#FirstLineFriday

#FirstLineFriday #GiveawayContest #FreeDownloads

/ Marcia / 32 Comments

Welcome once again (FINALLY!) to #FirstLineFriday, a little quiz designed to help us appreciate some of the best opening lines in literary history. From the classics of long ago to the latest best-sellers, everything is fair game.

As always, the rules are simple:

  1. Be one of the first five people to email me before the game ends at 4:00pm EST, with the title and authorof the correct book. 
  2. Do not reply here on the blog. Email only: marciameara16@gmail.com
  3. Honor System applies. No Googling, please.
  4. Submissions end at 4:00 P.M. EST, or when I receive 5 correct answers, whichever comes first.
  5. Winners who live in the U.S. may request a free download of any one of my books for themselves, or for someone of their choice. OR, if they’ve read all of the offered books, they may request a free download of my next publication.
  6. Winners who live elsewhere may request a PDF file of the same books, since, sadly, Amazon won’t let me gift you from the site.

And now, the moment you’ve been waiting for! I’m predicting this one will be a challenge, but my predictions haven’t been right yet, so who knows? Either way, here’s today’s opening line: 

“Left Munich at 8.35 pm on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6.46, but train was an hour late.” 

Remember, email answers only, please. Thanks! And now off I go to await your guesses. 

#FirstLineFriday Submissions Are Now Closed! Here’s the Answer to Our Quiz

/ Marcia / 24 Comments

Submissions for #FirstLineFriday#2 are officially closed now. My thanks to all who stopped by to see if this one rang a bell. I’m sorry—but maybe not surprised– to say we have no winners, though. While I was hoping I’d be wrong, I was also thinking this would be a tough one, even though it made an official Top 100 Opening Lines list. This is one of my favorite reads of recent years, and well deserving of being included in the list, in my own opinion. If you are a fantasy reader of any age, I highly recommend you check it out. So, without further ado, here’s the answer to today’s quiz:

“Joost had two problems: the moon and his mustache.” is the opening line from Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo. Six of Crows is a fantasy novel which takes place in the Amsterdam-inspired city of Ketterdam. The new series takes place in the same world as Bardugo’s Grisha books but is set in a different time frame, in a world loosely inspired by the Dutch Republic of the 17th century, and based on a magical system. The plot is told from the close third-person viewpoints of five different characters, plus a first and last chapter from the point of view of two minor characters.

The book is the first in a duology, followed by Crooked Kingdom. Bardugo’s Grishaverse” trilogy, which includes Shadow and Bone, Siege and Storm, and Ruin and Rising. Reading both series will provide a deeper understanding of the Grisha world. Bardugo has since also written The Language of Thorns: Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic which features several short stories from the Grishaverse, and King of Scars, a spin-off from the “Shadow and Bone” trilogy.

Take a close look at this stunning cover!
Amazing!

WHAT AMAZON SAYS:

Enter the Grishaverse with the #1 New York Times–bestselling Six of Crows, Book One of the Six of Crows Duology.

Ketterdam: a bustling hub of international trade where anything can be had for the right price—and no one knows that better than criminal prodigy Kaz Brekker. Kaz is offered a chance at a deadly heist that could make him rich beyond his wildest dreams. But he can’t pull it off alone. . . .

A convict with a thirst for revenge.

A sharpshooter who can’t walk away from a wager.

A runaway with a privileged past.

A spy known as the Wraith.

A Heartrender using her magic to survive the slums.

A thief with a gift for unlikely escapes.

Six dangerous outcasts. One impossible heist. Kaz’s crew is the only thing that might stand between the world and destruction—if they don’t kill each other first.

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo returns to the breathtaking world of the Grishaverse in this unforgettable tale about the opportunity—and the adventure—of a lifetime.

