Archives
Categories:
- Business announcements
- Best First Line Contest
- Books/Reading
- Contests
- Editing
- New Releases/Excerpts
- Life
- Miscellaneous
- Round Robin
- TV/Movies
- Writing
Recent Comments
- Crystal Dee (Tales of a Sequel Whore )
- Leah Braemel (Tales of a Sequel Whore )
- Devon Ellington (Do you NaNo?)
- Beth Williamson (Devils on Horseback Rides in Again!)
- Jess Dee (The things we shouldn’t love…but we do…)
- Rhian Cahill (Devils on Horseback Rides in Again!)
- Chris Redding (The story behind the story.)
- Karin (Dedications)
- Beth Williamson (Dedications)
- Crystal Dee (Dedications)
Best First Line Contest is Now Open!
This contest is not open to Samhain authors
As stated below, you may only enter once. Anyone entering more than once—including those who use different names—have had and will have their entries deleted.
We have had to delete entries that have contained more than one line.
MAKE SURE YOU READ THE RULES BEFORE POSTING!
You’ll find the description reposted below. The most important thing here is to post your first line—and only your first line. Please do not post as “anonymous” but use some type of name/nickname isntead, and make sure to leave a valid email address so we can contact you if you are one of the final winners.
If you don’t post correctly (in other words, post more than one line—and one line is where the punctuation ends the first sentence. If you have a question mark, a period and more, you’re probably posting more than one line, though a line of speech with a dialogue tag is acceptable. One line only) your line will be deleted. Unfortunately, we won’t be able to email you to let you know because of time constraints in our schedule.
Last, be sure to check back next Monday to see if you were chosen to move forward and post your next line!****
Thanks to inspiration from the Romance Divas and author Karin Tabke, Samhain Publishing is going to be holding a Best First Line contest on our blog (http://www.samhainpublishing.com/blog).
Starting Monday, June 4th at 8am Eastern, authors are invited to leave the first line of a previously unpublished work (of 12,000 words or more) in the comments of the Best First Line blog post. The contest is open to published and unpublished authors not currently contracted with Samhain Publishing.
On Friday, June 8th at noon Eastern, we will close the comments and no more entrants will be admitted into the contest. Only those who enter by posting on our first line contest blog post between 8:00 a.m. EST, June 4th 2007 and 12:00 Noon EST, June 8th will be eligible to participate in the first line contest.
Samhain editors will choose a group of entrants for the next round and the “winning” first lines will be posted on Monday, June 11th. Winners of the first round will have until early noon Eastern on Friday to post their first and second lines (both must be posted together) in the comments of that blog post—we will not email those who move on to the next round, you must check back at the blog. The contest will run in a subsequent manner(with previous lines plus the new line, being posted), with editors paring down the entries and asking for the next line in the entry, for a total of 5 lines. The contest will end on July 6th and a minimum of three entrants will be invited to submit their manuscript (first three chapters and complete synopsis, minimum) to Samhain Publishing for consideration for publication on our 2008 schedule.
A few rules:
1) One line only (a dialogue tag is allowed, but make sure you’re punctuating things correctly. We’re editors. We’ll know if you cheat and use an action tag making it a second line, instead of one whole line)
2) If you move on to the second round, you cannot change that first line in any way. Each line posted must remain as written as you move through the rounds.
3) If we close the comments before you’ve had a chance to post your next line, we’re very sorry, but you will be eliminated from the competition. We must make this fair for everyone and still make it workable for us, and the only way to do that is to post a deadline.
4) This contest is for new material only. No previously published material
5) Samhain is a general publisher, you may enter material of any genre!
6) One entry per person, please!
This is an opportunity for everyone who’s been waiting for submissions to open. Submissions are due to remain closed until later in the summer, so we’re giving at least three people the chance to get their work in front of a Samhain editor before submissions re-open. If interest in the contest is high, we will give this opportunity to five authors.
Even dead men need good music.
It was on a deceptively average Wednesday morning that Deacon Styles found himself in a situation he was sure no etiquette book had ever addressed.
He stumbled through the palace, blood oozing from his wounds onto the marble floor beneath his feet.
“Dammit Cherry, slow down,” she yelled.
Aneirin saved my life the day I met him, and saved it twice again before he finally killed me.
“Are you in love with someone from another planet and having problems because of differences in customs, diet, or anatomy?
The baseball flew over Rynne Slater’s head as she tried to jump up and catch it inside the mitt.
Charlotte’s life was as grey and bleak as the worn, grimy carpet that covered the Free Clinic’s waiting room floor.
Simon Ely, the fourth baron Kesterby, woke to find himself dead.
“How the hell am I gonna explain a dead body in the middle of my lawn?”
