index of first lines
Dec. 5th, 2005 11:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyOtherwise known as that meme, which has served me so well in the past.
I've decided to organize it this time, and like Gaul it is divided into three parts.
These are the stories that are out doing the door-to-door thing. I'm including them because it reminds me to keep kicking them back out to find the next door.
"Amante Dorée"
"You are importunate, m'sieur."
"Ashes, Ashes"
Snow fell from the gray sky like ashes.
"Blue Lace Agate"
They hadn't caught the shoggoth larva smugglers yet, but the head of the BPI's southeast hub had other things on his mind: "And, ah, how are you and Sharpton doing, Keller?"
"The Bone Key"
I had been in the paper when the Parrington opened its new fossil exhibit, an ugly, gawky presence half-hidden behind a diplodocus skull.
"The Clockwork Pianist"
Christian Molnar played as perfectly and lifelessly as a music box.
"Coyote Gets His Own Back"
Luther shot the coyote bitch on Wednesday. She didn't make a sound, just fell ass over teakettle into the defile, blood blooming across her neck and chest. She was dead--there was no doubt about that, then or later.
"Draco campestris"
The Museum owns eighty-nine specimens of the genus Draco.
"Fiddleback Ferns"
"Are these fiddleback ferns, Mommy?" Cindy asked.
"Katabasis: Seraphic Trains"
Her name is Clair.
"Letter from a Teddy Bear on Veterans' Day"
It is early morning, barely dawn. It rained all night, and it will be raining again soon. The air tastes green and fresh and heavy. The park is deserted. I walk along the path, carrying the teddy bear in my left hand, as if it were something as normal as a newspaper. Somewhere ahead of me, the Wall is waiting.
"A Light in Troy"
She went down to the beach in the early mornings, to walk among the cruel black rocks and stare out at the waves.
"Listening to Bone"
In clement weather, I sometimes went to the Henry Davenport Public Zoological Gardens on my lunch break.
"A Night in Electric Squidland"
Some days, Mick Sharpton was almost normal.
"No Man's Land"
He wakes up tasting dirt.
"Requiem for Prey"
Prey use the word "love" like it means something.
"Sundered"
The nameplate on the door still said LT. MICHELLE THORNE, and Rachel wondered how long it would be before it was changed.
"Under the Beansidhe's Pillow"
The Beansidhe does a lot of wailing during the crossing.
"Why Do You Linger?"
"Why do you linger?" he asks the empty room.
"The World Without Sleep"
In the January that I turned thirty-five, sleep became a foreign and hostile country.
Stories that exist in a complete draft but don't, for whatever reason, quite work yet.
The Mirador
There was a Curia meeting after court.
Richard Estæth
He came stumbling up out of the darkness, knowing nothing except that the people in the fortress at the top of the pass had to be warned.
"The Hostage Crisis on the Derelict Mistral Freighter D35-692N-C, Queen of Liverpool"
My father's funeral was held this morning, broadcast 'live'--a morbid irony--on twenty channels, relayed off-planet by telecommunications satellites he had owned.
"Under Babylon"
Mick Sharpton's howl of outrage--"oh fuck no!"--was clearly audible in the junior agents' office.
"Old-Fashioned"
Nick was making bread when I got home.
"Somewhere Beneath Those Waves Was Her Home"
184. Figurehead. Wood. 35" x 18". American, ca. 1850. Figure of a woman holding a telescope and compass. Ship unknown.
The Marriage of True Minds
The greatest danger was that he wanted to trust.
And the stories that are still looking for all of their parts.
Summerdown
Suddenly, Mildmay said, "I ain't taking this no more."
The Emperor of the Elflands
"Maiah! Maiah, wake up!"
The Second Son
On the twenty-fourth of April, Medraut dreamed of Loheris again.
Schrödinger's Parable of the Cat
The heat in Hylant Station was like nothing Tanasestefeth had ever imagined.
The White Devil
My great-aunts Lally and Cleo lived in a tiny, dusty, cluttered house surrounded by the most magnificent rose garden you ever saw.
"Thirdhop Scarp"
It was an open question in the Parrington Museum which of Samuel Mather Parrington's two daughters was more to be feared.
