The Rest is Even Better Than the First

Another in my long running series on first lines (see here).

This one, the most recent, compliments of Lee Child and his thirteenth Reacher novel, is pretty gripping as far as first lines are concerned.

Suicide bombers are easy to spot. They give out all kinds of telltale signs. Mostly because they’re nervous. By definition they’re all first-timers.

Child, Lee - Gone Tomorrow

Who wouldn't want to know why Reacher is thinking about suicide bombers? Who wouldn't want to know what the signs are that lead him to spot one. Plus it has that bit of cryptic, dry humor that immediately puts the reader into the mind of the main character.

Gripping? Sure. Apropos description if you ask me. Best part about this first line? It presages a novel that is just as gripping and hosts just as much dry, crypticism and compelling interesting twists and turns.

Another Morning, this Time from Felix

I just finished Crossfire by Felix Francis and it wasn't too bad. Not as good as Dick Francis, but a solid try. 

All that being said, Felix is a typical writer in that he too falls for descriptions of the morning. Anyone who reads this blog should know by now that finding morning descriptions are a particular fondness of mine (see here). Felix provides his own offering below.

The sky was lightening in the east with a lovely display of blues, purples and reds. In spite of being completely at home in the dark, I had always loved the coming of the dawn, the start of a new day. 

The arrival of the sun, bringing light and warmth and driving away the cold and darkness of the night, was like a piece of daily magic, revered and worshipped by man and beast alike. How does it happen? And why? Let us just be thankful that it did. If the sun went out, we would all be in the poop, and no mistake. 

The rim of the fiery ball popped up over the horizon and flooded the hillside with an orange glow, banishing the gloom from beneath the bushes.

Francis, Dick; Francis, Felix - Crossfire

A little more than is common from what I find in other works, still just as prototypical. I'll probably keep reading Felix's stuff, even though I think "fiery ball" is a tad trite.

On the TBR List

Yep, I'm adding The Centurions by Jean Larteguty to my To Be Read list (see here).

For just a moment I thought I was going to read about Devil's Guard (no, not The Devil's Brigade, but the book about the SS officers who run off to join the French Foreign Legion) when I began reading this WSJ article by James D. Hornfischer.

The anguish of the U.S. experience in Vietnam reverberates in some of our best fiction, from Philip Caputo’s “Indian Country” (1987) and Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” (1990) to Karl Marlantes’s “Matterhorn” (2009). But in literature, as in the war itself, the French got there first.

Now, I'd rather not get into my disdain for The Things They Carried, which I belive too many people like for the wrong reasons, but anyone who has read the out of print Devil's Guard can clearly see why I would have thought that's where the article was going. But No! Now I have a new book to read.

Devil's Guard was Holy Writ in our Ranger Platoon. We bought a copy for three hundred dollars back in 1996 and carried it around in a plastic bag from deployment to deployment and forced the new privates to read it and quote from it. Still, The Centurions sounds like a good companion as well, although it sounds like reading it might be a hard slog.

Though it has been heralded as the first novel to feature a “ticking time bomb” storyline, “The Centurions” was not built to satisfy readers looking for crisp plotting, suspense and action. With its extended speechifying, incomplete character arcs, female love interests cut from wet cardboard, and company of minor characters who march to little effect, Lartéguy’s work is more symposium than thriller. When the Frenchmen aren’t holding forth on the sweep of history and the hinge of fate, they are writing long diary entries summing up many things that the reader already knows. Some of the monologues run for pages at a time. But the depth of the principals and the author’s sure sense of their complex torment bring the soldiers’ world vibrantly to life.

I don't know, after reading about "wet cardboard" love interests and "writing long diary entries" perhaps I'd be better off just reading my copy of Devil's Guard again.

Who Hasn't Started a Book with "Medic! Medic!"

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I love writing about and logging my first lines and paragraphs from books that I read. My most recent one is this one:

Medic! Medic!” 

