The Opening Lines Meme

Taken from :

“A few other writers on my friends list have done this; the idea is to post the opening lines of works in progress. The allure of rich, creamy narcissism is too much to resist!”

Here’s what I’m working on:

Black Powder, Black Magic

The rope snapped taut.

His neck didn’t break.

Mercy was as conspicuously absent from the prisoner’s death as it had been during his life. No sudden snap and enveloping darkness for him, but rather the seeming eternity of strangulation as his feet danced an involuntary jig for the amusement of the crowds gathered at the scaffold outside of Newgate Prison.

Heroes of the New Wave

Welcome To The FUTURE!

Welcome…to 1985.

OK, sure. At the time, it wasn’t the future. It was the present, and from where we stand now, it’s the past—but at the time, it sure looked like the future to me. Neon and chrome and digital watches and pastel colors and everybody had Really Cool Jackets. No doubt about it, kids, this was the Future-with-a-Capital-F that we had been promised, back in the days of Popular Mechanics and Analog.

Before the dawn of the tarnished millennium, before impeachment, before the flannel-and-coffee crowd beat the joy out of rock-and-roll, a long time ago in a decade far, far away, Ronnie was in the White House, God was in his Heaven, and all was right with the world.

(Untitled Fantasy)

The old man had wandered in from the desert, or so they say.

That’s how it always begins.

The teller of the tale usually pauses then, allowing for the statements of disbelief, which someone always dutifully makes, even though they’ve heard this story a thousand times from a thousand different tellers since the time of their birth.

He wandered in from the vast waste, caked in dust, breathing sand, and entered through the Gateless Gate, the unbarred way traditionally left open as it faced the endless nothing to the south of the city.

It’s true, someone always says. My Father’s Father (Uncle, Brother, Friend–the rite of the tale here is open to interpretation) was a guard, and was manning the Gateless Gate on that very night (Occasionally, in less reverent tellings, it is at this point that some wit remarks that for each time he’s heard that to be true, there must have been an entire Legion at the southern gate that night).

In from the desert, in through the Gateless Gate, walking from where no man walks, caked in dust, breathing sand.

There’s a bunch more stuff in various stages of completion, but if I posted it all, your friends page would be miles long. So, there’s a snippet.