on the right side of his chest were also highly polished silver conchos. The horizontal buttons were tan buckskin and almost invisible. His two Colt revolvers were the same models but his right gun was highly polished nickel. It glinted like the hat’s concho. His left hand gun had an unobtrusive matte gun-metal finish. Cotter’s tan buckskin pants had a row of polished conchos on the outer right leg seam only. His tan buckskin boots gave him almost silent under-footing. He had his photograph taken to help get the outfit just right. To anyone confronting Cotter, the man was off center. The bib buttons and the shiny silver conchos directed an opponent’s vision to the right. When Cotter drew his guns he moved slightly to the left. Even if his adversary was faster than he, the bullet usually missed and went off to the right. Usually, on two occasions he was shot superficially, once in the in the right shoulder and once in the right thigh. Every man who drew on him had died. http://tinyurl.com/py7rzxz

[George]

"Last night, I dreamt I went to Mandolin’s again. It seemed to me I stood by the sheet metal mailbox which fronted the driveway as I looked into their garage for a statuette of the black bird. For a while I could not enter for the way was barred to me. Then, like all dreamers, I was possessed asudden with supernatural powers and passed like a spirit through the barrier before me to that warm afternoon when Kiefer and I sat in that garage overlooking Baker Lake drinking a baker’s dozen of tepid Pabst Blue Ribbon beers. We there realized when someone kills your partner you have to do something about it even if it was unrefrigerated beer that killed him."

Joe had awakened with a full hangover, a failed communion with hard spirits. Yet he was able to wax loquaciously if not coherently. Joe and Fred had passed out in Fred’s bed in Fred’s in basement room at the Etheridges. On the floor was Sam. He had wrapped himself around three-fourths of the four-footed Japanese console stereo at the foot of the bed. Sam had also found reverie in a state of meditation that can only be attained by drinking to the point of finding some finite number of sheets to the wind.

Sam tried gingerly to pick up his head, “Ah, remembrance of things Pabst.”

Lad on a Softened Stoop

[Eve]

"I remember my first time. Though decades have passed, it’s still as clear as a full moon on a winter night. You’d think I was facing a firing squad. I stood behind the velvet curtain, frozen in a time warp that made each second seem like an hour. Every hair on my body was buzzing. I thought I would pass out."

From "CELESTIAL BODIES IN ORBIT: Memoirs of The Unknown Stripper"- Ch. 1. "Road To Stupidville" http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00A94D81A

[Mary]

I would have told Lena about the fire I saw in Iowa, but it is regret that writes this, that longs for said things unsaid.

First paragraph of Who by Fire: a novel; you may listen to the first chapter for FREE of the audible.com version here: http://amzn.to/Vd7hbV

[[deleted user]]

First Paragraph:

Today should have been one of the best days of my life. It was my first day playing golf as a member of Riveredge Country Club, one of New Jersey’s oldest and most exclusive golf clubs. Me, a nobody raised by a single mother in a two bedroom cape cod would now be hob-knobbing with people whose money was so old and their blood so blue their names ended in Roman numerals III and IV.

From Murder at the Jersey Shore

Richard Brawer
www.silklegacy.com

[Lance]

Luis Ojeda scanned his binoculars along the rusty sixteen-foot fence to the dirt road’s visible ends. Nothing. A dead floodlight at the curve over the arroyo left a patch of twilight in the line of artificial day. The lights on either side leached all color from the night.

From South , a near-future thriller.

[Tracey]

Berkeley square, Mayfair . A November evening , twilight fading into darkness . Street lights glowing in the misty air. In the garden at the centre, the branches of great trees formed filigreed shapes of black and silver , from which cries of roosting birds contended with the grind and roar of traffic . At this hour people passed through the square on their way somewhere else, huddled warm in coats and scarves , or shivering in short skirts and too-thin jackets. Those heading for the tube station or bus stop walked purposefully , eyes down, dodging the laughing groups that drifted towards wine bar or pub. It was a Friday night and London's offices were emptying fast.
The Silent Tide by Rachel Hore

[Savannah]

Sitting back on her heels, Rose wiped the sweat from her brow. The bandanna turned dark. Her grandmother’s attic was hot, but she needed to get the boxes down. Her grandmother, Lydia was not at all well and wanted to go through the boxes, before she became too ill to do it. Lydia's sister Rosemary had been murdered way back in the fifties and Lydia had inherited all of Rosemary and her husband Richard’s things. The boxes in the attic were most of what was left of two lives cut tragically short.