“You’re saying the only guy you’ve ever had sex with was that creep you were engaged to?”
Kelly Reed clung to the rain-slicked wrought iron bars of the balcony but couldn’t quite get a hold, because the leather gloves on her hands didn’t allow for much of a grip but leaving behind fingerprints wasn’t an option.
Blood spattered the fair cheeks and wheat-colored braids of Chieftain Alrik Gunn’s new bride, but Dagny remained the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
Bubble bath made terrible camouflage.
Alexa Ranger knew when she was three years old that one day she’d meet a dragon.
“You are more trouble than your sword is worth,” raged William FitzOsbern, the Earl of Chepstow.
Smoke snaked on languid currents around the sweat-glistening bodies of his clan—more than the people of his blood, they were now his responsibility.
I define the turning point in my life as the moment I decided to rush a sorority.
Edmund Beaumont, rain dripping from his broad brimmed hat onto the cape of his greatcoat, cursed the weather, then cursed the task that took him down to the wharfs.
“I would then lie on the blanket, pull up my dress to show him I’m not wearing any panties, and ask him if he’d like anything to eat.”
Sebastian knew he was in hell the moment he stepped through the door—and it was exactly where he wanted to be.
“You’ve got to admit, Kai, throwing you a surprise party to the tune of twenty-eight thousand dollars and then sending you the bill takes balls.”
“Write her a letter,” I repeated.
“That is not a Hans Holbein painting.”
“I won’t leave my home.”
Twelve inches separated Dr. Brad Berkowitz from heaven.
“When is she flying in on her broom?”
It was blackmail, pure and simple.
When the nightclub owner grabbed my butt for the fifth time, I turned him into a toad and walked out of the smoky, dingy club.
Everyone in heaven is good looking.
Grace Draven
The greatest king of Scotland, dead for nearly a thousand years, would be reborn through a woman’s dreams.
It had been quite a while since my butt had been soaked in blood.
“We the jury, find the defendant guilty.”
The blade pressed so tight against her skin, Nia feared swallowing the lump in her throat.
Are you sure you’re up to this?
“We’re on in two, Alex.”
“The dog shoplifts.”
“Have you ever had sex in an elevator?”
“Look, Rick, I just got her to start trusting me and pretty soon we’ll have the info we need, okay?”
“Amy, grab your tranq kit, we’ve got a problem.”
The pungent aroma of stale sweat and urine assaulted Karla Blue Corn as she entered the lobby.
Warm, wet lips placed open mouth kisses along her bare back.
“Don’t.”
Supermodel Krista Maxwell’s memorial service was a media circus.
Into the sweltering, blood-tinged air of the birthing room Death moved with remorseless intent.
Forget how fast he can fly or whether he’s from the southern or northern region of Avian or even the size of his cock.
Eyes closed, Lorenzo lay enjoying the feel of the woman he secretly loved wrapped in his arms.
Stalking someone was far easier said than done.
Flyn died like any ordinary man.
When the media called Michael Brannon the big bad wolf of the courtroom, they had no idea just how close to the truth they were.
“He must remain completely still.”
Arriving in the village of Coven’s Cove, Brea Kincade failed to notice the elderly woman dressed in royal blue, chin to ankles, loitering in front of the shop window next to the realtor’s office.
The day I died was like any other ordinary day.
It was the kind of day that poets never write about.
Sometime in the next ten hours, Riley thought, they’d make land, or Mandalay would sink to the bottom.
They were going to take her away.
Massaging the man of steel is murder, and I don’t mean just on the elbows.
Donnice Jordan sat on the most uncomfortable bench in the world squeezed between a strange woman, and at least ten other people.
“Your pleasure, my passion, Kitten.”
“Kiss me.”
I wouldn’t have seen the flyer if the mailbox hadn’t been on fire.
She wore Donna Karan originals and her own signature blend perfume, owned a villa in Puerto Vallarta and plotted the down fall of Joseph Gallant.
Judith sat watching the incoming tide lap over her red toenails and wet the brilliant white lace of her wedding gown.
“I’ll take a box of yellow, blue, pink and purple condoms, please.”
Jill Morrison, concentrating on the code on her computer screen, sensed someone had entered her office, but whoever it was should just go away.
Stalked by beautiful women would be most men’s fantasy dream, but it was Finn MacIntyre’s most terrifying nightmare and was only too real.
“If you’re just tuning in, we’re talking with seductive, sassy, Danna Dempsey, the host of S.E.X.Y.‘s hottest new adult talk show, Got Sex.”
Except for being dead, he looked like every other tall, dark and drunk guy in the bar.
Arie De Voss accepted the necessity of lies, because lies eased his way onto every stage.
“Hurry up and toss the bastard out!”
