Sullivan’s First Line

 I went with Sullivan’s Sting. Why? Well, there’s an outside chance that I haven’t read this one. I was hoping to find an Edward X Delaney that I had overlooked, but I’ve got my fingers crossed that I’ve overlooked this one in the past. 

Before I reveal the first line, which is the purpose of this pose, one thing I found funny. 

Last night I was reading some of the comments on Lawrence Sanders’ page on Amazon. I was trying to determine if I had read The Fourth Deadly Sin (an EXD novel . . . I had) when I saw this one commenter write:

Very dated, full of cops treating people in outrageously cruel and illegal ways presented as standard police procedure. The author should be ashamed of himself and should pull this book from circulation.

Let me say, as someone who has novels on Amazon, . . . I’m never going to delist my novels because they get dated. Dated novels are awesome first of all, and secondly, how does Joanne, that’s the commenters name, know that it’s so dated? Did she live in New York City in the 70’s and 80’s?  

So, here’s the first line of Sullivan’s Sting, which I’m still hopeful will be a new one for me.

Expelling Demons

No update today . . . only that I'm on track and ahead of schedule already and I'm not even on the flight or waiting at the airport. Things are trending up.

Today it's about getting rid of ghosts. One thing I love about writing is that it lets a writer put himself/herself into the mind of a character and really expel some demons and ghosts that may be lurking there. My character is dealing with a breakup, a slow, agonizing one that he doesn't want to have to face but is forced upon him. Working him through that is really helping me through some stuff, but it's not enough. Today I found myself asking, "What more can I do to really screw this guy up."

One of my favorite books that I've read lately is "The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August" by Claire North (here and here). One of the things I loved about the book is that the author put her main character through so much pain and suffering. To put it simply he relives his live over and over again and remembers all of his previous lives. There's a lot more to the plot than that, but she kills Harry off in some spectacular ways. The death at the hands of his arch enemy in Russia is particularly unnerving.

I loved the movie The Butterfly Effect because I enjoyed the idea of someone being able to change the world and their own timeline through small changes in their life. I also enjoyed the movie 12 Monkey's for the same reason, the paradox of people going back in time and making changes that affect the future. Groundhog Day with Bill Murray (which savvy readers will know I've written about many times before and even contacted the author, see here) is also a favorite of mine, although I think the movie is a bit too light hearted. Harry August leaves them all in the dust.

Still and all it's a love story as well as a great story about friends and enemies. It was always the love story that appealed to me because the main character was not only able to meet the love of his life, but also to shape his next life to make sure he marries her. Sadly, it never worked out the way he hoped with her, which I suppose was Miss North's way of saying a person can never truly find and manufacture true love, still that was the part that drew me in the most. Perhaps it will be something I find time to explore in NaNo 2018!