Hooker

At night just before I turn out the light, I sometimes fill the page of a notebook I keep beside the bed, with . . . well, crap. The crap part usually happens if I also drink a glass of wine before lights out.

I’ve been interested in first paragraph hooks. If the whole rest of your book stinks, you at least have to wow them with a first paragraph masterpiece. After an agent gets through the first paragraph in total awe; of course, you don’t want the rest of the book to stink, but you get my point.

My strong strength, if I have one, is leaving the hook at the end of the chapter. Some agents must be immediately entertained before they reach the masterfully written end hook. Pity. Anyway, I digress.

Hooks. I’m going to share some of the hooks I’ve written in the late night hours. Some of them are cheesy, I admit. Maybe you’ll think they all are. But, here it goes.

• Had I known I’d be wading through Poison Oak, I’d have worn jeans instead of my prom dress and three-inch Stilettos. Who knew that jerk would drop me in the middle of nowhere.
  
  
  
• I fell asleep on the tanning bed. When I woke, the lights were off and my body could have melted the ice of an igloo. The act of getting dressed caused excruciating pain. I nearly tripped over the body when I stepped out of the tanning chamber.
  
  
• It was all coming back to me now.
  
  
  
• It started in the dead of night, but the sun had been up for hours.
  
  
  
• Sometimes you have to let things go.
  
  
  
• It was a stench I’d never forget. The stench of death warmed over by who knew how many days in the sun.
  
  
  
• I reached for my cell phone where it lay ont the rock and heard a rattle.
  
  
  
• Babies don’t belong in bars, especially if one hapless little tyke has me for a mother. The owner told me if I left the child in the bar again, he’d report me.
  
  I really have to quit drinking before I start sleeping. I'm no poet.