I could see that my platoon sergeant was shouting, but strangely, the sound of his voice seemed muffled, as if I was in a neighboring room rather than out here in the open. 

I was lying on the dusty ground with my back up against a low bank so that I was actually half sitting. Sergeant O’Leary was kneeling beside me on my left.

Francis, Dick; Francis, Felix - Crossfire

It's not a bad start. And of course as anyone can guess the main character is the one who is severely hurt.

I've never read a Felix Francis book. I love his pop Dick, but Felix is new to me. So far, a few pages in, I'm quite happy with it. I'm looking forward to more. I'm seeing the difference. Dick Francis has a bit more sophistication to his writing, whereas Felix sounds like he's just trying to get the story out. But, it's not a bad book thus far.

AVOID this Book at all Costs

Don't you hate when you're favorite authors fail to live up to expectations. Some do it over and over. They have a best seller out of the gate, then each book after is just mediocre. They never live up to that first. Others, have a slew of good to great then BOOM! you read one and it's rubbish.

The second one happened to me a few months back when I tried to read the new Vernor Vinge novel, The Children of the Sky (see here). I even gave him the benefit of the doubt and went a few chapters further than I would have. No dice. Horrid. Gave up. (Might try again though).

Just happened again with Lawrence Sanders.

I love Lawrence Sanders work, if you want the proof, just note the number of times he mentioned in this blog (see here). I love his works. Love em. Lately I've loved his 1970's stuff. Caper (see here) . . . left me wishing I'd never heard of him.

BLECH

It started well, and for the first half it was a typical Lawrence Sanders. Great descriptions of the city, terrific analogies, sparkling writing. But then it turned jejune. It started to read more like a biography rather than novel, and worse it was a boring biography about a road trip. I wanted to give up on it but hung in there. Next time I will got with my initial reaction.

May not have ruined me for Sanders' novels, may not have even ruined me for his early work . . . but it sure ruined my week.

Cathartic Writing

Something happened in the past few weeks which although outwardly isn't of great significance in my life, it has huge significance emotionally and internally. It has made me turn back to my writing. Sorry I've been away so long, but I'm back now. How long? Who knows . . . but for now I need to write.

That's what struggles do for me . . . they make me return to my writing. Right now I'm finishing up my third novel, the third draft, and completing the rough draft of what I feel might be my best novel yet. Strangely, this novel that I'm writing is far afield from what I've commonly written.

This novel that I'm presently writing is a story of a musician in New York and the problems he has in his love life and the love life's of those around him. Far far different than the two murder mysteries (here and here) and a third to come presently.

That being said I think it's incredibly fun to try new genre's. I've written and published those two mysteries, I have a rough draft of a techno-thriller, several miltiary thriller short stories that draw on my experiences in the Army, and now a romance cum literary fiction novel in the works. I know Kristi, struggles with genre alot. I love the experimentation and the ability to try whatever I want whenever I want. Doesn't have to be successful, just has to be something that helps me.

Keeping everything I've written above in mind, there is one word missing in that word map image above: cathartic. Now more than ever writing has become a cathartic experience for me. No longer is it a means to an end, it's an end in an of itself. It is what I turn to when I have struggles and need peace of mind.

Gotta love that it's always there when you need it.

Another (Techno) Thrilling First Line

I'm onto a Clancy (sanctioned) techno-thriller. This time Threat Vector. It's a typical and expected beginning to a typical and expected Clancy novel.

The five Americans had been lying low in the decrepit hotel room for hours, waiting for nightfall. 

Sheets of warm rain rapped on the window, generating the majority of the sound in the dim room, as there was little talk among the men. This room had served as the base of operations for the team, though four of the five had stayed at other hotels throughout the city during their weeklong stay. Now that preparations were complete, those four had checked out of their quarters and consolidated their gear and themselves here with the fifth man in their group. 

Though they all were still as stones now, they had been a blur of activity over the past week. They had surveilled targets; developed op plans; established covers; memorized their primary, secondary, and tertiary exfiltration routes; and coordinated the logistics of the mission to come. 

