contemplativeA lot of them are stories I've been poking at for years. I wish my brain would finish them.
Hear that, Brain?
So now, the First Lines Meme. The idea here is that I can list these unfinished stories by their first lines, and then they will maybe get written. And I can go back and look at them later and see that I finished some!
Smile:
Pewter scraped across the black wave-caps of the Atlantic on the morning Carl Hughes learned how his lover had died.
Flush:
"The universe will always need plumbers," Henry said, up to her armpit in the toilet. "At least until the Big Rip. Or the Rapture, whichever happens first."
A Time to Reap:
I paused in the wings stage left, in air thick with the smell of dust, imagining the applause.
On Safari in R'lyeh and Carcosa with Gun and Camera:
"We wouldn’t be having this conversation if you'd flunked Algebra, Griswold," Roberts said, racking another shell into his hunting rifle and peering over our flimsy barricade to see if the monstrous creatures beyond were preparing for another assault.
Angel Maker:
You'd think I'd have gotten out of the adventuring business, is all.
Ancestral Night:
[No first line yet.]
The Stone in the Skull :
The mountain wore a mirrored mask.
Steel:
Johnny Backus was a daywalker. Johnny Backus was a vampire. Johnny Backus was a friend of mine.
Posthumous Jonson:
I loved you not.
Periastron:
There are no unremarkable worlds.
Gallowglas:
As the innate perversity of the universe would have it, Officer Jericho was up to her elbows in the guts of a roasted pumpkin as big as her chest when her pager shrilled.
Patience and Fortitude
Nothing made Matthew hate himself more than waiting for the elevator.