TITLE: PLAYING FOR KEEPS
GENRE: Mystery with Domestic Suspense Elements
First 250 words:
“You ready for your big night?” I ask. This party is to celebrate Curt’s birthday, but I need it to secure my social standing in Arlington. It will never be as prestigious as Georgetown. Those five miles placing us on the Virginia side of the Potomac River make a difference.
Curt sits silent on the edge of our mahogany four poster king size bed.
The tinkling of the harp drifts up the marble staircase and into our bedroom, even through the closed double doors. My stilettos, which cost more money than my parents ever spent on a mortgage payment, plunge into the high pile thick beige carpet as I step carefully, concerned I will trip. Crossing the room, past the loveseat and gas fireplace, which is too warm to use in April, I go to Curt, and cup his face in my hands. His fresh shaved skin is soft. The sage-patchouli scent of his Ralph Lauren cologne lingers around him, reminding me of when we met at that bar in Dupont Circle. He was all cocky swagger. No ripped t-shirt and jeans tonight. He’s handsome in his tux.
I lean in and place my lips on his, then sit on the bed next to him. My dress cuts into my waist, and I worry that I’m wrinkling it.
“Do we really have to go downstairs?” Curt murmurs. His lips brush the top of my ear. His breath is warm on my cheek.
NEW - Nominate Your First Page for a Critique on the Blog
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bethshannonwriter
- Posts: 2
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charleswhite
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Re: NEW - Nominate Your First Page for a Critique on the Blog
Title: The Shrink
Genre: Literary Fiction
As I watch Leah Houston stroll across my Persian hand-knotted wool rug, I’m haunted by the feeling that my days as a shrink are numbered, part by health, part by ennui. My new patient’s body exudes a metallic smell, like freshly sheared copper, and there is a dark stain on the front of her creamy North Face jogging top. “What brings you in today?” I ask with practiced cool, though the area where I had my new pacemaker implanted two days ago itches and burns.
Leah wriggles in the leather armchair like an eel trying to throw a hook. “I’m seriously sleep-deprived, Dr. Noland, and when I do drift off, I’m plagued by horrible nightmares.”
Suspicion rises cobra-like from my memory basket of troublesome clients. “Any idea why?” I ask, leaning back in my Charles Eames lounger and glancing at her intake form—mother deceased, father receiving chemotherapy, insomnia, bulimia, recently returned from Medellin, Columbia. I wonder what she was doing there the previous two years, given my Columbian wife’s awe of Ingrid Betancourt, the liberal anti-corruption candidate who finished seventh in the 2022 presidential election.
“I was hoping you might be able to prescribe something.” Leah turns her head as she speaks, but I catch the concealed eyeroll, hear the suppressed sigh. As if it’s my job to dispense medication at her command.
For me, pills are a last resort. “Let’s talk a bit first. Quick fixes are not what I’m about.”
Genre: Literary Fiction
As I watch Leah Houston stroll across my Persian hand-knotted wool rug, I’m haunted by the feeling that my days as a shrink are numbered, part by health, part by ennui. My new patient’s body exudes a metallic smell, like freshly sheared copper, and there is a dark stain on the front of her creamy North Face jogging top. “What brings you in today?” I ask with practiced cool, though the area where I had my new pacemaker implanted two days ago itches and burns.
Leah wriggles in the leather armchair like an eel trying to throw a hook. “I’m seriously sleep-deprived, Dr. Noland, and when I do drift off, I’m plagued by horrible nightmares.”
Suspicion rises cobra-like from my memory basket of troublesome clients. “Any idea why?” I ask, leaning back in my Charles Eames lounger and glancing at her intake form—mother deceased, father receiving chemotherapy, insomnia, bulimia, recently returned from Medellin, Columbia. I wonder what she was doing there the previous two years, given my Columbian wife’s awe of Ingrid Betancourt, the liberal anti-corruption candidate who finished seventh in the 2022 presidential election.
“I was hoping you might be able to prescribe something.” Leah turns her head as she speaks, but I catch the concealed eyeroll, hear the suppressed sigh. As if it’s my job to dispense medication at her command.
For me, pills are a last resort. “Let’s talk a bit first. Quick fixes are not what I’m about.”
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VickeyThomson
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Re: NEW - Nominate Your First Page for a Critique on the Blog
Title: He Who Does Not Exist
Genre: Fantasy
He walks in from the top doors of a lecture hall down to the podium. Everyone is turning, staring, they can’t believe it’s him. He’s wearing a dark pinstriped suit. He makes his way to the bottom of the stairs, turns, and faces the class.
