throw another bear in the canoe

stillsostrange has pulled out the first lines meme, and this seems like as good a time as any, since I'm waiting for Dropbox to restore my data.

I think I'm going to take a couple of days off and think very hard about Shattered Pillars. Because for one thing, I actually have some breathing room for the first time since January 2010, and it might be a good idea to take some of it to recuperate... and for another, because I need to think about the book.

I have been working awfully hard for an awfully long time. My brain might actually grow back if I stopped snipping pieces off it for a while.

Yeah, I know I say this every four months or so. Sometimes character growth is epiphantic; sometimes it's cyclic.

Anyway, without further ado, the first lines meme!

The idea here is that we post the first lines of unfinished stories, on the theory that we might then be inspired to finish a few...

So here's what's in the queueueueue currently...


"Spellslinger"
Doc Holiday leaned his head way back, tilting his hat to shade his eyes from the glare of the sun, and said, "That looks like some Jules Verne shit to me."

"Form and Void"
Before she turned into a dragon, Kathy Cutter was Comanche Zariphes' best friend.

"On Safari in R'lyeh and Carcosa with Gun and Camera" (unfinished since 1989!)
"We wouldn’t be having this conversation if you'd flunked Algebra."

"Patience & Fortitude"
Nothing made Matthew hate himself more than waiting for the elevator.

"Periastron"
There are no unremarkable worlds. But in all the galaxy, perhaps the ice-moon of Tau Ceti IV comes closest.

"The Deeps of the Sky"
Stormchases' little skiff skipped and glided across the tropopause, skimming the denser atmosphere of the warm cloud-sea beneath, running before a fierce wind.

"Steel Monkey"
Johnny Backus was a daywalker. Johnny Backus was a vampire. Johnny Backus was a friend of mine.

"The Death of Terrestrial Radio"
The first word was meant to be spoken quietly, if it should ever be spoken at all.

"The Leavings of the Wolf" a/k/a "Helskor"
Dagmar was doomed to run.

"Posthumous Johnson"
I loved you not.


Shadow Unit:

"Dark Leader" (no first line yet, but an epigraph)
"The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right." --Mark Twain

"Latency"
Barry Petrewski lived in a hole in the ground.

"Something's Gotta Eat T. rexes" (with coffeeem) (first line is spoileriffical, so here's an epigraph)

"This, too, is probable, according to that saying of Agathon: 'It is a part of probability that many improbable things will happen.'" ---Aristotle, Poetics



Gotham Jazz
It was always night in Gotham.

Shattered Pillars
The desert writhed with poison life.

Karen Memory
You ain't gonna like what I have to tell you, but I'm gonna tell you anyway.

Smile
Pewter scraped across the black wave-caps of the Atlantic on the morning Carl Hughes learned how his lover had died.

An Apprentice to Elves
Tin laced her fingers together across her gravid belly and frowned along her nose at the feeble human child.

The feeble human child frowned back.

---

And here's the honeydews, for completeness' sake:

State of the Honeydew:

Online Writing Workshop review: August 15, 2011
RoF column: August 25, 2011
Revise of "The Leavings of the Wolf" (aka "Helskor," aka Sad fantasy story): September 15, 2011
Shattered Pillars: December 31, 2011
Victorian fantasy story: December 15, 2011

travel:
Armadillocon: August 26-28, 2011
100-Year Starship Symposium, Part II: Sept 30-Oct 2, Tampa
Viable Paradise: October 7-16, 2011

2012:
"Latency": March 2012
An Apprentice to Elves: June 11, 2012 with truepenny
Hard SF adventure story: June 11, 2012
Steles of the Sky : November 2012
"Underworld": September 2012

2013:
"Dark Leader": March 2013
"Something's Gotta Eat T. rexes": September 2013


No fixed deadline:

"The Deeps of the Sky"
Karen Memory
Smile (unless its name is actually Salt Water)
Unsuitable Metal
Gotham Jazz
"Form & Void"
"Untitled Space Opera Thingy" aka "Periastron"
"Steel Monkey"
"Spellslinger"
"Posthumous Jonson"
"The Death of Terrestrial Radio"
"On Safari in R'lyeh and Carcosa with Gun and Camera"

---

I think I'm going to go read a book. For fun.