There's a Surprisingly Essential First Page Contest going on at Nathan Bransford's blog at the moment. I don't normally go in for these- not since I tried out a hook on Rachel Vater's site at a very early stage of writing my WIP and she labelled it "Saving Nurse Meredith" and told me it was packed with cliches. LOL.
Actually, the advice I got from that one posting alone was worth so much, I don't know why I haven't jumped into more. Probably just that I can't stand the waiting to see what Very Important People have to say about my stuff. I'm going to be a blubbering mess when it gets to query time (g). Speaking of VIPs, my DH finally read some of Between the Lines for the first time tonight, which for some reason had me in knots of nervousness. I'm pretty genuinely convinced he enjoyed it. Loved it, even. Starting to get excited about the whole thing again thanks to him :)
Anyway! I was going to enter Nathan's contest, but I've been sitting here for two hours trying to post, and there are too many entries. The whole thing has slowed to a total halt. So, bugger it. I was never gonna win anyway, because my story doesn't have a thunderclap beginning (not on the first page, anyway- within the first three pages, perhaps). So, here's my one person contest, and I automatically declare myself the winner of the most essential first page on this blog. So there.
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Between the Lines
Claire Gregory, 2007
Stonehaven, Western Australia
January 1920
With all the shrieking and carrying on, nobody but Bill noticed the little boy at first. The child stood in the doorway of the parlour, half-hidden behind the frame, and all Bill could see was the gleam of his messy golden hair, one round blue eye fixed wide with curiosity, and a set of chubby fingers gripping the white-painted wood.
When he tried to take another breath, the air had been stolen from his lungs. For just a moment everything else in the world ceased to exist.
His mother was still flung over the chaise, sobbing and wailing, shouting. “Lionel! Oh!”
Dad was down on his knees beside her, trying to stroke her hair, to grab her flailing hands and stem the unexpected disaster that was their youngest son coming back from the War alive, when so many others had fallen. “Shh, love, come on.”
They’d been glad to see him, a minute ago, until he’d delivered the news about his brother. Now it had all gone to pot. Six years, he’d been waiting for this. Six years he’d pushed and pushed, fought and survived and frozen his arse off, kept on moving forwards, ever closer to home, and now he was here.
Now they all wished he wasn’t. They all wished Lionel were here instead.
Everything faded into silence in that blue stare, though. Not just his parents, not just the familiar sounds of the farm, the chirp of crickets and the lowing of cows- even the rattle of distant artillery in his head fell quiet. Even the whispering voice of his brother. Traitor. Murderer. He caught his breath, listening for it, wanting to be sure, but it was gone.
He took a few halting steps forward, and the child shrank back behind the door. “Wait.” He sank down onto his knees, a hand stretched out, hardly daring to raise his voice. “Stop. Wait.” The boards were hard as rocks, but he didn’t care.
All he wanted was a closer look at that face. His heart was pounding up in his throat fit to choke him. He was close enough now to smell the kid, all soap and powder, wearing blue shorts and a shirt that was half-untucked, striped with crayon and food.
“What’s your name?” he whispered. The boy seemed to hear him all right, even in the sudden clamour as Mother rushed past in a bustle of skirts, half-knocking each of them sideways as she charged through the door and out into the hallway. His father laid a gentle hand on his back as he followed her out, and then it was just the two of them. One skinny, broken soldier, and a knock-kneed boy about five years old.
Give or take a year, maybe.
A kid whose face, now that he could see it, broke his heart in more ways than he could count.
Why hadn’t somebody told him?
Excerpt from Between the Lines
A memory wavered into his mind, shimmery as heat rising off the road in summer.
He was six years old, and he’d been in Stonehaven no more than a week. He was hollow and lonely, confused. He missed the bustle of Melbourne. He missed the other kids on his street, the whole gang of them and their scampy games. He was stuck out in the bush, all of a sudden, with nobody but Lionel for company. Lionel had spent the first day ignoring him completely, and the last few beating the stuffing out of him whenever he got the chance. So that day, he’d wandered out to the back garden, if it could even be called that- just a scrubbed, flat expanse of hot red dirt with a veil of tangled trees and shrubs behind it.
The bush.
On impulse, he’d taken a couple of steps toward it, bare feet burning on the hot ground. The air was filled with the lemony scent of eucalyptus and the fresh tang of the distant sea. He'd filled his lungs and the two steps had turned into six, then ten, then before he knew it he was running headlong toward the wall of whispering green and brown, pushing all his mother’s warnings about snakes and savages from his head. He barrelled between the first spicy-scented leaves and, to his surprise, popped out on a sort of beaten down track, hidden from view of the house. After a moment’s pause to wonder how many strokes of the belt he’d get for this, he set off down the track toward the most interesting noise he’d heard so far- the babbling giggle of flowing water, and laced in with it, the high, clear notes of a girl’s voice, singing.
He stepped off the track with his heart hammering in his chest, suddenly terrified as he caught side of the wide river bank and the rolling mass of glassy green water.
She was standing there, all right- a girl not much taller than him, skinny as a rake, skin the golden brown of tree bark lit by sun. A cascade of golden curls rolled over her shoulders to skim at her waist, tendrils flicking out here and there as she drew back her arm and lobbed a big rock into the water.
He watched it go, traced the arc with his eyes until it hit the water with a loud splash and was swallowed. She was singing, still, her voice high and clear. She was wearing a white dress that finished at her knees and puffed into short sleeves at her shoulders. He looked down at himself, his grey shorts and jumper coated in jam, dirt and everything else he’d been busy with that morning. He stared at her back with suspicion. She was pristine. The only dirty bit of her was her feet, bare as his.
If it hadn’t been for those feet, he might have thought she was an angel. Or a ghost.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
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11 comments:
For heaven's sake, woman, ENTER that in Nathan's contest! The deadline isn't until 5 pm Pacific. ENTER IT!
LOL! I've tried and tried and tried, and now it's 1am and I'm sooo tired... I'll give it one last shot when I get up tomorrow, ok? (vbg). Thanks for the vote of confidence (w)
Dude, you SO have a shot.
Hope it works next try. When you DO enter. *w,g*
Jen H is coming to my rescue as we speak! Looks like the problem could be the connection on my end, and I may be needlessly slagging Nathan's blog (cough). Fingers crossed.
I just came back to offer to submit it for you. If JH can't get it to work, let me know and I'll give it a try. Dammit, you have to enter that!
Oh, he also said on a subsequent comment thread that, if you're having trouble posting, you can email it to him!!! Go! Go now!
Oooh Claire!!! I'll enter it for you fer cryin' out loud! This is wonderful stuff, gimme more, gimme more... (Not being facetious here. I really mean it. Oh, Jared...)
ROFL! Goodness, it's not *that* good. But Jen is a legend- she succeeded in her mission, and I'm up! Probably entry 500-and-something- I haven't even looked yet (g)
Oh good, you got it entered. I was on tenterhooks at 5am this morning when I passed by and read the first couple of comments. You've got me hooked!
I'm glad to see from these comments that you did get it entered.
"No thunderclap"? Finding out you have a five-year-old son isn't a thunderclap? Do you even have a _pulse_? *g, d & r*
Corrallie.
ROFLMAO! Have I told you guys how much I love you lately? (vbg). I can still see lots of big changes to be made- not the least that Bill seems to be having a hissy fit about not getting enough attention, when in fact he's arriving home for the first time since he learned that his fiance is dead, and all the rest, and this is *not* a likely reaction from him. Tee hee. I suppose we'll see what happens with the contest!
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