Praise for Six of Crows:

“Six of Crows is a twisty and elegantly crafted masterpiece that thrilled me from the beginning to end.” –New York Times-bestselling author Holly Black

“Six of Crows [is] one of those all-too-rare, unputdownable books that keeps your eyes glued to the page and your brain scrambling to figure out what’s going to happen next.” –Michael Dante DiMartino, co-creator of Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra

“There’s conflict between morality and amorality and an appetite for sometimes grimace-inducing violence that recalls the Game of Thrones series. But for every bloody exchange there are pages of crackling dialogue and sumptuous description. Bardugo dives deep into this world, with full color and sound. If you’re not careful, it’ll steal all your time.” —The New York Times Book Review 

My Thoughts:

And any book that has garnered a 4.5 star average out of 3,691 ratings can’t be all bad, now can it? I HIGHLY recommend Bardugo’s work, and while reading about the Grishaverse first might be the typical approach, Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom stand on their own, as well. And as an aside, I’ve heard Netflix has plans for this one, and may already have begun filming. I haven’t been following the news, because I almost always hate the film version of my favorite books, but that right there tells you they think it’s a winner.

Buy Six of Crows Here

And that wraps up this week’s quiz, folks! Again, sorry I couldn’t give away any downloads, but I’m still happy to be sharing a book I love with folks who may not have heard of it yet.

#FirstLineFriday will be back in two weeks, and I’ll try to have something that rings a bell with more of you. Maybe. You never can tell. 😀  See you then!

 

#FirstLineFriday #GiveawayContest #FreeDownloads

/ Marcia / 21 Comments

Time for another #FirstLineFriday folks, and just to keep you on your toes, I’ve chosen something I suspect will be tricky, even though it isn’t a classic from decades gone by. Let’s see if you prove me wrong today.

PLEASE READ these simple rules, just to refresh yourself on how this should be done. Thanks.

  1. Be one of the first five people to email me before the game ends at 4:00pm, with the title and author of the correct book. 
  2. Do not reply here on the blog. Email only: marciameara16@gmail.com
  3. Honor System applies. No Googling, please.
  4. Submissions end at 4:00 P.M. EST, or when I receive 5 correct answers, whichever comes first.
  5. Winners who live in the U.S. may request a free download of any one of my books for themselves, or for someone of their choice. OR, if they’ve read all of the offered books, they may request a free download of my next publication.
  6. Winners who live elsewhere may request a mobi or PDF file of the same books, since, sadly, Amazon won’t let me gift you from the site.

And now, the moment you’ve been waiting for! Put on your thinking caps, because here is today’s opening line:

“Joost had two problems: the moon and his mustache.” 

Remember, email answers only, please. Thanks! And now off I go to await your guesses. 

GOOD LUCK!

#FirstLineFriday#2 Submissions Are Now Closed! Here’s the Answer to Our Quiz, and the Name of Our Winner!

/ Marcia / 16 Comments

Submissions for #FirstLineFriday#2 are officially closed now. My thanks to all who emailed me with their guesses. Today, I’m sorry to say we have only one winner: John Howell.  Congratulations, John, and thanks so much for pointing out to me that the correct spelling is “John Galt,” and not “John Gault.” (Let’s just pretend that’s why nobody else got this one right. 😀 😀 😀 )

John’s Author Page can be found  HERE 

And now, here’s the answer to today’s quiz:

“Who is John Galt?” is the opening line from Atlas Shrugged,  written by Ayn Rand in 1957.

Rand’s fourth and final novel, it was also her longest, and the one she considered to be her magnum opus in the realm of fiction writing.[1] Atlas Shrugged includes elements of science fiction, mystery, and romance, and it contains Rand’s most extensive statement of Objectivism in any of her works of fiction. The theme of Atlas Shrugged, as Rand described it, is “the role of man’s mind in existence”. The book explores a number of philosophical themes from which Rand would subsequently develop Objectivism. In doing so, it expresses the advocacy of reason, individualism, and capitalism, and depicts what Rand saw to be the failures of governmental coercion.

The book depicts a dystopian United States in which private businesses suffer under increasingly burdensome laws and regulations. Railroad executive Dagny Taggart and her lover, steel magnate Hank Rearden, struggle against “looters” who want to exploit their productivity. Dagny and Hank discover that a mysterious figure called John Galt is persuading other business leaders to abandon their companies and disappear as a strike of productive individuals against the looters. The novel ends with the strikers planning to build a new capitalist society based on Galt’s philosophy of reason and individualism.

Atlas Shrugged received largely negative reviews after its 1957 publication, but achieved enduring popularity and ongoing sales in the following decades. After several unsuccessful attempts to adapt the novel for film or television, a film trilogy based on it was released from 2011 to 2014. These films were critical and box office failures. (BTW, I read it when it came out and didn’t much like it myself, but I was only 13, and I doubt I really understood it in any depth.)

