Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
2089 words
. . . and it feels good. I wrote the opening to Flight this morning. As I mentioned previously, even though Flight is all written, I have a good deal of scene addition/scene subtraction to do. Flight needed a punchy opening, and I think I managed it. See what you think of the first two paragraphs:
The odor came from his grandson’s duffel bag. Ankh knelt beside it, worrying the lock with his talon. What sort of nine-year-old locked his luggage? He smelled something musty in there, something long dead.
Dirty laundry. Ankh hopped from his study to the kitchen closet where he kept his tools. He snipped off a length of stiff brass wire, then used his beak and hands to shape it. That’s all it is. Dirty laundry. The way Jeryn and Kord rushed off this morning, it’s a wonder they got the boy here with any of his things.
Ankh gets a panicky phone call. While figuring out that his world has changed forever, he also manages to unlock his grandson’s duffel bag and discover what’s inside.
Maybe it’s a cheap trick, but I thought it worked well.
D.
Well??? What’s inside???
BWAHAHAHAHAHHHAAAAA!
How else will I build pre-publication buzz?
Hey. I’m intrigued…with the beak and talons and such.
You have read too many books with dead, smelly bodies of late. 😀
I haven’t read any books with stinky dead bodies and am looking forward to reading this one–even if it turns out to be limberger cheese and not a corpse.
Gabriele, yeah, after I slept on it, it occurred to me that this bit was more than a little influenced by Threads. All those dead bodies and dismemberments and post-mortem exams!
Kate, I promise you, it’s not limburger. What’s inside has no direct bearing on the plot — it’s there for creepy foreshadowing. Also, the grandson’s barbarity will echo with a bit at the end of Book 1 (a reference to Lord of the Flies) and this motif will get echoed again and again. One of the main points of this trilogy is the main character’s loss of innocence — BIG time.
I like it. Makes me want to read more [which was the point, right? ;-p].
I already know I like your fiction since I read your two short stories a while ago. I swear you could have been talking about every cardiologist I’ve ever met [and there have been quite a few] in the crime fic story!
I liked the Saul story, too. We just finished studying 1 Samuel in my Sunday night Bible study group, and I always felt kind of sorry for Saul.
I think if they’d had bi-polar meds back then, he might have been a better king.
The first time I read 1 Samuel, I got so freaking mad when Jonathan died. I still get irritated when I think about it. If anyone deserved a HEA, Jonathan did!
I think the occasional ‘Deus ex machina,’ [at least in real life], is a good thing. I wish it happened more.
Most of that had nothing to do with your post, but I’m sending it anyway.
Thanks, Shelbi. I’ve always felt a lot of sympathy for Saul, too, which was the origin of that story.
This reminds me . . . I need to get some links up here to those stories 😉
Thanks for reading ’em.