When I dream, I’m the hero.
I slay mighty giants in the icy fields of Jotunheim. I brave the blazes of Muspelheim and laugh in the face of Hel.
Between the hours of Nott and Morginn, the All-Father himself knows my name. We hang out. He thinks I’m awesome.
But every other time, from morning to night?
Every other time…
…I’m just Fandral.
First Chapter First Paragraph Thursday Intros ~ Sweet & Bitter Rivals by Jessica Burkhart
My fingers shook as I clutched the planter balanced in my lap. It was shaped like a hardback book and held a flourishing African violet in a tiny pot in the center. Not just any African violet, of course, but on I’d been raising all summer. They could be very temperamental, and I’d managed to keep her alive, so yay! Honestly, the violet was one thing I could count on to provide silent but steady comfort after a summer of turmoil.
First Chapter First Paragraph Thursday Intros ~ Anger Bang by Avery Flynn
Feelings were things best folded into mental origami and stuffed into the back pocket of a pair of awful, turn-yourself-into-a-pretzel-to-get-them-off leather pants. And Thea Pope would know.
She’d bought a pair during a night spent online shopping while wine drunk on her couch in her Harbor City studio apartment and learned a valuable lesson: when one buys leather pants boozed up, one risks popping a hip out of place peeling them off when sober.
First Chapter First Paragraph Thursday Intros ~ Pizza Pete and the Perilous Potions by Carrie Sellon, Sarah Horne
In my last English lesson, Miss Cameron asked us for our favourite word. Eight people said ‘football’. Three said ‘fart’. One said ‘onomatopoeia’.
I didn’t put my hand up, but I carefully wrote four letters in my exercise book.
H-O-M-E.
That’s my favourite word. The cosiest word in the English language. Home. A place where no one laughs at me for the stuff I ‘m rubbish at, like football or diving. And I have hours and hours to get on with the stuff I’m good at, like making pizzas and building interplanetary warships out of Lego.
First Chapter First Paragraph Thursday Intros ~ Arsenic and Adobo by Mia P. Manansala
My name is Lila Macapagal and my life has become a rom-com cliché.
Not many romantic comedies feature an Asian-American lead (or dead bodies, but more on that later, but all the hallmarks are there.
Girl from an improbably named small town in the Midwest moves to the big city to make a name for herself and find love. Check.
Girl achieves these things only for the world to come crashing down when she walks in on her fiancé getting down and dirty with their next-door neighbours (yes, plural)? Double check.
Girls then moves back home in disgrace and finds works reinvigorating her aunt’s failing business. Well now we’re up to a hat trick of clichés.
And to put the cherry on top, in the trope of all tropes, I even reconnected with my high school sweetheart after moving back to town and discovered the true meaning of Christmas.
OK, that last part is a joke, but I really did run into my high school sweetheart. Derek Winter, my first love.
First Chapter First Paragraph Thursday Intros ~ The House on Sunrise Lagoon: Sam Makes a Splash by Nicole Melleby
There are towns in New Jersey where the houses sit along lagoons, instead of streets. The lagoons feed into the bay, which feeds into the Atlantic Ocean, which is why the lagoons are filled with fish and crabs, and sometimes, if you’re lucky, turtles. Neighbors’ backyards face one another, families separated by water and boats, but you’re close enough to know everyone’s business. Voices carry easily, and none were louder than the voices of the Ali-O’Connor family. Their house sat at the end of one such lagoon.
First Chapter First Paragraph Thursday Intros ~ Never Fall for Your Enemy by Kate O’Keeffe
Don’t panic. Don’t panic.
I’ve got to keep it together.
I take a steadying breath as I glance over at him once more, and my heart leaps in my mouth.
Dang it! I’m panicking.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m trying to stay cool, calm, and collected. Really trying. But right now, my brain is sparkling alert messages at multiple synapses, my heart is racing like it’s a greyhound at the track, and my urge to run is almost overwhelming.
He’s here. Right in front of me.
The one that got away.
The one I haven’t seen since… well it’s been a while.
Almost twelve years, in fact.
First Chapter First Paragraph Thursday Intros ~ City of the Dead by James Ponti
On a slate gray November day, one hundred years after the discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb, a group of five young people converged in a part of London known as Bloomsbury. Like Howard Carter, they were looking to recover treasures of Egyptian antiquity. Except they weren’t going to dig a tunnel in the desert. They were going to sneak through one in an abandoned section of the London Underground. And the artifacts they sought weren’t concealed in some long-forgotten tomb. They were on display at one of the busiest museums in the world.
This was no excavation. It was a heist.
First Chapter First Paragraph Thursday Intros ~ We Deserve Monuments by Jas Hammonds
Ten.
That’s how many bullet holes I counted puncturing the rusted brown Bardell County highway sign. There were probably more, but I lost count when it blurred past us as Mom accelerated into town. I turned to look through the rear window, wondering if I imagined them, but they were as real as the seat belt digging into my neck. Dreary sunlight streamed through the holes like an erratic cheese grater, and I couldn’t think of a more fitting welcome to this wasteland.
First Chapter First Paragraph Thursday Intros ~ On Air with Zoe Washington by Janae Marks
If someone had told ten-year-old me that in four years I’d have a bakery job and that my birth dad – who I didn’t even know at the time – would be my coworker, I would’ve looked at them like they had two heads. It was totally unbelievable. But now, it was happening.