“So you are my class of honor students, honor demons as it were. I am the devil. Boo!
“I know you were expecting something different; but, here is the big thing. We need to move in the shadows. We can’t be flashy. We can’t let everyone know it’s us. Sometimes that works in our favor, but, usually, it doesn’t. Usually, you need to work quietly in the background and have no one know you are or were there.
“So let me explain, how this class is going to work because you are the best of the best. You are the ones who are going to be in charge of the new demons, who harvest souls. It will be your job to train the newly promoted demons on how to get souls. As in, they will be helping people – go to hell! Well, to be honest, the people were probably already going to go to hell. Your trainees just make it so it’s a little more likely.
“So how this class is going to work is I will have you start describing the infamous deadly sins. I figured that was as good a place to start as any,” said the devil.
With that he moves into the thoughts of one of the students, Penny, who is sitting there quietly taking notes, very studiously.
He gets into her thoughts and says, “Hi, yes I am quite capable of being in your thoughts and as you will soon learn you can do it too.”
“Now, here is the best part, no one knows when we’re here. When you are here, inside someone’s mind, not only will you be able to read the mortal’s thoughts, you can kind of influence them. I’ve chosen you, Penny, because you were having quite a few thoughts while taking these notes and you seem very serious so I figured it was only fair for me to make a personal appearance.”
The devil now addresses the class
Genre: Fantasy
He walks in from the top doors of a lecture hall down to the podium. Everyone is turning, staring, they can’t believe it’s him. He’s wearing a dark pinstriped suit. He makes his way to the bottom of the stairs, turns, and faces the class.
“So you are my class of honor students, honor demons as it were. I am the devil. Boo!
“I know you were expecting something different; but, here is the big thing. We need to move in the shadows. We can’t be flashy. We can’t let everyone know it’s us. Sometimes that works in our favor, but, usually, it doesn’t. Usually, you need to work quietly in the background and have no one know you are or were there.
“So let me explain, how this class is going to work because you are the best of the best. You are the ones who are going to be in charge of the new demons, who harvest souls. It will be your job to train the newly promoted demons on how to get souls. As in, they will be helping people – go to hell! Well, to be honest, the people were probably already going to go to hell. Your trainees just make it so it’s a little more likely.
“So how this class is going to work is I will have you start describing the infamous deadly sins. I figured that was as good a place to start as any,” said the devil.
With that he moves into the thoughts of one of the students, Penny, who is sitting there quietly taking notes, very studiously.
He gets into her thoughts and says, “Hi, yes I am quite capable of being in your thoughts and as you will soon learn you can do it too.”
“Now, here is the best part, no one knows when we’re here. When you are here, inside someone’s mind, not only will you be able to read the mortal’s thoughts, you can kind of influence them. I’ve chosen you, Penny, because you were having quite a few thoughts while taking these notes and you seem very serious so I figured it was only fair for me to make a personal appearance.”
The devil now addresses the class
Re: NEW - Nominate Your First Page for a Critique on the Blog
title: THE WIDOW DETECTIVE
genre: mystery/police procedural
Sergeant Ruta Petrauskas sat down to pull on her boots, not the fashionable high-heeled boots she used to wear when she was thirty, but warm, non-skid, flat-soled footwear appropriate for snow and ice and a lady of fifty-five. She had stowed the boots under her desk in the morning and walked around in her comfortable slippers. The other day, she overheard two young officers saying she was a “sweet old lady.” Needing to contest that description, she poked her head out of the office and replied, “I’m not sweet.” Both officers were properly embarrassed and slouched off.
She pressed her fingers on the desk as if it could be compelled to give an answer. Just now the officer said a young man’s body had been found in the parking garage at the state university. No blood, so his body had been dumped there from someplace else. What was the world coming to? This was her second death of the month, and it wasn’t even the full moon. Well, she knew that moon stuff was a myth. Perhaps this was a bar fight that was taken to an extreme. Perhaps a lovers’ quarrel or a collection of a debt, revenge for an insult, and most likely accompanied by overindulgence in alcohol or drugs. The expressions of evil were myriad but the motives were trivial, cliched, and predictable. She sat up tall and straightened her shoulders.