"To Die for Moonlight"
I cut off her head before I buried her.
"Spider's Rose"
Long ago, in a world none of them can remember, the vampires were taught to dance.
"Moonwork"
In January, Jenny Sutpen's baby died.
The Aftermath of the Glastalvon Rebellion
Cuthbert Swetenham, who had been the ninth Earl of Glastalvon, rose to his feet as the transparent fourth wall of his cell vanished. It worried him, a little, how something that was already invisible could vanish, but he had no other words to describe the phenomenon.
Untitled
The Renault case refused to break.
Untitled
In all the Museum's long history, there have been only seven thefts: the Qarian snuffbox from Arc Sigma 29, the Tavian mongooses of Epsilon 03, the spar from the whaling ship Pequod (Sigma 14), the funeral stele of the unknown Myvedian warrior (Lambda 20), the bridal sari of the Rani of London (Kappa 09), a chronometer from Beta Andromedae (Theta 07), the bust of the Emperor Horatio V.
Untitled
Shelby was waiting for them on a rise two miles out of town.
Untitled
Therese Winslow was sixteen, a tall child, slender, with the porcelain-fair fragility of a tea rose or a Shakespeare heroine: Cordelia, Desdemona, Ophelia. She had been carefully raised, though not by her parents, feckless black sheep that they were, and at sixteen, when most girls were reaching eagerly towards womanhood, Therese retained the old-fashioned air of a child in a Renaissance portrait. It disconcerted her mother, who said, "What a stick you are, darling," and bought her rouge and scarves in femme fatale colors, which Therese did not wear. Her father called her an odd little puss, but since he scarcely ever noticed her, it was hard to say what he meant by it.
Untitled
I was beaten to death when I was two years old. I don't remember it, which is probably just as well.
And then there are the stories that don't have first lines yet.
If nothing else, this has made me feel better about my productivity. And that's something.
I've decided to organize it this time, and like Gaul it is divided into three parts.
These are the stories that are out doing the door-to-door thing. I'm including them because it reminds me to keep kicking them back out to find the next door.
"Amante Dorée"
"You are importunate, m'sieur."
"Ashes, Ashes"
Snow fell from the gray sky like ashes.
"Blue Lace Agate"
They hadn't caught the shoggoth larva smugglers yet, but the head of the BPI's southeast hub had other things on his mind: "And, ah, how are you and Sharpton doing, Keller?"
"The Bone Key"
I had been in the paper when the Parrington opened its new fossil exhibit, an ugly, gawky presence half-hidden behind a diplodocus skull.
"The Clockwork Pianist"
Christian Molnar played as perfectly and lifelessly as a music box.
"Coyote Gets His Own Back"
Luther shot the coyote bitch on Wednesday. She didn't make a sound, just fell ass over teakettle into the defile, blood blooming across her neck and chest. She was dead--there was no doubt about that, then or later.
"Draco campestris"
The Museum owns eighty-nine specimens of the genus Draco.
"Fiddleback Ferns"
"Are these fiddleback ferns, Mommy?" Cindy asked.
"Katabasis: Seraphic Trains"
Her name is Clair.
"Letter from a Teddy Bear on Veterans' Day"
It is early morning, barely dawn. It rained all night, and it will be raining again soon. The air tastes green and fresh and heavy. The park is deserted. I walk along the path, carrying the teddy bear in my left hand, as if it were something as normal as a newspaper. Somewhere ahead of me, the Wall is waiting.
"A Light in Troy"
She went down to the beach in the early mornings, to walk among the cruel black rocks and stare out at the waves.
"Listening to Bone"
In clement weather, I sometimes went to the Henry Davenport Public Zoological Gardens on my lunch break.
"A Night in Electric Squidland"
Some days, Mick Sharpton was almost normal.
"No Man's Land"
He wakes up tasting dirt.
"Requiem for Prey"
Prey use the word "love" like it means something.
"Sundered"
The nameplate on the door still said LT. MICHELLE THORNE, and Rachel wondered how long it would be before it was changed.
"Under the Beansidhe's Pillow"
The Beansidhe does a lot of wailing during the crossing.
"Why Do You Linger?"
"Why do you linger?" he asks the empty room.
