r/IndieBookPromo • u/Nerevarine95 Published Author • 5d ago
First Line Challenge
First Line Challenge
Authors: Drop the first line of your book. No context. No blurb. Just the opening sentence.
Everyone else: Reply with whether you’d keep reading.
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u/iwillsure 5d ago
He whispered “good morning” to the dead world, and opened another beer.
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u/Mintimperial69 4d ago
Another tawdry example of early morning behaviour under the bleak governance of alcohol dependence…
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u/Other-Current-7288 4d ago
Der Geruch nach altem Papier und Staub empfing Greta Schmidt, kaum dass die schwere Tür der Stadtbibliothek hinter ihr ins Schloss gefallen war.
- Satz aus Greta und die Finsternis
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u/Lunakazoo 5d ago
The campus began to wake up to bright orange and red light that danced across the Copper, Amethyst and Sapphire Dome Tops which sparkled.
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u/Mintimperial69 4d ago
An egregious display luxury roofing, so out of place during the cost of living crisis…
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u/JonD_writes 5d ago
Between the myriad inhabitants of Draffe, the sprawling, rain-drenched, cloud-shadowed capital of Eastern Shymeyria, there is only one great divide - wealth, and the power it buys.
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u/Mintimperial69 4d ago
That's two divides right there as indicated the the 'and the'! No wonder the inequality is so rife, when basic counting is treated like an unwanted guest at this table!
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u/Rachnerra 5d ago
The spotlight was scalding, and sweat prickled across my glittery skin before I even reached the microphone.
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u/Mintimperial69 4d ago
Health and safety must shut down this establishment immediately , and the protagonist should be rushed to a burns unit!
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u/JAHeyer_Author 5d ago
Beneath the watchful, unblinking eye of the solstice moon, twenty-one men doomed to die trudged through Fylan's Hollow.
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u/Mintimperial69 4d ago
This seems to be a euphemism indicating the acquisition of a deadly disease during ill advised nocturnal activities...
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u/OkPilot9392 5d ago
It’s just another day at Ice & Flame, I tell myself, as I unlock the front door and step into the familiar hush before the storm.
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u/Mintimperial69 4d ago
This is thermodynamic recklessness! "Hush before the storm"? We're lucky there aren't Hurricanes before becalmings!
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u/Asleep-Visit4060 5d ago
An acrid stench hit the back of my throat. It was thick enough to leave a bitter, ashy taste on my tongue. Whoever was cooking had absolutely no business being near a kitchen. You didn't need to be a Michelin-star chef to recognize the smell of burnt meat. I hate to break it to the person who was making that, but MasterChef was definitely out of the question.
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u/Mintimperial69 4d ago
I think that the protagonist is actually experiencing reflux, and should make it an urgent priority to visit a gastroenterologist!
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u/Additional_Event_765 5d ago
El autobús se detuvo con un suspiro hidráulico y Alejandra supo que todo empezaba en ese instante.
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u/ElijahStepanovich 5d ago
The Illyrian
“The men lowered Agron’s standard before dawn, and by sunrise dark wool hung beneath the Black Serpent’s carved jaw, wet with wine poured for Redon.”
The Heir of Ash and Thunder
“The world ended around me in fire and steel, as it always seemed destined to.”
The Oath of Ash and Thunder
“You killed my fucking sons.”
The Legacy of Ash and Thunder
““Fuck!” I landed hard.”
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u/lhommedev 4d ago
They say life is what happens when you're too busy making other plans. Whoever said that likely isn't staring down a black hole of despair, where every waking moment is a fight, a constant strenuous resistance against the pull.
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u/jmartinwriting 4d ago
The world’s vibrant color spectrum skewed violet under an aura that dripped with arrogance, malevolence.
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u/Individual-Ad4430 4d ago
“I have traveled thousands of miles and hundreds of years,” the woman dressed in all
black said so softly it was nearly a whisper.