“My father wants me to get married and have babies, and I want you for that job.”
Jack Lion only agreed to fly half way across for one reason: Maggie Walker.
“This man…this man,” the high pitched voice squealed in shrill outrage, “is pleasuring five women at once!”
“She cannot be crowned; her wings are bound.”
Claw marks separated the shirt into three pieces.
Abriel crept toward the illuminated partition, careful to avoid casting a shadow on the papyrus screen.
Captain Jeren Vassal tugged on the sleeve of his dress uniform jacket, the blue-grey wool catching on his undershirt, his stomach in knots over his awaited private audience with the king.
“I’m sorry my nephew tried to beat you to death with a baguette.”
Stumbling down the sidewalk, Remy Hargitay left a meandering wake of Aqua Velva and Boones Berry Farm wine—one would have known that his man lacked taste on all fronts.
Della sat up in her bed with remnants of the same dream, the same dead woman, drenching her psyche as much as the sweat on her face.
Do you think I won’t find you?
When I was five I wanted to be a ballerina.
In dreams, he pushed her away.
“The next time I take my clothes off, Clayton Walter, you better damn well mean business.”
It was just more proof that the universe continually had too much fun at her expense.
Fifty cents secured the last private room at the 46th Street hotel, but the musty sheets and the brazen frolic of mice under the bed left Sutton thinking he should have saved the change and slept on the sidewalk.
A wizard, the ancients tell us, come into their power between the ages of six and twelve.
“Range 200 meters, wind SSW 2kph. Target is wearing a black turban.
Science probably used thousands of words to describe the beauty and horror of colossal star pulsing in its final moments before going supernovae, but as a linguist, a preservationist, Esmé Domair could think of none.
I watched Muffie take the burgers off the grill one by one and devour them with doggie glee before anyone else grew wise to her pilfering ways.
There’s nothing in the world like being in love.
It was nearing midnight when the phone rang again, waking sweat-drenched Riley from a recurring nightmare of her death.
One more day, that’s all I have left to fulfill the stipulations of Dad’s will.
The clouds perforated the moonlit sky in a danse macabe.
Little did her brother know he was about five minutes away from a black eye.
Megan Smith had just gotten down from her stair climber and was checking out her butt in the big mahogany mirror behind her desk when someone came knocking at the door of her shop, Through the Looking Glass.
“Do all your patients try to kill you?”
“Here, have some Sex.”
(BTW – the capitalized “Sex” is not a typo)
Sweeting, that was rich as forty feet up a bull’s arse.
Dead women didn’t go around smiling at lads—or did they?
Few knew the forbidden tales.
He had barely touched her when it triggered.
On the last day of her life, Bridget Collins stumbled through her front door with her arms full of groceries, tripped over the pile of books she’d left in the hallway, managed to stagger five heart lurching paces then toppled onto her couch without breaking anything except her dignity.
As the hearse slowed into Karrakatta Cemetry, her stomach rumbled.
‘Dance naked for me, Rebel!’ whispered Alec.
‘Would you like to taste an apple?’ asked Eve, holding out the plate of sample apple quarters.
Catrina fingered the soft silk fabric of her mockingly stark white ball gown.
“Good evening, madam,” he said, as he approached with the drink tray, and shot her.
The night shift nurse walked into the room just as Carter was pulling on a pair of jeans.
Blood dripped from his sword onto his sandals, staining his naked toes and mingling with the spattered Celtic mud.
He opened the door and she fell in a heap at his feet.
Dr. Penelope Sutcliffe’s blue scrubs clashed with her purple satin underwear and had creased rather awfully after a full day in The Royal Sydney’s operating suites, but a girl couldn’t have everything.
The long syringe glinted ominously in the harsh light of the sterile room, yellow liquid spurting briefly before subsiding.
It’s hard to have a life when you’re the Angel of Death.
Getting your throat gnawed open might seem a reasonable alternative to a slow death by cancer (especially when the life insurance companies can’t prove it was suicide), but I doubt it’s pleasant.
White capped waves crashed against the shingle not far from where Patrick MacLachlan stood alone on the battlements of Castle Lachlan.
Kimberly stretched as the patches of moonlight streaming in from the barred window above her uncomfortable bed covered her like a patchwork quilt.
The message on her office e-mail popped up in bold, red font: DON’T LOOK NOW!
Just when Christine Abernathy thought life couldn’t get any worse, her umbrella collapsed.
One night in Paris was enough for me.
“Let’s samba!”
The problem with being a vampire hunter, Jenna mused, was how to describe your occupation to the IRS.
She knew things were about to get very very bad when the dead woman in the photo from thirty years ago appeared to be her twin.
The full moon casted its silvery light over the deserted street turning objects an eerie ghostly white – not that it mattered to me.
