A Dark And Stormy Night

The world-famous competition that seeks to find the most atrocious opening sentence to a hypothetical lousy novel, presents a hilarious, even perversely instructive, collection of skilled ineptitude.

The new Dorothy Martin mystery When Dorothy Martin and her husband, retired Chief Constable Alan Nesbitt, are invited to a country house weekend, they expect nothing more explosive than the Guy Fawkes fireworks. Having read every Agatha Christie ever written, Dorothy should have known better. Rendered isolated and incommunicado by the storm, Dorothy and Alan nevertheless manage to work out what in the world has been happening at ancient Branston Abbey.

Katie Flynn isn’t sure she wants to be living in a gothic novel. Tempestuous weather? Check. Haunted mansion with a sketchy housekeeper? Check. One gorgeous man, dark and brooding, chained by an impossible secret? Check. But she’s no vulnerable, brainless heroine, even if she’s having a hard time resisting her unwilling host. O’Neal has no choice but to rescue Katie from the hurricane that is ravaging the rocky Maine coast, and all his efforts to send her on her way meet with failure. If she stays much longer, she’ll find out about the spectres and the curse and things that go bump in the night. If she stays much longer, he just might fall in love with her, when love is out of the question in his dark life. But Katie has other ideas, including finding out just where those secrets lead. Danger is all around, and the truth is unbelievable. But that doesn’t keep her from falling in love with a haunted man who’s everything she ever wanted.

So I present to you twelve chapter 1s of novels that have never been written or, more importantly, finished. Maybe someday, after the kids leave and I have all sorts of free time, Ill finish one or two of these into full-fledged novels. But I doubt it. So dont hold your breath. Instead, just enjoy the potential of chapter 1. Who needs an ending anyway?