Savannah Black Ripples in Time

[Peggy]

John wrote: "The American Lawyer: A Novel

There are three ways a pissed-off senior law firm partner can get rid of an irritatingly bright and popular associate who's up for partnership. Two of ..."

Great opening line -- a real grabber!

[George]

Mary Jane MacIntyre lay in her bed fingering her rosary beads. She looked down at her hands as she started the first decade of the Sorrowful Mysteries – the Agony in the Garden. Her fingers were bent and twisted by arthritis. She looked at the brown spots and wrinkled skin on the backs of her hands. And her mind began to wander.
Letters from the Dead by George R. Hopkins

[Iscah]

From Seventh Night

Fortesdale was not a large village, nor was it terribly small. It was not well-known, nor unheard-of. It was not extremely wealthy, nor was it wretchedly poor. The village was not considerably important to the kingdom of Cordance, nor was it useless. In simple terms, it was average.

(Action really starts with the next sentence...but I'll follow the rules...)

[Savannah]

CHAPTER ONE
The Typewriter

Sitting back on her heels, Rose wiped the sweat from her brow. The bandanna turned dark. Her grandmother’s attic was hot, but she needed to get the boxes down. Her grandmother, Lydia was not at all well and wanted to go through the boxes, before she became too ill to do it. Lydia's sister Rosemary had been murdered way back in the fifties and Lydia had inherited all of Rosemary and her husband Richard’s things. The boxes in the attic were most of what was left of two lives cut tragically short.

[Jan]

Jan O'Kane
Deadly Details

The night always brought cold winds this time of year and Johnnie King could hear it blowing outside her office window. She could hear and almost feel the gust of wind rattling the windows of the old bank building. The building itself was amazing; six floors to its structure and her office was on the top floor. She loved wandering through the various cubbyholes and hidden spots of the building. She told Gary Percy, her supervisor about her roaming, a habit she developed when she worked for the FBI. Johnnie was always vigilant about knowing her surroundings. It could one day save her life, well when she was in the FBI. Still, the habit persisted, but this was a quiet town, she had no need for her FBI training here.

[Yvonne]

From: Driven By Lust: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EETACT2
Elin had met Guy Preece during a business lunch and both sets of pheromones had reared up on their hind legs and reached across the table as the magnetism flowing between them had reduced the room to exclude the world at large.

[Paul]

1015 Skyview Drive. Reynaldo Collins’ eyes opened when he heard the radio alarm go off in his parents’ bedroom. The music went away suddenly. A few moments later came the running of water in the sink. He knew the sounds by heart. Next would come the click of the medicine cabinet, the buzz of the shaver. As Reynaldo lay in bed he realized that the fog was outside. When the fog came and surrounded the house, little sounds seemed louder. He looked around. Gray light seeped into the room from around the edges of the shades on his window. He could see the rectangular shape of his Power Rangers poster on the wall, but could not see the Rangers’ brightly colored outfits or read the words on the poster. From: In the Shape of a Man In the Shape of a Man

[Bryan]

Zoe met Kayla by accident on the bridge overlooking Lover’s Pond. It was a brisk, slightly foggy morning and Zoe was out on her usual jog around the lake (something she did to keep herself busy between waking in the morning and heading off for schooling, more so than staying fit or healthy). As she crossed the bridge at just past six fifteen (she remembered the time well because it was ten minutes earlier than when she would normally cross the pond; her feet felt so much lighter that day), Zoe stopped to take in the sounds and smells of the morning, which on a day like this—as the dew dripped off the flowers and the soft hint of moisture caressed her face—was just delightful. She leaned up against the rail to let the rays of the sun breaking through the thinning fog warm her face and noticed something peculiar in the water. It wasn’t a duck or a fish as one might expect to see in the early morning, but a family of pearls dancing just above the water. Zoe slid her head between the lowest rails to get a better look and the pearls disappeared under the water. She strained to see where they might have gone, but it was still too dark to get a real good look into the normally crystal clear water. Maybe she had imagined it.

