Truths, triumphs, and tragedies of an independent writer.
I’m stoked to announce that my horror novella “Snakes” launches tomorrow, June 1, from Damnation Books. The publisher is running a special. Order it quickly enough and you might even get your copy for free! The pricing starts at $0.00 and increases by 25 cents for each purchase until it reaches the full cover price. So now’s the time to get your e-book copy.
“Write a more compelling first line and I’ll read your article!” was one Facebook comment on my post about first lines. Point well taken. Could I have spruced up my first couple of lines? Certainly. Do I intend every blog post to be a fine crafted work of art and a juggernaut of intellectual persuasion? Nope. Ain’t got time. I’m too busy trying to write fiction. Nevertheless, readers did have things to say about this list. But first, here are the answers for my previous post on first lines.
Gee, I’m so surprised. I’m still here. According to a well-fueled media wave, the Biblical Rapture was supposed to happen at 6:00 p.m. yesterday, May 21. Jesus was supposed to come back and spirit away a few million of the most faithful and thus signal the beginning of Armageddon, which was to culminate in Doomsday on Oct. 21 this year. Hmm. Well, I’m still here, so I guess that means I’m not one of the “faithful.” That’s a big “duh,” I suppose. We’ll all have a lot more fun with those people gone. You suppose there’s going to be a
I picked up (semi-) random assortment of novels from my TO BE READ pile today in a little exercise of curiosity. A truism for writing fiction nowadays is that the writer must grab the reader’s attention from the beginning. If the reader (or acquisitions editor) isn’t hooked by the end of the first page, she’s likely to put the book down. So what I’ve compiled a few first lines that handful of my novels to be read. These range from new authors to old hands and heavy-hitters. So tell me which of these you find the most compelling and why.
“It is missing the point to think that the martial art is solely in cutting a man down. It is not in cutting people down; it is in killing evil. It is the stratagem of killing the evil of one man and giving life to ten thousand.” – Yagyu Munenori, The Life Giving Sword How do you define a decade? By committing an act of far-reaching, shocking, ruthless violence. I hadn’t had such a strange mixture of surprise, relief and hope in a long time, but it was strangely mixed with things like skepticism, sadness, and trepidation. I was trolling