The dead have a way of stumbling in on me.
I didn’t think too much about the black sedan creeping towards me in the Manhattan traffic, but when a man with all the finesse and grace of a ham bone opened the door of the sedan and grabbed me, well that just put a different spin on my opinion of sedans completely . . .oh, and happened to land me my current job.
Go find him — the dragon— he will tell you all you need to know, he will help you.
The early spring day started out sunny and normal – not the kind of day that would end with me soaking wet and curled up in the trunk of my own car.
A four-foot deep sea of black undulated over the center of the room, and then surged as forty tiny fists pummeled the still air and forty small feet flew skyward over a collective roar of triumph.
Why couldn’t she fall in love with a man more like Cade Kristoff?
It had been a long time coming.
A woman like me doesn’t worry about bringing sexy back; I never let it go in the first place.
Charis woke to the strident buzzing of her digital alarm clock.
Sometimes even an angel of death needed to stop and ask for directions, Marissa told herself, the hilt of her death sword pressing into her shoulder.
I was tired of following the fat bastard.
“Bite me!” she screamed, then added, “Please.”
True crime TV was going to be the death of Estelle Kiefer or at least her business.
“We, the Jury, find the defendant Joshua Baldwin, not guilty on the sole count of Murder in the First Degree.”
Rachel Fierister a.k.a. Rae Fyre, smiled pleasantly if not a little stiffly at the slightly rotund, definitely way to happy balding man, standing, ardently before her.
In the midst of an eerie stillness that had settled over the sleepy Oceanfront town of Johnstown, an empty swing creaked back and forth beckoning the town children to play.
“I now own more than half of your company and that means I now own you, as well.”
Was it possible to disappoint the dead?
Bram Tighe strode toward the bow of his three-masted schooner, his Dubarry regatta shoes soundless on the polished wood deck.
Lois’s youthful glow, natural beauty and perfect teeth had Maggie wanting to barf.
The shot made all four ladies jump.
“I’m not saying you have to fuck him.”
It was a day of death.
“Of all the towns in Ireland for Kate Boland to reconstruct a chapel, why’d it have to be mine?” Thomassey Glennon muttered as he placed his medical bag on a mahongany hall table under a painting of an Irish wolfhound.
Despite the fact that Grace woke up late and stumbled into the bathroom with her eyes half open, she immediately noticed the pink pregnancy test kit box in the wastebasket.
“Betrothed! You can’t be serious!” Mairin O’Donnell shouted.
What have you gotten yourself into?
To say that General Michael Hendricks’ days were numbered was not entirely accurate.
“I tried to tell you I wasn’t cut out to be a soul sucking bitch.”
If Erica Peck were a gambler, she would’ve laid good money that nothing could ever get her in the waters of the North Atlantic again.
“Listen, Shelly, before we go to work in the local condom factory for the rest of our lives, I’d like to raise a little Hell.
Sam felt the engine sputter and then die — exactly according to plan.
What was taking him so long?
Everyone thought him dead.
Sonia Carpenter knew it was going to be a bad day when she went to her backyard and found her neighbor floating face down in the deep end of her pool.
“Maybe I should become a lesbian for a week,” I blurted.
Holly knew deep in her bones she was being watched.
Self-consciously crossing her arms over her chest, Mihari huffed at the scantily clad females and hugged her thick pullover to her body.
The son of a bitch was going to kill her with sex…again, but what else could she expect from a rogue sex demon.
The dirty oilcloth packet slid out to the floor with a quiet swoosh; its owner was playing cards with his friends, too drunk to notice.
He was hard and standing in front of him was his greatest fantasy come to life.
Jesse Landry hadn’t been looking for trouble, but it sure had a way of finding him.
Sleeping Beauty has never been my hero.
An ordinary person would consider a lack of vampires to be a good thing.
I hate ski boots; they’re the worst part about this whole trip.
“Okay, Lang, strip,” the uniformed guard yelled in a voice loud and churlish, sending shivers up Carrie’s spine.
Aveline Bell looked at the fat, smiling Buddha sitting on top of her flatscreen monitor and glared back at him.
Such darkness, he had never known.
Late for her appointment, Hope Harrison’s clicking high heels echoed in the emptiness as she hurried down the medical clinic’s long corridor,
Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me.
The demons were playing the penny game outside Ardagh’s again.
The Reverend Mother used to tell acolytes that if men were going to brawl, they should at least be naked and glistening with oil.
There were no two ways about it: Maya Tiegan had died and gone to hell.
The child on the bench puzzled me.
IT’S one of those moments in life when the sound rushes into your ears, your tongue tastes metal, your eyes stare at nothing but see everything inwards and your body forgets how to move.