If the young man’s body had been moved from someplace else, it was a more difficult puzzle. She would solve it though. Someone--a mother, a father, a spouse--would want this murder to be solved. She looked around the office.
genre: mystery/police procedural
Sergeant Ruta Petrauskas sat down to pull on her boots, not the fashionable high-heeled boots she used to wear when she was thirty, but warm, non-skid, flat-soled footwear appropriate for snow and ice and a lady of fifty-five. She had stowed the boots under her desk in the morning and walked around in her comfortable slippers. The other day, she overheard two young officers saying she was a “sweet old lady.” Needing to contest that description, she poked her head out of the office and replied, “I’m not sweet.” Both officers were properly embarrassed and slouched off.
She pressed her fingers on the desk as if it could be compelled to give an answer. Just now the officer said a young man’s body had been found in the parking garage at the state university. No blood, so his body had been dumped there from someplace else. What was the world coming to? This was her second death of the month, and it wasn’t even the full moon. Well, she knew that moon stuff was a myth. Perhaps this was a bar fight that was taken to an extreme. Perhaps a lovers’ quarrel or a collection of a debt, revenge for an insult, and most likely accompanied by overindulgence in alcohol or drugs. The expressions of evil were myriad but the motives were trivial, cliched, and predictable. She sat up tall and straightened her shoulders.
If the young man’s body had been moved from someplace else, it was a more difficult puzzle. She would solve it though. Someone--a mother, a father, a spouse--would want this murder to be solved. She looked around the office.
Re: NEW - Nominate Your First Page for a Critique on the Blog
(This is the prologue to my semi-autobiographical novel, "The Late Edition")
The steady click of the winch echoed across the cemetery, a metronome marking my father's final descent. I stood alone by the grave in 1992, the sound amplifying the chasm between myself and my family. My mother and sister huddled several feet away, their distance a testament to the years I'd spent in self-imposed exile, hiding from a truth I couldn't face.
Des Moines in the '50s and '60s was a pressure cooker of conformity, leaving no room for the differences that set me apart. As a boy, I had sensed an otherness within myself, a quality that filled me with dread in the presence of my father. That fear had calcified over time, becoming a millstone I carried into adulthood, coloring every relationship and decision.
Now, as the casket disappeared into the earth, I searched myself for the grief a son should feel. Instead, I found only a vast emptiness, a void where sentiment should have resided. Yet beneath that hollowness stirred something unexpected – a sense of conclusion tinged with the faintest glimmer of liberation.
The thud of dirt hitting the casket lid seemed to punctuate the end of a chapter. As the gravediggers continued their work, I stood motionless, caught between the weight of the past and the uncertain promise of a future no longer overshadowed by my father's presence.
The steady click of the winch echoed across the cemetery, a metronome marking my father's final descent. I stood alone by the grave in 1992, the sound amplifying the chasm between myself and my family. My mother and sister huddled several feet away, their distance a testament to the years I'd spent in self-imposed exile, hiding from a truth I couldn't face.
Des Moines in the '50s and '60s was a pressure cooker of conformity, leaving no room for the differences that set me apart. As a boy, I had sensed an otherness within myself, a quality that filled me with dread in the presence of my father. That fear had calcified over time, becoming a millstone I carried into adulthood, coloring every relationship and decision.
Now, as the casket disappeared into the earth, I searched myself for the grief a son should feel. Instead, I found only a vast emptiness, a void where sentiment should have resided. Yet beneath that hollowness stirred something unexpected – a sense of conclusion tinged with the faintest glimmer of liberation.
The thud of dirt hitting the casket lid seemed to punctuate the end of a chapter. As the gravediggers continued their work, I stood motionless, caught between the weight of the past and the uncertain promise of a future no longer overshadowed by my father's presence.
Re: NEW - Nominate Your First Page for a Critique on the Blog
Title: The Celestial Ashes
genre: Sci-fi Fantasy space opera
Zayn ibn Idris al-Zaryan opened his eyes after what felt to him like an eternity.
His body lay on a soft cot inside a large, shadowy tent. The air was warm and dry, faintly scented with spices. Simple household items, typical of a nomadic dwelling from his homeworld, surrounded him. But this wasn’t Andar; this was Qamaruun, a desert moon with rust-colored skies, where a scattered tribe of Star Nomads had taken him in.
Layered solar-heated carpets inscribed with curling Zaryan calligraphy covered the floor. Beneath them, an ion-mesh mat generated steady electric currents that repelled scorpionic life forms skittering under the sands. Soft thermal-reactive quilts and cushions, dyed in desert ochre and star violet, were digitally embroidered with scenes from ancient Zaryan myths: phoenixes, constellations, and floating cities.