WHAT AMAZON SAYS:

Peopled by larger-than-life heroes and villains, charged with towering questions of good and evil, Atlas Shrugged is Ayn Rand’s magnum opus: a philosophical revolution told in the form of an action thriller—nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read.

Who is John Galt? When he says that he will stop the motor of the world, is he a destroyer or a liberator? Why does he have to fight his battles not against his enemies but against those who need him most? Why does he fight his hardest battle against the woman he loves?

You will know the answer to these questions when you discover the reason behind the baffling events that play havoc with the lives of the amazing men and women in this book. You will discover why a productive genius becomes a worthless playboy…why a great steel industrialist is working for his own destruction…why a composer gives up his career on the night of his triumph…why a beautiful woman who runs a transcontinental railroad falls in love with the man she has sworn to kill.

Atlas Shrugged, a modern classic and Rand’s most extensive statement of Objectivism—her groundbreaking philosophy—offers the reader the spectacle of human greatness, depicted with all the poetry and power of one of the twentieth century’s leading artists.

Buy Atlas Shrugged HERE

By the way, for those who didn’t see the answer that popped up under the first post, it was 1984 by George Orwell. And that wraps up both efforts for this week. Sorry for the confusion, but happy we at least had one winner. I’ll be back in two weeks, if the bridge don’t go, an’ the creek don’t rise. Hope to see you then! 

 

#FirstLineFriday #GiveawayContest #FreeDownloads

/ Marcia / 19 Comments

As promised, #FirstLineFriday is back! We’ll have to see how it goes, but I’m aiming for every other week, and hope you guys will enjoy these little challenges that teach us so much about how to use opening lines effectively. This week, I’ve chosen one that I think will be fairly easy, but we’ll see if that turns out to be true or not.

As always, the rules are simple:

  1. Be one of the first five people to email me before the game ends at 4:00pm, with the title and author of the correct book. 
  2. Do not reply here on the blog. Email only: marciameara16@gmail.com
  3. Honor System applies. No Googling, please.
  4. Submissions end at 4:00 P.M. EST, or when I receive 5 correct answers, whichever comes first.
  5. Winners who live in the U.S. may request a free download of any one of my books for themselves, or for someone of their choice. OR, if they’ve read all of the offered books, they may request a free download of my next publication.
  6. Winners who live elsewhere may request a mobi or PDF file of the same books, since, sadly, Amazon won’t let me gift you from the site.

And now, the moment you’ve been waiting for! Put on your thinking caps, because here is today’s opening line:

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” 

Remember, email answers only,  please. Thanks! And now off I go to await your guesses. 

Motivation inscription of splash paint letters

Update for Past #FirstLineFriday Winners

/ Marcia / 7 Comments

Help me out here, Folks, if you would. I know that several of my past #FirstLineFriday winners asked for their prize to be a download of my next Emissary tale, and that’s now officially out, as some of you may have seen. If you were one of the winners who requested a copy (download in the US, mobi file to those elsewhere), please drop me an email ( marciameara16@gmail.com ) and remind me. I do have records for every post, but it would take me some time to go through them all to get your names. 

This way, as soon as you email me, I’ll send your gift along to you, with my sincere hope you enjoy it. THANKS! (And hopefully, #FirstLineFriday will be up and running next week, fingers crossed.)

That’s all for now, Everyone. As you were! 🙂

#FirstLineFriday #GiveawayContest #FreeDownloads

/ Marcia / 17 Comments

I apologize for the long delay since our last #FirstLineFriday post, and hope you’ll understand that it wasn’t for lack of interest in offering one. I’m just way, way behind on everything. But, having said that, here I am today with one I hope you’ll enjoy.

Not sure whether this one will be ridiculously easy or crazy hard, but I have no doubt the answer won’t be unfamiliar to you.  So here’s your chance to try your hand at #FirstLineFriday, our little quiz designed to help us appreciate some of the best opening lines in literary history. As always, from the classics of long ago to the latest best-sellers, no matter how old or how recent, everything is fair game on #FirstLineFriday. Let’s see how many of you recognize this one.  

