Here are the first lines from each chapter of a novel called Threnody that I wrote in 1994 and threw away. It’s actually much better this way.
- Harper Juno had nothing to write about.
- Harper met his painter friend Silas every Sunday for brunch at a place in San Mateo which specialized in wheat germ.
- Harper sat in his narrow office at Elazaro Productions and wrote the word “hybrid” in the Black Notebook.
- “So what do you have for me, Mr. Juno?” Feddema said, not looking up from the sheaf of papers in his hand.
- The next month was blissfully complicated for Harper.
- Lincoln Juno was thoroughly tired of strained carrots.
- Link’s birthday party raged on out in the living room.
- Harper Juno stood at the foot of the mountain of salt.
- The note on the refrigerator said: “Went to get some dinner. Be back soon.”
- It was now the tragic and violent story of Blazes Boylan, his wife Molly, and the evil Dr. Marcello.
- It was on the news the following Wednesday.
- Montgomery Keats hated all things shredded.
- The next morning, Threnody 111 hit bookstores nationwide.
- Harper showed Gordo and Birdie his father’s gun.
- Billy Rubin, liver specialist, had a craving for imported beer but there was none to be had.
- Harper opened one eye and saw himself, frozen and jittery, on a TV screen.
- Harper Juno now had blond hair, no beard, and small round spectacles that wrapped their loving arms around his ears.
- Billy Rubin was taped to a plush easy chair in their small, tidy, air-conditioned room.
- The next day Wallace Riley burst into Bejamin Mallory’s lush, book-lined office, frantically waving a handful of papers.
- The traffic loosened up and started moving as official announcements came over the radio that the bomb threat had been declared a hoax and that everyone should discontinue their panic.
- Lincoln Juno liked the smell of rain, though he was still too young to explain that to his mother.