In the beginning...

First lines and daisies remind us that small is beautiful.

In a recent post on Strictly Writing, we looked at famous opening lines of books. Taking that as my inspiration, here are the opening lines to our own books, some published, some going through the publishing journey and some wearing the badge of pride that is 'Work in Progress'.

In no particular order, here are our paper children (phrase borrowed from Richard Bach) along with a few background details. Take it away, Strictlies!

Cracks by Caroline Green

Opening line: 'The first crack was freaky'. 

Genre: YA dystopia

Background: Cal's discovering that his life is not as ordinary as he thought. That's scary. Particularly when it seems he's the very last to know. He needs to find out the truth - but, with lies, danger and deceit on all sides, is there anyone he can trust?

Doll by Tracey Sinclair (pub. Kennedy & Boyd)

Opening line: Before you start feeling sorry for me, there's something I should tell you.

Genre: Fiction. 

Background: Devastated by the death of her best friend, Thea Stanton goes in search of the father who abandoned her as a baby and the family she never knew - only to realise that sometimes the past should stay buried... 

Re:Becca by Deb Riccio (writing as D.A. Cooper. e-book available on Amazon)

Opening line: 'My parents could have been a part of Hitler's army.'

Genre: YA.  

Background: Becca Banks is misunderstood.  When her parents confiscate all her electronic gadgets for doing something silly at school, she starts to understand how life must have been before the age of mobiles, internet and iPods, and she doesn't like it.  She can't see what the bullies are saying about her anymore and she can't stare at Judd Crawley's photo on Facebook until she falls asleep.  Becca's best friend Liberty, however, sees only the good that can come out of the situation but it's her creepy brother Jason who Becca has to watch out for.

Covenant by Derek Thompson

Opening line: For an hour Errmoyne had sat, facing the altar where the stone Tablet rested.

Genre: Fantasy

Background: Isca has followed the faith since childhood, taking her from the Settlements and into the City States. Now, as a priestess, a prophecy bears fruit. But what if the long-awaited Righteous One isn't so righteous after all?

Standing Man by Gillian McDade (pub. History Press Ireland) date to be confirmed

Opening lines: Once he started singing, no one could stop him. It gave him great joy. So when he suddenly stopped and clutched his chest, that's when we knew something was wrong.

Genre: Northern Irish contemporary literary fiction.

Background: Set at the height of the Troubles, the novel explores the complex relationship between a young survivor of a church shooting and a repentant IRA man and asks if it's possible to forgive and move on from the past.

Coming Through by Deb Riccio

Opening lines: 'The last time I saw Price Johnson he'd had his hand up the back of my t-shirt in a valiant attempt at unfastening my shiny new Wonderbra; if I'd had a bit less fear or a bit more to drink I'd probably have told him it was a front-loader and let the passion commence.'

Genre: Rom-Com.

Background: When Price Johnson, the famous Midland's Medium returns to his hometown and drops into his old local radio station for a bit of free publicity, he's surprised to find himself sitting opposite Lizzie McCarrick, the geeky one from High School who was supposed to be a Doctor or a Scientist or a Barrister by now.  His only hope is that she's forgotten everything that he can still remember because he didn't see THIS coming.

Dark Dates by Tracey Sinclair

Opening line: SO, WE’VE all seen Buffy, right? I mean, you didn’t pick this up because the shop was out of Jane Austen and this looked like the next best thing.

Genre: Urban fantasy.

Background: All Cassandra Bick wants is to be left to get on with doing her job. But when you’re a Sensitive whose business is running a dating agency for vampires, life is never going to be straightforward – especially when there’s a supernatural war brewing in London, a sexy new bloodsucker in town and your mysterious, homicidal and vampire hating ex-lover chooses this moment to reappear in your life…

Dead Good by D.A. Cooper (ebook available on Amazon) 

Opening line: 'This sucks.'

Genre: YA 

Background: 16 year old Maddie Preston's father loses his well-paid banking job and moves his family out of their 4 bedroomed home and into a small house that hasn't been lived in for a while.  It's not until Maddie starts seeing the ghosts of the previous residents who perished at the house in a fire that she starts to make sense of life, love and everything in between. With best friend and spiritual know-it-all Amber, Maddie sets out to help the gorgeous (but not breathing)  Leo and his family move on with their deaths.