Also as always, the rules are simple:

  1. Be one of the first five people to email me before the game ends at 4:00pm, with the title and author of the correct book. 
  2. Do not reply here on the blog. Email only: marciameara16@gmail.com
  3. Honor System applies. No Googling, please.
  4. Submissions end at 4:00 P.M. EST, or when I receive 5 correct answers, whichever comes first.
  5. Winners who live in the U.S. may request a free download of any one of my books for themselves, or for someone of their choice. OR, if they’ve read all of the offered books, they may request a free download of my next publication.
  6. Winners who live elsewhere may request a mobi or PDF file of the same books, since, sadly, Amazon won’t let me gift you from the site.

And now, the moment you’ve been waiting for! Put on your thinking caps, because here is today’s opening line:

“If you want to find Cherry-Tree Lane all you have to do is ask the Policeman at the cross-roads.” 

Remember, email answers only, please. Thanks! And now off I go to await your guesses. 

#FirstLineFriday Submissions Are Now Closed! Here’s the Answer to Our Quiz, and the Name of Our Winner!

/ Marcia / 29 Comments

Submissions for #FirstLineFriday are officially closed now. My thanks to all who emailed me with their guesses. Today, we have one winner: Harmony Kent.  Congratulations, Harmony, and I hope you enjoy your prize.

Harmony’s Author Page can be found HERE. 

And now, here’s the answer to today’s quiz:

“Nobody was really surprised when it happened, not really, not at the subconscious level where savage things grow.” is the opening line of the epistolary novel, Carrie, by American author Stephen King.

 It was King’s first published novel, released on April 5, 1974, with a first print run of 30,000 copies. Set primarily in the future year of 1979, it revolves around the eponymous Carrie White, an unpopular friendless misfit and bullied high school girl from an abusive religious household who uses her newly discovered telekinetic powers to exact revenge on those who torment her.

During the process, she causes one of the worst local disasters the town has ever had. King has commented that he finds the work to be “raw” and “with a surprising power to hurt and horrify.” Much of the book uses newspaper clippings, magazine articles, letters, and excerpts from books to tell how Carrie destroyed the fictional town of Chamberlain, Maine while exacting revenge on her sadistic classmates and her own mother, Margaret.

Several adaptations of Carrie have been released, including a 1976 feature film, a 1988 Broadway musical as well as a 2012 off-Broadway revival, a 1999 feature film sequel, a 2002 television film, a 2013 feature film, and a 2018 television special episode of Riverdale. The book is dedicated to King’s wife Tabitha King: “This is for Tabby, who got me into it – and then bailed me out of it.”

WHAT AMAZON SAYS:

Stephen King’s legendary debut, about a teenage outcast and the revenge she enacts on her classmates.

Carrie White may be picked on by her classmates, but she has a gift. She can move things with her mind. Doors lock. Candles fall. This is her power and her problem. Then, an act of kindness, as spontaneous as the vicious taunts of her classmates, offers Carrie a chance to be normal…until an unexpected cruelty turns her gift into a weapon of horror and destruction that no one will ever forget.

Buy Carrie HERE

I think this particular line proves once again that while great opening lines can pull us into a story, it’s the tale, itself, that sticks with us in the long run.

And that wraps it up for this week, folks. Hoped you enjoyed playing along! Thanks so much for taking part, and stay tuned for another #FirstLineFriday quiz in two  weeks. See you then!

 

 

 

#FirstLineFriday #GiveawayContest #FreeDownloads

/ Marcia / 20 Comments

It’s been a couple of weeks, I know, and I apologize. I’m still trying to catch up, but mostly treading water right now. Lots going on in my life these days, even considering I’ve been trapped here at home for more than three months now. BUT. I was determined to get a #FirstLineFriday post out for you guys today, and voila! Here it is!

As always, the rules are simple:

  1. Be one of the first five people to email me before the game ends at 4:00pm, with the title and author of the correct book. 
  2. Do not reply here on the blog. Email only: marciameara16@gmail.com
  3. Honor System applies. No Googling, please.
  4. Submissions end at 4:00 P.M. EST, or when I receive 5 correct answers, whichever comes first.
  5. Winners who live in the U.S. may request a free download of any one of my books for themselves, or for someone of their choice. OR, if they’ve read all of the offered books, they may request a free download of my next publication.
  6. Winners who live elsewhere may request a mobi or PDF file of the same books, since, sadly, Amazon won’t let me gift you from the site.