From In the Light of the Eclipse (To be released on November 26, 2013)

[Tracey]

Sleep was the enemy. The old man knew that. The heat was merely it's accomplice and these scorching days of August were particularly dangerous. He rebuked the little voice whispering in his ear that it would be all right to lean his head against the cool stone wall of his closet for just a moment. But the little voice insisted that a quick rest of the eyes might even help him to concentrate on Maria Gamboni's moans droning from the other side of the black lace netting.
The Miracles of Santo Fico -D.L. Smith

[J.M.]

"I woke up screaming."
1st paragraph of "The Centurion Chronicles Book Two The Belgae"
Should be live on Amazon in 48 hours.

[Jeremy]

Space is a silent and vastly dead expanse, yet filled with marvels of life, twists of physics, furnaces of unimaginable fire, and wastelands of matter-shattering cold. There is no greater ocean for humanity to sail, no more perilous journey, and none more yearned for by generation upon generation. Tentative steps into the endless frontier inevitably are loosened into giant leaps, but adventure brings with it failures as often as glory.

Jeremy Lee
www.jeremylee97.com

[Christi]

Take a Chance on Love
Chancie de Leur glanced at the two studiously casual men once more before dismissing her assistant for the night. Neither of the big, broad-shouldered men showed outward signs of awareness that they were being watched. Instead, they stood at military ease in matching green and beige uniforms. Hands folded in front of their belts, each of them held a right elbow hovering over the dull black butt of a holstered gun.

[Norene]

Intricate colonies of Bacillus nocturne swirled through the moonlit sea foam as she slid her kayak into the Delaware Bay. Unaware of the grave danger, she brushed the clinging sea foam from her calves, stepped into the kayak, and positioned her legs into the tight compartment stocked with the day’s scientific supplies. She turned sideways and pushed her paddle against the sandbar, propelling the kayak into the bay. As dawn lit the night sky, she settled into a steady rhythm of paddling and headed north toward the marsh.


Nocturne, Opus 1: Sea Foam

[Connie]

From Powerball 33 by Connie Spittler
The sharp smell of sauerkraut cut through Ed Frink's heart. He leaned against the doorframe of Leon's Grocery, closed his eyes and shifted back 20 years. To the drizzly morning his mama loaded the crock of vinegar fermented cabbage into his red wheelbarrow. The rumble of loppety wheels rolled toward their fate inside the chicken coop. There was the rustle tussle of hens invaded, the brush brush of the broom. Lightning flashed. Then boom.

[Tracey]

A bright spring day, sunshine splashing yellow through the new leaves. Two little girls stand on the banks of the swollen stream , which rushes loudly past their small feet.
Not Without You by Harriet Evans

[Ian]

Athene's Prophecy - Ian J. Miller

Pallas Athene was in disgrace, but she felt that it was worth every gram of it for she had immortalized herself, starting over three thousand years before she was born. Yes, she knew that her career as a serious classical historian was over, and being consigned to this miserable cell was not exactly a career highlight, but on the bright side the cell did not have a means of evacuation. If it had, and if there were even a remote possibility that such an evacuation could have been reported as accidental, she was quite certain she would have been consigned to the depths of space. Instead, all they could do was to put her in a shuttle and return her to Earth tomorrow. They would also make certain that she would never be given permission to use the temporal viewer again.

[Sharon]

“What do you get when you bite a ghost?” Braeden McKay managed a weak smile and whispered, “A mouthful of sheet.”

(First paragraph, Chapter 1, HOODOO MONEY)

[Wanda]

Even with all her inspiration, time charts, and style sheets, Helen’s story spiraled down and came to a standstill. Once again, she had written herself into a hole. If her main character was the strongest woman in the kingdom, why would she agree to marry the evil king? If she didn’t marry him, though, the story couldn’t happen. How can I fix this?

[Bryan]

Sharon wrote: "“What do you get when you bite a ghost?” Braeden McKay managed a weak smile and whispered, “A mouthful of sheet.”

(First paragraph, Chapter 1, HOODOO MONEY)

"

Awesome opening, Sharon!

[Jericho]

First paragraph:

Bathed in the light of a half crested moon, Raven sank back into the shadows and waited. Nightfall beyond the edge of the forest was lambent with the flickering light of freshly lit lanterns, but darkness crept slowly across the village, unheeding of the fragile glow that glimmered softly from each tiny flame. Soon, all would be drenched in night and the Raven would emerge.