Hello, amazing fellow creatives! Here’s to more fun perusing the library’s new releases to see what strikes our fancy. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve retitled Story Cuppings to better fit the premise of the podcast.

As writers, we hear all the time that we’ve got to hook readers in just the first few pages or else. We’ve got to hook agents in the first few pages or else.

Whether you’re looking to get published or just hoping to hook your reader, first impressions are vital. Compelling opening scenes are the key to catching an agent or editor’s attention, and are crucial for keeping your reader engaged.

JEFF GERKE, THE FIRST FIFTY PAGES

Well then, let’s study those first few pages in other people’s stories, shall we?

Today I snagged from the New Release shelf:

What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher

This is hands down one of my favorite finds so far for this podcast.

If you do not see the audio player above, you can access the podcast here.

What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher may be a reimagining of Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, but in five pages it still reads very much as its own unique work. I’m reminded a bit of John Scalzi’s Kaiju Preservation Society as far as the wry narrator goes, and of Jeff VanderMeer’s Area X trilogy with the unsettling, unnatural forms Nature seems to take. Everything is bleak and grotesque–even the sight of mushrooms growing hints at violent death for humanity. Setting this grim landscape inside a fictional country also makes the story feel like it’s one step off kilter from reality–it could be in our Europe, but surely not, right? This book moves at a quick clip, so if you’d like to take a few days to shift into some spookier tales for the coming Halloween season, I can’t think of a better place to start.

As always, I love hearing what’s on the shelves of your own libraries. Libraries Rock!

Read on, share on, and write on, my friends!