Life, Lopsided by Deb Riccio

Opening line: 'My left boob is bigger than my right.'

Genre: Rom-Com. 

Background: Lisa Thomas likes her life nice and organised.  Jars have to face out, potatoes evenly roasted; pictures have to be straight and boyfriends aren't supposed to dump you whilst you have toothpaste running down your chin.  So when her mother turns up at the shop where Lisa works looking more like Cher's older, bolder sister than her usual young Margaret Thatcher and announces her father has left her for a girl Lisa used to share tampons at school with, Lisa knows she needs to do something drastic to make everything go back to normal again.

Scars & Stripes by Derek Thompson

Opening lines: Thursdays had always been my favourite day of the week, until that one. "I've got something to tell you," Polly whispered breathlessly, as we stood in her bedroom, "and you're not going to like it."

Genre: Comedy drama.

Background: It's the late 1980s. Madonna's star is still rising and punk is dead, although 20 year-old Alex barely knew it when it was ill. He's been happy to drift along with retro hippy-chick Polly, until she decides that she wants more out of life than watching old sci-fi videos and eating tofu. Something's got to go - and that something is him.

Those first few opening lines can serve many purposes:

- They can entice the reader in.

- They can set the scene and deliver a flavour of what's to come.

- They can tell the reader what the POV is.

- They can give you a sense of the voice (external or internal) of the main character.

- They are the author looking back at you through their words and whispering, 'This is me.' 

Don't be shy, tell us what you think - we can take it. And if you've written something of your own, add your title, first line and genre in your comment.

Book up for grabs in a 'what we're reading' special

We have a signed copy of A Parachute In The Lime Tree by Annemarie Neary to give away in a Good Friday special - consider this your Easter egg from us! I've just started this book, a wonderful, atmospheric tale of wartime love involving four people caught up in the Second World War, or The Emergency as it was known in Ireland. Annemarie recently featured on Strictly Writing and if you want to be in with a chance of winning a copy of the book, simply let us know what you are reading by commenting below.

Here is a round up of what the other Strictlies are reading:

Susie
I'm still reading Caitlin Moran's How To Be A Woman - I save it for a treat at bedtime. And I'm reading a survey (am buying - hopefully - a flat). And I'll soon be doing a second proof read of The Making of Her, before it goes off (eek) for printing.

Debs
I've finished 'How I Live Now' now... And the book my writer friend has written... Am just about to start um..... *scans the pile* 'Damaged Goods' by Helen Black.

Caroline
I’m reading The Earth Hums in B Flat by Mari Strachan, which is set in a small Welsh town in the 1950s. It has a very quirky and endearing child narrator and although I’m not usually a fan of child narrators (only because I feel I have read so many books with that apprcoach) this one is lovely.

Caro R
I'm reading Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism, by Natasha Walter. It's a fascinating but disturbing study of gender stereotyping and the rhetoric of choice. I'm also reading Charles Knowlton's 'The Fruits of Philosophy' as I'm writing a thing about the effect of the 1877 Bradlaugh-Besant trial on the advertising of contraceptives. Finally, I've just started Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett for my book group. We got a bit sick of the 'hauntingly-lyrical-prize-winner-in-which-sod-all-happens' genre that book groups are supposed to like.

Fionnuala
I'm reading a hisfic book (not normally my preferred genre) but getting into it. It's called 'Dark Fire' and it's by CJ Sansom. I'm enjoying the fact that it's set against the backdrop of Cromwellian London but overall... Not sure, jury's out at the moment!

What are you reading? Leave a post below and we will choose one winner at random.

Guest blog by author Annemarie Neary

Today we are chatting to the award-winning writer Annemarie Neary whose first novel A Parachute in the Lime Tree has just been published by History Press Ireland.

Welcome to Strictly, Annemarie – tell us a little about your early life as a lawyer and how you developed an interest in writing.

