New Beginnings and First Sentences.

 by Thomas Kies

Since we’re about say farewell to 2025 and usher in a new year, I’ve been thinking about new beginnings.  I’m optimistic on the publishing front because I’d like to announce that I’ve signed with a new publishing house- Level Best Books.  I can’t be any happier to be part of their team!

New beginnings.

Anytime you start something new, it’s a time of excitement colored with a shade of apprehension.  It’s a little like reading, or writing, the first page of a new novel.  It’s an adventure and you really don’t know where it will take you. 

Legend has it that Aristotle said, “Well begun is half done.”

In the creative writing class that I teach, I often talk about how important your very first sentence should be if you’re trying to capture a reader’s attention or that of an elusive literary agent. My own agent has told me that she gets a hundred queries a day.  That first sentence has to grab her.

The sentence that captured my agent’s attention in Random Road my first novel was—"Last night Hieronymus Bosch met the rich and famous." 

Then I followed that sentence up with this:

"That was the lead sentence of the story I filed later that night with the Sheffield Post.  My editor spiked it, saying, “nobody who reads this newspaper knows who Heteronymous Bosch is.”

"Instead, the story began: “Six people were found brutally murdered, their nude bodies mutilated, in the exclusive gated Sheffield community of Connor’s Landing.” 

Here are a few famous first sentences from some truly great mysteries:

•  “There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife.”— The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman

•  “They threw me off the hay truck about noon.”— The Postman Always Rings Twice, James M. Cain

•  “When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist.”— The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith

•  “Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.”— The Trial, Franz Kafka

•  “Mrs. Bentley was not surprised when the sheriff arrived.”— A Fatal Grace, Louise Penny

•  “In my end is my beginning.”— The Daughter of Time, Josephine Tey

•  “The first time I saw Terry Lennox, he was lying on the floor of my living room with a blood-soaked towel pressed against his face.”— The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler

•  “I was seventeen years old, and I was pretty sure that no one would ever want me.”— Sharp Objects, Gillian Flynn

•  “I am convinced that at heart every writer is a murderer.”— The New York Trilogy, Paul Auster

•  “I’d seen little of Holmes lately.”— The Hound of the Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle

•  “I was sitting in my office when the door opened and a woman walked in.”— Farewell, My Lovely, Raymond Chandler

•  “It was seven minutes past midnight.”—
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon

So, in closing, have a wonderful New Year and I hope this is the beginning of a fabulous 2026,  Oh, and the picture at the top of this blog?  It has nothing to do with what you just read.  But I thought it was funny as hell and we all need to smile at the New Year.