"In the beginning...."


First impressions are important, and I want to make a good one with you. I have never contributed to or maintained a blog before, and I know that I have a lot to learn, so I hope you will be patient with me as I experiment and try new things with this.


When Lifted Up was published over 5 years ago, I heard back from many readers who directed their comments to the publisher or who sought me out from the local phone book. It pained me to not have a very effective means to respond to their many questions and requests to discuss parts of the book. I am very hopeful that through this blog I will have that opportunity to talk with more of you over the years.


So...

After much too much put-off and delay and concern on what in the world to write and include on my first-ever blog, I have finally decided how to start out my blog and personal and professional thoughts and journal--I have decided to start at the beginning. Genius! I know.

We writers are painfully aware that the first few words and sentences we pen are critical to every book's success. Done right and we may have a best-seller on our hands; done poorly, and it could be the most inspiring, influencial book ever written but it will go largely unread and unappreciated.

You may not judge a book by it's cover, but you certainly judge it by it's first paragraph. You may not even realize this, but for most of us the decision to purchase and/or read a book is the same:

1. The color of the book cover will catch our eye
2. We will read the back or jacket-cover synopsis
3. If that interests us, we will open to chapter one and begin reading

If those first lines don't catch our attention, if we are not "hooked" at this early point, we put the book down and move on. In this light, I offer here the opening lines from a few of my favorite books.

"I am the vampire Lestat. I'm immortal. More or less. The light of the sun, the sustained heat of an intense fire--these things might destroy me. But then again, they might not."

--Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat

"When Chili first came to Miami Beach twelve years ago they were having one of their off-and-on cold winters: thirty-four degrees the day he met Tommy Carlo for lunch at Vesuvio's on South Collins and had his leather jacket ripped off. One his wife had given him for Christmas a year ago, before they moved down here."

--Elmord Leonard, Get Shorty

"Sally."

A mutter.

"Wake up, Sally."

A louder mutter: leeme lone.

He shook her harder.

"Wake up. You got to wake up!"

--Stephen King, The Stand

"His name was Remo..."

--Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy, The Destroyer series (this was how every Chapter 2 began)

"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun."

--Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

"The boy's name was Santiago. Dusk was falling as the boy arrived with his herd at an abandoned church. The roof had fallen in long ago, and an enormous sycamore had grown on the spot where the sacristy had once stood."

--Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

"The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest. The flood had made, the wind was nearly calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to come to and wait for the turn of the tide."

--Joseph Conrad, The Heart of Darkness

"I settled back into the crushed ebony velor of the Cadillac limousine's spacious rear seat and checked my Omega. The ride to burbank studios, according to the public relations people handling my tour, would take at least fifty minutes in the late afternoon traffic."

--Og Mandino, The Christ Commission

"Hafid lingered before the bronze mirror and studied his reflected image in the polished metal.

'Only the eyes have retained their youth,' he murmured as he turned away and moved slowly across the spacious marble floor."

--Og Mandino, The Greatest Salesman in the World

And thus it ends, for now, this maiden voyage of my blog, So Let it be Written...

I hope to update this regularly (if not daily) as I share with any of you that might care what it is like trying to balance writing, working (believe it or not, writing does not pay the bills...), and being the best husband and dad I can be. I look forward to hearing and talking to you!