But preparations were now complete, and there was nothing left to do but sit and wait for darkness.

Clancy, Tom; Greaney, Mark - Threat Vector

What I can never be sure of is, which first line to take? The prologue first line:

These were grim days for former operatives of the Jamahiriya Security Organization, the dreaded national intelligence service of Libya under Moammar Gaddafi. Those members of the JSO who had managed to survive the revolution in their home nation were now scattered and in hiding, fearing the day when their cruel and brutal past would catch up with them in a cruel and brutal way.

Or the first line from chapter 1. I chose chapter 1 if only cause the prologue one was so damn boring. I guess Greaney and Clancy split the difference. One on the "good first lines" list (here) and the other on the "bad first lines" list (here).

Joe's First Line is Great

I love cataloging first lines (see here and here) and I'm really looking forward to this next book, have been for some time now (see here and here), so I'm glad that The Forever War starts with such an intriguing first line:

‘Tonight we’re going to show you eight silent ways to kill a man.’ The guy who said that was a sergeant who didn’t look five years older than me. So if he’d ever killed a man in combat, silently or otherwise, he’d done it as an infant. 

I already knew eighty ways to kill people, but most of them were pretty noisy. I sat up straight in my chair and assumed a look of polite attention and fell asleep with my eyes open. So did most everybody else. We’d learned that they never scheduled anything important for these after-chop classes.

Haldeman, Joe - The Forever War

This reminds me of a shirt I almost bought. It said "I may look calm, but in my head I've killed you three times" (see here). When I told my wife about it she yelled that it was perfect for me. Whether due to my time in the military or thanks to my liking to write murder mysteries, I'm always thinking about how to kill people.

I'm glad to see that the character in my next book seems to think the same way.

Guest Post: Aimee Conner

My wonderful friend and accomplished author Aimee Conner has been mentioned on this blog several times (see here), wrote a fantastic psychological thriller, Scrapbook, that you can purchase here. Today's she has provided a post on the live of a writer. 

The first vivid memory I have of being a writer is of me, age 12, burying my first novel at the foot of an old Juniper tree that stood on the northwest corner of the 160 acres I grew up on. It was a defining moment because I knew then that nothing could stop me from being who I was born to be: not my abusive parents, my inherent loneliness or the fact I was growing up secluded on the wastelands of Central Oregon. Writing was my escape and salvation, my little secret that I guarded closely. There was the occasional poem I would share with the family to appease their curiosity. The novel, a slew of dark poems and my journals are lost forever. Under constant scrutiny and monitoring at the hands of my parents, I found ways to express myself on paper then destroy it before it could be discovered. I would burn some of my writings in the wood stove but my novel was too thick to dispose of quickly. That’s why I buried it during a nature walk, one of the few activities I was permitted to do alone.

Later on in life as I started defining myself as a writer, my identity went through the growing pains of bad and good advice, some of which came from best-selling authors. I threw myself into the machine, never shying from lengthy discussions with agents and publishers. I sustained the social discouragement of comments from ignorant people. A date’s quip during dinner tops the list of my favorites, “So what are you going to do after being a writer?”

Going through the writer’s fire I’ve learned one truth that keeps me focused and confident. In this short piece I have shared with you intimate details of where I’ve come from, who I am and a taste of my personality. It takes a certain amount of vulnerability to put it all out there but it’s worth it. Fiction or non-fiction, every writer has an opportunity to share their experiences and perspective and that is what connects you to your reader.That is the magic of writing for me. That is my truth, my rule, my strength in this craft. Now a published novelist and travel columnist, I’ve had the great honor of speaking with people from all over the world who have been impacted on a very personal level by my work. It is the greatest high in life for me to know someone read the words I wrote and felt something because of it.

A saying I once heard goes something like “There is no such thing as a former writer.” Fellow wordsmiths, we were born this way and we are here to stay.

