The Music Book, Last Orders, First Sentences, A Chords

Northwest Music Scene was kind enough to post a preview (link below) of The Music Book, which for those of you who don’t know is the title for my next book. It’s about music, especially local Seattle bands, love, loss, a mutable past. Look for it this fall, possibly late summer, but that might be pushing it as we’re still working through the final edits.

Read the preview: The Music Book. Booktrope. Fall 2014

Now, over the past year and a half, I’ve taken copies of the manuscript with me to the George and Dragon pub in Fremont to do some editing over a few pints and have had more than a few people ask me, “What’s the opening line of the book?” It’s an understandable question, and it always comes after asking what the book is about so they want a glimpse, a hint of what’s to come. It’s very much like being in Barnes & Noble and picking a title off the shelves, reading the copy on the back and then opening to page one to give the author a shot. I still vividly remember doing that way back in 1998 with Graham Swift’s Last Orders, one of my absolute favorite books. I’d heard it won the Booker Prize so I picked it up off the shelf and read.

It aint like your regular sort of day.

I was intrigued, but then the next sentence began like this:

Bernie pulls me a pint…

Last Orders coverI was hooked. One and a half sentences in and the main character  already has a beer in hand. And it only gets better from there. Those of you who haven’t read it should because there’s a reason it won the Booker Prize, and because in the words of Ferris Bueller, “It is so choice.”

But to get back to my own book, I figured I’d do the same here as I’ve done in the pub and offer up the opening line for the curious, so here goes:

There was an A chord and then silence.

Being The Music Book, it starts right there on the first letter of the musical alphabet. Where else could it? And then it goes quiet.

And from there, hopefully it will take you places. As for me, it’s Thursday at 3:00 in the afternoon, but it ain’t like your regular sort of day as I settle in at the pub a few hours earlier than usual, manuscript in hand, and smile as the bartender pulls me a pint. Cheers.

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