Five First Lines to Novels I Will Never Write

1. Most of what can be said about my family can be synthesized as follows: we were like the Kennedys, only with far less-sensible shoes.

2. If Carmela had managed to see the tiger under the basement stairs prior to tumbling down them, her death might have been avoided.

3. “You are home free like a gazelle in a corn field in Iowa, hopping over a leprechan at the end of a broken rainbow.”

4. Dragons don’t bite, do they?

5. Our Prince always had an aire of flamboyant pagentry, so it came as a shock to see him stumble through my apartment, trip over Travis, and crash through my coffee table, definitively ruining sushi night and any chances of impressing the new girl from work.