Aimee draws upon her own experiences as well as stories she's heard along the way. She uses organic themes and relatable, flawed characters. She strives to provide a voice for victims of abuse and increase awareness. Her debut thriller 'Scrapbook' follows the life of Hannah Dormer, a young woman living in quiet desperation until a family of serial killers opens her eyes to her Shadow Self.

To discover Ms. Conner's lighter side as a travel columnist, visit www.lynfuchs.blogspot.com to catch her latest ramblings from Walla Walla Washington. 

10% of 'Scrapbook' digital sales are donated toward helping victims of abuse and violence. 

http://www.goodreads.com/author/aimeeconner

http://www.stage32.com/profile/32569/aimee-conner

http://twitter.com/aimeeconner84

More First Lines . . . This Time as "Scene-Setters"

As a follow up to yesterday's post on my own first lines (see here) as well as last week's first line on Frederick Forsyth's first line of The Veteran, I offer two more. I inadvertently stumbled into a nest of short stories. Didn't mean to. I was looking forward to a nice, long, British, spy-thriller. I got a series of shorties.

Still, the first lines of each help illustrate exactly what I was writing about yesterday. In both of the below cases the first lines act as scene-setters. I like reading the way Forsyth is able to produce a fantastic word picture of exactly where the reader is finding themselves in the story.

THE ART OF THE MATTER 

The rain came down. It fell in a slowly moving wall upon Hyde Park and, borne by a light westerly wind, drifted in grey curtains of falling water across Park Lane and through the narrow park of plane trees that divides the northbound and southbound lanes. A wet and gloomy man stood under the leafless trees and watched. 

The entrance to the Grosvenor House Hotel ballroom was brightly lit by several arc lights and the endless glare of camera flashes. Inside was warm, snug and dry. Under the awning before the door was an area of only damp pavement and here the uniformed commissionaires stood, gleaming umbrellas at the ready, as the limousines swept up, one by one. 

As each rain-lashed car drew up by the awning one of the men would run forward to shield the descending star or film celebrity for the two-yard dash, head down, from car to awning. There they could straighten up, plaster on the practised smile and face the cameras. 

The paparazzi were either side of the awning, skin-wet, shielding their precious equipment as best they could. Their cries came across the road to the man under the trees.

Forsyth, Frederick - The Veteran

THE MIRACLE

The sun was a hammer in the sky. It beat down on the clustered roofs of the walled Tuscan city and the medieval tiles, some pink but mostly long baked to umber or ashen grey, shimmered in the heat. 

Shadows dark as night were cast along upper windows by the overhanging gutters; but where the sun could touch, the rendered walls and ancient bricks gleamed pale, and wooden sills cracked and peeled. In the deep and narrow cobbled alleys of the oldest quarter there were restful pools of further shade and here the occasional sleepy cat sought refuge. But of local humans there was no sign, for this was the day of the Palio. 

Down one such alley, lost in a maze of tiny cobbled ways, hardly wider than his own shoulders, the American tourist hurried, red as beef. Sweat trickled down to soak his short-sleeved cotton shirt, the tropical-weight jacket felt like a blanket dangling from his shoulder. Behind him his wife tottered painfully on unsuitable platform sandals. 

They had tried to book far too late for a hotel inside the city, in this of all seasons, and had finally settled for a room in Casole d’Elsa. The rented car had overheated on the road, they had eventually found a parking slot beyond the city walls and now scurried from the Porta Ovile towards their goal. 

They were soon lost in the labyrinth of alleys dating back five hundred years, stumbling on the hot cobbles, feet on fire. From time to time the Kansas cattleman cocked an ear towards the roar of the crowd and tried to head in that direction. His well-upholstered wife sought only to catch up and fan herself with a guidebook at the same time.

Forsyth, Frederick - The Veteran

I find it interesting that the first one is about rain coming down near Hyde Park, then the very next one is sun in Italy. The rain soaked start is for a revenge fantasy regarding a painting con. The sun is the first line for a story about a miracle. Forsyth is a good enough author where I think both of those are intentional.