Cracking opening lines

As you know, I place great store on opening lines. They should hook the reader in. To illustrate the point, here’s some from the two anthologies we have published.

“I met Silas in a bar called The Trickster. He was the Joker. I was the Queen of Hearts.” That’s the beginning of Heart String by S J Finn, the first story in our anthology Global Shorts.

 

Or how about this? “On the day of my grandmother’s funeral, I stopped eating.” That’s the start of Eat, Mister by John Michaelson.

Or “I always get away with it, I’m invulnerable, I’m the man,,” he thought, and he said it loud, right into the ear of the wimp who was lying pinned beneath his foot in a remote corner of the playground” , which is the start to I Always Get Away With It by Stuart McCarthy.

Or “It’s not like anyone around here actually properly celebrates Christmas.” That’s the start to Andrew Frost’s Chrissie Lights, one of the stories in our Australian anthology Vegemite Whiskers.

Or how about this at the start of Bella Anderson’s The Last of My Line? “I am the last of my line; my eyes will never shine from another face, no one will laugh or talk like me and my memory will not survive a careless generation.”
Want to know what happened next? If you go to www.amazon.co.k and key the title into the Kindle store you can buy the book and find out what happened in those and many other stories. And all for £1.48. Australian readers will have to purchase via Amazon US at www.amazon.com

John Dean