I was a compulsive reader as a child, and went on to do an English degree before I became a lawyer, so I’d always had a deep interest in writing. Lawyers are essentially words people, though the differences between legal drafting and creative writing are huge. Drafting is all about deploying hand-me-down language in order to trigger the right bits of case law or statute. You are always constrained by precedent and consequences; it can’t be about just taking a line for a walk to see what happens! Having said that, the law taught me lots of things that came in useful when writing short fiction – keep to the point, and try and say what you mean.

You’ve won quite a few awards for your work - did this encourage you to pen your first novel?

My first ever prizes were for two stories taken from an early draft of A Parachute in the Lime Tree. That news, which arrived in successive months in 2009, was a huge boost. I took the novel in hand after that and worked hard at re-structuring it and paring it down so that when the publishing opportunity arose, it was in better shape than it would otherwise have been. Writers plough a lonely furrow at times and it’s all too easy to let things drift. Competitions provide a community of interest as well as the impetus of a deadline and the discipline of a word limit. However, it’s important to choose wisely– not all competitions are worthwhile. For instance, if the winners’ anthology is not something you’d want to read yourself, then don’t enter!


Tell our readers about your book A Parachute In The Lime Tree and how you secured a publisher.

A Parachute in the Lime Tree is part-quest novel, part-love story. It’s set in neutral Ireland in 1941, during the tense weeks following the Belfast blitz. The morning after Belfast is bombed, the unpredictable Kitty Hennessy awakes to find a German parachute caught in one of the trees in her garden in remote Dunkerin, right at the other end of the country. That sets up a chain of events with life-long consequences for four characters, two German and two Irish. While most of the narrative takes place in Ireland, the story’s roots are in Berlin and in the relationship between Oskar, whose parachute Kitty discovers, and his Jewish sweetheart, Elsa. I’d just finished re-writing the book when I saw the call for submissions from The History Press Ireland on an Irish online resource called writing.ie.. It’s the second title in their new fiction line after Derry O’Dowd’s wonderful medical-historical romance, The Scarlet Ribbon.


What inspires you?

Like most writers, I’m a magpie. Sources of inspiration are wholly unpredictable, which is part of the fun. Something a Turkish waiter told me he’d seen happen in his restaurant turned into a story about America abroad; a woman with a briefcase on a ferry full of day-trippers became a story about land and greed. Place is important; I’ve written a dozen stories set in Venice and Dublin is an important backdrop for sections of A Parachute in the Lime Tree. Inspiration is fragile and evanescent, so it’s important to catch those butterflies before they disappear. That’s why a notebook, paper or digital, is your friend.

What’s next on your writing agenda?

I’ve completed the first draft of another novel, Siren. The material is all there, but the structure needs attention and there’s a lot of re-writing to do, as always. I’m also midway into another novel, but it’s time to put that down for a while and do some research. I have lots of short story ideas pinned down in various places – but they all need time to find themselves (and I need time to write them!).

Do you have a favourite snack to accompany your writing?

Tea and chocolate, please. Pretty much any tea and chocolate will do, but if I’m allowed to be choosy I’ll go for a big bar of Green & Black’s (Almond) with Twining’s English Breakfast tea.

Have you ever read a book and visualised yourself as a character?

That’s a really interesting question! I can’t think of a recent example, but as a child I definitely wanted to be Lucy in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I remember eyeing-up an old mahogany wardrobe outside my bedroom for months on end and convincing myself that one day I’d be brave enough to step inside and there would be the lamp-post and all the rest of it…

Annemarie is a former lawyer who now enjoys the freedom of just making it up. Her first novel, A Parachute in the Lime Tree, was published by History Press Ireland on 1March 2012. She has won prizes for short fiction in international competitions such as Bridport, Fish, Columbia Journal and the Bryan MacMahon prize. Her stories have been published in anthologies and magazines in the UK, US and Ireland. Work-in-progress includes a collection of Venice stories, and a novel, Siren. Annemarie is a graduate of Trinity College and King’s Inns, Dublin and the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. Irish-born, she lives in London with her husband and three sons.

Thanks so much for inviting me over, Gillian, and all the best with your own writing and that of the rest of the Strictly team.