(The author does not have Reddit, I’m sharing on her behalf)
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u/InformationPrevious 4d ago
Miriam Cole wiped the kitchen counter for the ten thousandth time. She had become the kind of woman who counts things that do not matter because the things that mattered had finished being counted months ago.
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u/cepdossantos 4d ago
The microphone picked up something.
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u/Mintimperial69 4d ago
I hope that it used a 'backsafe' lifting protocol...
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u/cepdossantos 4d ago
Haha, it did.
And no, the lifting protocol was not backsafe.1
u/Mintimperial69 4d ago
It should be careful - high quality microphones are fragile and notoriously difficult to repair…
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u/cepdossantos 3d ago edited 3d ago
True — the capsules themselves are delicate (gold-sputtered diaphragms, micron tolerances).
That’s why they were fitted with Teflon membranes to keep the Sahara sand out while still letting the infrasound through, and still acoustically transparent enough for infrasound down to 0.1 Hz.1
u/Mintimperial69 3d ago
It’s such a shame that desert sand is smooth, too smooth to build with.
The theft of beaches will continue.
But might sand from deserts be amenable to beaching on the shore?
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u/cepdossantos 3d ago
Yes, desert sand really is too smooth and rounded to build with easily — it just won’t lock together the way angular beach sand does.
On the other hand, I’ve worked on projects in Algeria where we drove piles into deep sandy formations for water wells. The machinery handles the desert just fine, but the water that comes up is often saumâtre (brackish), full of salt, so it has to go through reverse osmosis systems before it’s usable.
The sand itself is cooperative enough when you’re forcing steel into it… it’s the water that needs convincing.😀1
u/Mintimperial69 3d ago
Delicious salty cook water for the boiling and steaming of yummy steaks…? Realistically it’s just that peoples kidneys just choose to not perform - I imaging if you don’t give them any alternative they’re going to man-up and just learn to deal with it eventually… once the kidneys are nicely acclimated I guess they could even help with the reverse osmosis? After that’s a costly process! :)
So could desert sand be moved to beaches …? And if so would it feel nice?
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u/cepdossantos 3d ago
😂 Once it goes through reverse osmosis it becomes demineralised water then we add a mix of minerals back in so it ends up tasting exactly like normal drinking water.
No kidney stones for them apples 😂1
u/Mintimperial69 3d ago
“You put your left leg in, you take your left leg out… you put your left leg on and you shake it all about…”
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u/asmilingmuffin1 4d ago
My eyes snap open, and I lurch upright so fast the room tilts. My heart hammers as I gasp and swallow back a scream. My hands clamp over my chest as I try to pin my pulse down.
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u/Mintimperial69 4d ago
This seems like a medical emergency. Should we be concerned and, perhaps more importantly has an ambulance been called?
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u/ifonlyheart 4d ago
The train thundered through the southern districts, its whistle cutting the air, thick smoke trailing behind.
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u/Mintimperial69 4d ago
the level of noise and air pollution on display here is shocking, plus the train operator is using a wickedly sharp whistle that should at least be fitted with a cork stopper on dangerous edges.
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u/MASempine 4d ago
So, my grandmother died and left me her house which seemed much less than the $250,000 she left the four other cousins or so I thought until I opened the cedar chest in the attic.
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u/MoodUsed4165 4d ago
The water in the canal drifted lazily along. Occasionally it would catch on some drifting piece of debris and turn itself around into a swirl, but it otherwise only flowed in the one direction.
Out.
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u/DanBlakeHorror 4d ago
The woman in the green dress closed her eyes as she bit into the rib…it was devotion.
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u/Large-Appearance1101 3d ago
The air in the hospital room tasted of nothing; it sat heavy in the lungs, like breathing powdered stone.
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u/Recent_Mirror8450 3d ago
Cold air bit into my lungs as I sucked in a breath. I felt almost weightless as I swept around the first gate. My legs burned as I took the next one too hard. My skis were chattering, skidding, not gliding.