Along the tent walls, light-drape panels projected shifting Sadu patterns that changed with the mood, prayer times, or the presence of guests. Wall scrolls displayed digital weavings of poetry and holographic quotes from the Book of Dawns. In one corner, old camel bags and saddle packs were stacked neatly, stitched with reverence to Earth and a vanished age.
To his left stood a foldable camelback leather lounger, its frame compact and precise. A small tray beside it held a polished vacuum-glass flask wrapped in a camel-hair cover, nestled in a carved animal-bone holder. Above, a portable coffee brazier with an optical flame control dial, still glowing from recent use, held a gravity-suspended cezve. Tiny spoons carved from pale bone sat beside magnetic spice jars filled with cardamom, sugar, and cloves.
Above him, the synth-wool canopy of the tent rustled in the wind, its black threads glimmering like stardust.
The scorching sunrise of Qamaruun crept across the tent wall, casting pale golden light. Grains of sand tapped softly against the magnetic pegs that held the tent in place. From the brazier, the faint scent of roasted spices filled the air—cardamom, ashroot, and something that reminded him of home.
He sat up slowly, his body wrapped in a silk quilt stitched with dawnbirds. The floor beneath him responded to his movement, warming gently—a subtle welcome. His throat felt like parchment. He reached for a water jug and drank straight from it, ignoring formalities. The cool liquid flooded his chest. He downed half the jug before lowering it, breathless but satisfied.
A slight pain bloomed the moment he stood, radiating from his neck and shoulder. His hand reached instinctively toward the source, finding the sliced, seared edges of a sword strike at the left shoulder of his obsidian-black robe. The fabric, Nightweave—a masterwork of Zaryan elegance, woven from rare silk that shimmered faintly like silver filigree in motion—was torn, but it had held enough to save his life. Beneath it, the bandages felt tight against the scar still healing, trailing down his collarbone.
genre: Sci-fi Fantasy space opera
Zayn ibn Idris al-Zaryan opened his eyes after what felt to him like an eternity.
His body lay on a soft cot inside a large, shadowy tent. The air was warm and dry, faintly scented with spices. Simple household items, typical of a nomadic dwelling from his homeworld, surrounded him. But this wasn’t Andar; this was Qamaruun, a desert moon with rust-colored skies, where a scattered tribe of Star Nomads had taken him in.
Layered solar-heated carpets inscribed with curling Zaryan calligraphy covered the floor. Beneath them, an ion-mesh mat generated steady electric currents that repelled scorpionic life forms skittering under the sands. Soft thermal-reactive quilts and cushions, dyed in desert ochre and star violet, were digitally embroidered with scenes from ancient Zaryan myths: phoenixes, constellations, and floating cities.
Along the tent walls, light-drape panels projected shifting Sadu patterns that changed with the mood, prayer times, or the presence of guests. Wall scrolls displayed digital weavings of poetry and holographic quotes from the Book of Dawns. In one corner, old camel bags and saddle packs were stacked neatly, stitched with reverence to Earth and a vanished age.
To his left stood a foldable camelback leather lounger, its frame compact and precise. A small tray beside it held a polished vacuum-glass flask wrapped in a camel-hair cover, nestled in a carved animal-bone holder. Above, a portable coffee brazier with an optical flame control dial, still glowing from recent use, held a gravity-suspended cezve. Tiny spoons carved from pale bone sat beside magnetic spice jars filled with cardamom, sugar, and cloves.
Above him, the synth-wool canopy of the tent rustled in the wind, its black threads glimmering like stardust.
The scorching sunrise of Qamaruun crept across the tent wall, casting pale golden light. Grains of sand tapped softly against the magnetic pegs that held the tent in place. From the brazier, the faint scent of roasted spices filled the air—cardamom, ashroot, and something that reminded him of home.
He sat up slowly, his body wrapped in a silk quilt stitched with dawnbirds. The floor beneath him responded to his movement, warming gently—a subtle welcome. His throat felt like parchment. He reached for a water jug and drank straight from it, ignoring formalities. The cool liquid flooded his chest. He downed half the jug before lowering it, breathless but satisfied.
A slight pain bloomed the moment he stood, radiating from his neck and shoulder. His hand reached instinctively toward the source, finding the sliced, seared edges of a sword strike at the left shoulder of his obsidian-black robe. The fabric, Nightweave—a masterwork of Zaryan elegance, woven from rare silk that shimmered faintly like silver filigree in motion—was torn, but it had held enough to save his life. Beneath it, the bandages felt tight against the scar still healing, trailing down his collarbone.
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