THIS CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED. CONGRATULATIONS TO “bb” FOR HER NOVEL SENTENCE: “It was the dead dog that started it.”
The Mixed Bag Challenge: a new question each week for the 15 weeks leading up to the Festival. Prizes include a bag for the best each week, and a raffle chance at Festival event tickets for each entry.
This week’s challenge: 4. Write YOUR OWN memorable first line to a novel.
Deadline: Feb 25, Noon. New challenge then.
Once in my youth I was among the stacks reaching up for a volume by O. Henry when I noticed it was braced by a curious, twisted-like bookend which appeared to grow larger and larger and larger when suddenly it hit me.
My life had been lived on the straight and narrow until I met the love of my life who introduced me to adventure, extraordinary journeys and memorable experiences.
I stole a book yesterday.
Most of my life looked to be boring and uneventful, and then the vortex opened.
My ninety-year-old mother, no longer cleared for on-road driving and barely able to see over the dashboard, sat in the passenger seat, freely giving my husband detailed navigating instructions on how to get to the funeral parlor.
As far as funerals go, it wasn’t too bad: cloudy, soggy, and a group of mourners that would make a Gorey print bright in comparison.
In only ten more minutes it would all be over.
It was the dead dog that started it.
It had been about a week since his death and it felt as though life stood still.
She looked into the mirror and knew she was going to die.
Blood was everywhere.
Thinking back on it, that summer was hot, but she was hotter.
Ruby heard someone screaming after she opened the door of George’s workshop; it was only when she gasped for air that she realized she was the one making all the noise.
Daintily sipping her tea, Miss Spencer looked down at Mr Eccles-Fitzgerald and idly wondered why there was so much blood.
Having just claimed the prize for traveling the farthest to the Linden family reunion, she could hardly disabuse them to protest that she was not at all related to any of them — whether by chance or inclination.
Suddenly, a loud belly-laugh disturbed the silence of the Imperial War Museum reading room.
I never thought I would be the one to do it.
She lived in a world that was made up of stories, where her best friends were the books she knew by heart and those she had not yet read, those were adventures she was eager to go on.
If there was ever a time I needed whimsical panties that time was now.
I was born by the sea and to the sea I have returned, still with the heart of a young man, which has been both my blessing and my curse.
Meet Art, he’s dying.
today i killed my mother.
Jadzya had long stringy blonde hair that was unkempt all the time; unless she was with her beloved sister Hazel.