Tag - You're It

I was tagged by Suzanne Stengl in her blog Tuesday Cafe with the Lucky Seven Meme.  She posted seven lines starting at the seventh line from page seven of her soon to be published novella - The Ghost and Christie McFee.

I had the opportunity of reading an early draft of Suzanne's book and it's great.  For me, it's really cool how Suzanne drew on Annie Hamilton and Otto Dredger, two of the characters from my book, Death at Bandit Creek and gave them a whole new story.  

Follow this link to Tuesday Cafe to read an exerpt from Suzanne's book.  If you do, I'm betting that you'll be buying it on August 1.

Okay, now for the meme:  Here are seven lines from my book, Death at Bandit Creek:

Luc felt the barb of Ty’s criticism. “I did a pretty good job of lining the brands up,” he said.

“We don’t want a fight with Dredger, Luc.”

Luc thought about Ty’s words. Dredger had always caused trouble for their father and now he wanted to steal their calves. Luc turned to his brother. “We’ll get these calves on the train out of Bandit Creek today. We’ll take them along with the yearlings.”

Ty muttered something. Luc knew Ty didn’t want a range war. Men like Dredger took the law into their own hands. Lynching for cattle theft wasn’t unheard of, especially back in the days before the new century.

I am tagging seven authors.  They have all published books in the Bandit Creek series and I am challenging them to post seven lines from their books:

Steena Holmes

Shanna Gekko

Trip Williams

Alyssa Palmer

Brenda Sinclair

Pamala Yaye

Vivi Anna

Truth and Fiction: Opening Hooks

The opening lines are the words that hook our readers into our fictional world. The words that start them down the path of our tangled webs.  We hope to give the reader just enough to intrigue them with our story question.

Here are the words that opened a debate into minimum sentences for criminal convictions.  The question for my readers is this:  would you read a book that opens with these lines?

"At just before 2:00 am on March 9, 2009, Leroy Smickle was engaged in a very foolish act.  He was alone in the apartment of his cousin, Rojohn Brown, having elected (because he had to be at work in the morning) to stay in while his cousin went out to a club.  Mr. Smickle was reclining on the sofa, wearing boxer shorts, a white tank top, and sunglasses.  Thus clad, he was in the process of taking his picture for his Facebook page, using the webcam on his laptop computer.  For reasons known only to Mr. Smickle, and which arguably go beyond mere foolishness, he was posing in this manner with a loaded handgun in one hand.  Unfortunately for Mr. Smickle, at this exact moment, members of the Toronto Police Emergency Task Force and the Guns and Gangs Squad were gathered outside the apartment preparing to execute a search warrant in relation to Mr. Brown, who was believed to be in possession of illegal firearms.  They smashed in the door of the apartment with a battering ram, and Mr. Smickle was literally caught red-handed, with a loaded illegal firearm in his hand.  He immediately dropped the gun and the computer, as ordered to by the police, and was thereupon arrested." [From the judgement of Ontario Superior Court Justice Anne Malloy in February 2012.]

I write a draft of an opening line to get my story going.  But then I go back and write and rewrite the lines.  I read other what other writers have written.  I ask myself, what pulls me into a story.  Are there lessons to be learned from Justice Malloy's opening? How do you craft your story opening?