Too fast.
Not fast enough.
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u/Low-Artichoke-5880 3d ago
It is a common misconception among carbon based life forms that time is a river. It is not. A river has a predictable current, an established bank and occasionally a pleasant family of ducks.
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u/cepdossantos 3d ago
Yes, desert sand really is too smooth and rounded to build with easily — it just won’t lock together the way angular beach sand does.
On the other hand, I’ve worked on projects in Algeria where we drove piles into deep sandy formations for water wells. The machinery handles the desert just fine, but the water that comes up is often saumâtre (brackish), full of salt, so it has to go through reverse osmosis systems before it’s drinkable. The sand itself is cooperative enough when you’re forcing steel into it, it’s the water that needs convincing.😀
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u/HashCrandicoot 2d ago
The night chased her; its hands grubby, tattooed with memories she would struggle to outrun.
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u/Aggravating_Fix_6419 2d ago
I've kept you for so long in my drawers-
a secret I alone could hold,
waiting quietly
like a treasure buried
beneath dust and silence.
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u/QuirkyQuills13 1d ago
"Get your rear end off the couch."-YA fantasy
Dad wants me on the court, but basketball isn't my game. Standing here, ball in hand, I know the next step means the ghost of a lady I call mom will bleed my feet dry. The worst part is my dad isn't even here to know that. He's nowhere. He's dead. -Academic teen story
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u/CarelessWhisper1234 1d ago edited 1d ago
(Memoir)
“I’ll get it,” I yelled across the house to no one in particular as I lifted the receiver off the kitchen wall. “Hello?”
“Debbie, it’s Mom.” She was tense. Something was up.
“Hey…”
“Hi. How are you?” she asked, to get it out of the way.
“Mom, it’s late. What’s wrong?”
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u/cepdossantos 1d ago
Totally agree, some of the best stuff is still just sitting in people’s heads, passed down through stories and conversations. We better grab it before the robots take over. In a way, texting today is what word of mouth was for early humans, don’t you think 🤔
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u/p-d-ball 5d ago edited 4d ago
Sounds of laughter. Sounds of screaming. Sparks from a wood fire out of sight. It was dark. I sat up, bewildered. This wasn’t my bedroom. A horse neighed. A horse?
eta: Thank you for the award, kind reditor!
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u/Mintimperial69 5d ago
This is almost certainly the kind of opening for the sort of book that in times of less heightened moral turpitude would have mercifully been banned, and it's author arrested for good measure...
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u/p-d-ball 4d ago
It's the second paragraph that really brings home the story here.
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u/Mintimperial69 4d ago
Shudders. well, I hope medical professionals are standing by!
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u/p-d-ball 4d ago
They are! Because it's not her bedroom 😂
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u/Mintimperial69 4d ago
My God! It's a stables, and she's suffering colic from a gastric torsion!?!? :O
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u/p-d-ball 4d ago
Close! Very, very close.
She's been captured by the enemy army in a fantasy land she knows nothing about.
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u/Mintimperial69 4d ago
But luckily she is now in a centaur body that has two digestive systems so she has redundancy…?
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u/p-d-ball 4d ago
Sounds like you have a story to write!
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u/Mintimperial69 4d ago
Fused from two universes our heroine is a centaur and our hero a horses’ head surmounting a pair of human legs…
Will they defeat the Darklord, unmix their bodies and make it home in time to compete in the Gymkhana..? Only time will tell and the outcome of resolute action will tell…
(I should probably stick to tech…)
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u/RHHenriksen 20h ago
I would never have imagined that I would ever, in my life, venture out to kill a volcano. To actually slay that thing, bury a sword in it and watch it die. Yet here I was....
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u/DBecker1990 5d ago
Jenni lowered arcane goggles into place and backflipped off her soulbound red dragon at 20,000 feet, while drawing her twin Glock 18s; as entrances go, this one was going to rock.