"The World Without Sleep"
In the January that I turned thirty-five, sleep became a foreign and hostile country.
Stories that exist in a complete draft but don't, for whatever reason, quite work yet.
The Mirador
There was a Curia meeting after court.
Richard Estæth
He came stumbling up out of the darkness, knowing nothing except that the people in the fortress at the top of the pass had to be warned.
"The Hostage Crisis on the Derelict Mistral Freighter D35-692N-C, Queen of Liverpool"
My father's funeral was held this morning, broadcast 'live'--a morbid irony--on twenty channels, relayed off-planet by telecommunications satellites he had owned.
"Under Babylon"
Mick Sharpton's howl of outrage--"oh fuck no!"--was clearly audible in the junior agents' office.
"Old-Fashioned"
Nick was making bread when I got home.
"Somewhere Beneath Those Waves Was Her Home"
184. Figurehead. Wood. 35" x 18". American, ca. 1850. Figure of a woman holding a telescope and compass. Ship unknown.
The Marriage of True Minds
The greatest danger was that he wanted to trust.
And the stories that are still looking for all of their parts.
Summerdown
Suddenly, Mildmay said, "I ain't taking this no more."
The Emperor of the Elflands
"Maiah! Maiah, wake up!"
The Second Son
On the twenty-fourth of April, Medraut dreamed of Loheris again.
Schrödinger's Parable of the Cat
The heat in Hylant Station was like nothing Tanasestefeth had ever imagined.
The White Devil
My great-aunts Lally and Cleo lived in a tiny, dusty, cluttered house surrounded by the most magnificent rose garden you ever saw.
"Thirdhop Scarp"
It was an open question in the Parrington Museum which of Samuel Mather Parrington's two daughters was more to be feared.
"To Die for Moonlight"
I cut off her head before I buried her.
"Spider's Rose"
Long ago, in a world none of them can remember, the vampires were taught to dance.
"Moonwork"
In January, Jenny Sutpen's baby died.
The Aftermath of the Glastalvon Rebellion
Cuthbert Swetenham, who had been the ninth Earl of Glastalvon, rose to his feet as the transparent fourth wall of his cell vanished. It worried him, a little, how something that was already invisible could vanish, but he had no other words to describe the phenomenon.
Untitled
The Renault case refused to break.
Untitled
In all the Museum's long history, there have been only seven thefts: the Qarian snuffbox from Arc Sigma 29, the Tavian mongooses of Epsilon 03, the spar from the whaling ship Pequod (Sigma 14), the funeral stele of the unknown Myvedian warrior (Lambda 20), the bridal sari of the Rani of London (Kappa 09), a chronometer from Beta Andromedae (Theta 07), the bust of the Emperor Horatio V.
Untitled
Shelby was waiting for them on a rise two miles out of town.
Untitled
Therese Winslow was sixteen, a tall child, slender, with the porcelain-fair fragility of a tea rose or a Shakespeare heroine: Cordelia, Desdemona, Ophelia. She had been carefully raised, though not by her parents, feckless black sheep that they were, and at sixteen, when most girls were reaching eagerly towards womanhood, Therese retained the old-fashioned air of a child in a Renaissance portrait. It disconcerted her mother, who said, "What a stick you are, darling," and bought her rouge and scarves in femme fatale colors, which Therese did not wear. Her father called her an odd little puss, but since he scarcely ever noticed her, it was hard to say what he meant by it.
Untitled
I was beaten to death when I was two years old. I don't remember it, which is probably just as well.
And then there are the stories that don't have first lines yet.
If nothing else, this has made me feel better about my productivity. And that's something.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-12-05 06:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-05 06:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-05 06:31 pm (UTC)Mistaken gender of artist also my bad. :(
no subject
Date: 2005-12-05 06:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-05 08:14 pm (UTC)I can trail names in front of you like a scarf, like an ant trail...
no subject
Date: 2005-12-05 08:26 pm (UTC)Latest occurence of meme
Date: 2005-12-05 08:43 pm (UTC)Also, the one that starts "Therese Winslow was sixteen" didn't instantly grab me, textwise... but I'm (metaphorically) dying to know what you meant, calling it a "Henry James meets Aleister Crowley story".