And now, the moment you’ve been waiting for! Put on your thinking caps, because here  is today’s opening line:

“Nobody was really surprised when it happened, not really, not at the subconscious level where savage things grow.”

Remember, email answers only, please. Thanks! And now off I go to await your guesses. 

#FirstLineFriday Submissions Are Now Closed! Here’s the Answer to Our Quiz

/ Marcia / 32 Comments

Submissions for #FirstLineFriday are officially closed now. My thanks to all who emailed me with their guesses. I knew this one would be difficult, but I had hoped one or two of you would get it. Alas, no one did this week, so without further ado, here’s the answer to today’s quiz:

“The stranger came early in February, one wintry day, through a biting wind and a driving snow, the last snowfall of the year, over the down, walking as it seemed from Bramblehurst railway station, and carrying a little black portmanteau in his thickly gloved hand” is the opening line from The Invisible Man, a science fiction novel written by H. G. Wells in 1897.

Originally serialized in Pearson’s Weekly in 1897, it was published as a novel the same year. The Invisible Man the title refers to is Griffin, a scientist who has devoted himself to research into optics and invents a way to change a body’s refractive index to that of air so that it neither absorbs nor reflects light and thus becomes invisible. He successfully carries out this procedure on himself, but fails in his attempt to reverse it. An enthusiast of random and irresponsible violence, Griffin has become an iconic character in horror fiction.

While its predecessors, The Time Machine and The Island of Doctor Moreau, were written using first-person narrators, Wells adopts a third-person objective point of view in The Invisible Man. The novel is considered very influential, and helped establish Wells as “the father of science fiction.”

 Wells said that his inspiration for the novella was “The Perils of Invisibility,” one of the Bab Ballads by W. S. Gilbert, which includes the couplet “Old Peter vanished like a shot/but then – his suit of clothes did not.”

The Invisible Man has a wealth of progeny. The novel was adapted into comic book form by Classics Illustrated in the 1950s, and by Marvel Comics in 1976. Many writers and filmmakers also created sequels to the story, something the novel’s ambiguous ending encourages. Over a dozen movies and television series are based on the novel, including a 1933 James Whale film and a 1984 series by the BBC. The novel has been adapted for radio numerous times, including a 2017 audio version starring John Hurt as the invisible man. The cultural pervasiveness of the invisible man has led to everything from his cameo in an episode of Tom and Jerry to the Queen song “The Invisible Man.”

EARLIEST FILM VERSION:
The Invisible Man is a 1933 American pre-Code science fiction horror film directed by James Whale. Based on H. G. Wells’ 1897 science fiction novel The Invisible Man and produced by Universal Pictures, the film stars Claude Rains, in his first American screen appearance, and Gloria Stuart. The film was written by R.C. Sherriff, along with Philip Wylie and Preston Sturges, though the latter duo’s work was considered unsatisfactory and they were taken off the project.

As an adaptation of a book, the film has been described as a “nearly perfect translation of the spirit of the tale” upon which it is based. The first film in Universal’s Invisible Man film series, it spawned a number of sequels and spin-offs which used ideas of an “invisible man” that were largely unrelated to Wells’ original story.

Rains portrayed the Invisible Man (Dr. Jack Griffin) mostly only as a disembodied voice. Rains is only shown clearly for a brief time at the end of the film, spending most of his on-screen time covered by bandages. In 2008, The Invisible Man was selected for the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”

PERSONAL NOTE: The image of the man covered by bandages (so you could see him) is why the phrase “thickly gloved hand” made me think of this movie as soon as I read the opening line. While I haven’t read the book, I’ve seen the early version of the movie (not when it was released in 1933, though. Even I’M not that old! 😀 ) and several adaptations over time.

 

Buy The Invisible Man HERE

And that takes care of our #FirstLineFriday for this week. This was a tough one, and I’m not surprised that we didn’t have a winner. However, I hope you enjoyed taking a look at that extraordinarily long and comma-filled opening line, and contrasting it with what most of us would do today.

Thanks so much for taking part, and I’ll be back with another #FirstLineFriday quiz in a week or two. (Still catching up, here.) See you then!