With a blood stained hand, he pulled his bruised and broken body forward, towards the source of the gunfire. He didn’t know who had fired the shots, but they certainly had to better than what he was crawling from.
Reaching out, his left hand slipped on what had to be oil. A warm, wet feeling caressed his cheek and a metallic odor nestled into his nostrils. He opened his eyes to find cold eyes staring back, the life already drained away.
He realized what he had slipped on.
Blood!
Bile rose in his throat and he choked it back. He had to press on. His life depended on it. With his right hand pressed to his stomach, he got to his knees and crawled. First an inch. Then another as he felt his life seep out between his fingers.
It had started as a drip, his hand trying desperately to ply pressure. But the dam could only hold back so much. Now all that he was was smeared across alcohol soaked pavement.
His clothes were in ruins. A shame. He loved the shirt. The concrete greeted him as he fell a second time.
Breath came in short, ragged bursts. Headlights from an unseen car blinded him, and he removed his hand from his gut to shield his eyes. He rolled onto his back, the chill biting at flesh. It wasn’t the cool concrete. No. He knew what it was. The blood, how his breath slowed, the abyss clawing at the edges of his eyes. It could only mean one thing.
Death.
I’m dying! He ran his hand through his short, brown hair, a reflex he had done thousands of times before.
I just…I just wanted to help…
His eyes. So heavy now. For weeks, exhaustion had been there. This was different. He knew that there would be now waking now. This was it.
As he prepared for the end, one thought rattled around over and over.
How the hell did it come to this?
For awhile now, I've felt like there was something missing from the beginning of Project Zero: BulletProof (besides maybe a more succint and catchy title, but I digress), something to pull the reader in. That thing that makes you go, HOLY SHIT!!!! What did I just read? I have to read more!
Or, as Dwight K. Shrute would put it, "Put the most attractive beets on top, the ones that make you pull the car over and go "wow, I need this beet right now" - Those are the money beets."
The opening is the money beet.
Normally, I don't preview writing until it's at a certain point, but I felt so strongly about this that I decided to post the new opening right away. Let me know what you think. If this were the opening to a book you picked up on the shelf, would you keep reading?
You can preview the rest of the book here to compare this new opening to the original. Should I keep the new stuff? Stick with what I had?
Showing posts with label Noble. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Noble. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Monday, October 4, 2010
A Missed Opportunity?
As I've discussed earlier on in the life of my blog, I'm a writer. Not yet an author because apparently there is a distinction between the two, depending on whether one has been published. Writer = unpublished, author = published.
I bring this up because I wrote one story that I was sure would sell, only now I'm equally certain that it won't. You see, the story took a classic, popular text (Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, to be precise) and inserted the ever-popular undead into the story.
Now, I can hear the groans already (and not the ones coming from the previously mentioned zombies) but, while similar in description to Pride and Prejudice and Zombie, it is very different in form (to my understanding, anyway). I confess I've nver ready PPZ and only heard of it after I completed my ownstory and was describing it to a friend.
Nor is it the same as Romeo and Juliet and Zombies, which replaces, if I'm correct, Romeo with a zombified version of the Veronan lad. No, my story wasn't like that (well, it does have zombies). Instead of having the plucky couple fight off hordes of the flesh-eating monsters, it places side characters at the forefront of the action and uses Shakespeare's play as a backdrop.
The idea, which I describe as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead meets Shaun of the Dead, came about when I was attempting to teach R&J to freshman. After the character of Mercutio bites it in the third act, the hapless student who read for the character dropped the book and said something like, "Thank God, now I don't have to read anymore." My reply was along the lines of, "Yeah, unless he (Mercutio) comes back to life..." And then the lightbulb switched on.
However, I was only a student teacher at the time and there was no way I was going to be able to write a story, short or otherwise, during that time. But I kept it on the backburner, took some notes on ideas for the story (especially when reading it with students) and left it to simmer until the school year was over.
By the time school let out, the story had already gone through a number of changes (of which I'll discuss at length another time) in my head and I was ready to write). I typed, edited, and fact-checked the story, which took almost six months from start to finish.
I explain this in such length because I thought I had something truly special. That is, until a week and a half ago, when I was wandering around a Barnes & Noble, and happened upon a table of books with similar premises (taking a classic story and mixing it with classic monsters like zombies, vampires, sea monsters, etc.). While they're still not exactly the same, their very presence helps saturate the market and I feel the opportunity to get my story published may have closed.
I bring this up because I wrote one story that I was sure would sell, only now I'm equally certain that it won't. You see, the story took a classic, popular text (Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, to be precise) and inserted the ever-popular undead into the story.
Now, I can hear the groans already (and not the ones coming from the previously mentioned zombies) but, while similar in description to Pride and Prejudice and Zombie, it is very different in form (to my understanding, anyway). I confess I've nver ready PPZ and only heard of it after I completed my ownstory and was describing it to a friend.
Nor is it the same as Romeo and Juliet and Zombies, which replaces, if I'm correct, Romeo with a zombified version of the Veronan lad. No, my story wasn't like that (well, it does have zombies). Instead of having the plucky couple fight off hordes of the flesh-eating monsters, it places side characters at the forefront of the action and uses Shakespeare's play as a backdrop.
The idea, which I describe as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead meets Shaun of the Dead, came about when I was attempting to teach R&J to freshman. After the character of Mercutio bites it in the third act, the hapless student who read for the character dropped the book and said something like, "Thank God, now I don't have to read anymore." My reply was along the lines of, "Yeah, unless he (Mercutio) comes back to life..." And then the lightbulb switched on.
However, I was only a student teacher at the time and there was no way I was going to be able to write a story, short or otherwise, during that time. But I kept it on the backburner, took some notes on ideas for the story (especially when reading it with students) and left it to simmer until the school year was over.
By the time school let out, the story had already gone through a number of changes (of which I'll discuss at length another time) in my head and I was ready to write). I typed, edited, and fact-checked the story, which took almost six months from start to finish.
I explain this in such length because I thought I had something truly special. That is, until a week and a half ago, when I was wandering around a Barnes & Noble, and happened upon a table of books with similar premises (taking a classic story and mixing it with classic monsters like zombies, vampires, sea monsters, etc.). While they're still not exactly the same, their very presence helps saturate the market and I feel the opportunity to get my story published may have closed.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)