Sometimes dead is better

But there's one thing I'm sure about. An opening line should invite the reader to begin the story. It should say: Listen. Come in here. You want to know about this.

The world was the Overlook Hotel, where the party never ended. Where the dead were alive forever.

All you imagined, no matter how wild it might seem, was no more than a disguised version of what you already knew.

Even the company of the mad was better than the company of the dead.

you can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.

And all that weirdness isn't just going on outside. It's in you too, right now, growing in the dark like magic mushrooms. Call it the Thing in the Cellar. Call it the Blow Lunch Factor. Call it the Loony Tunes File. I think of it as my private dinosaur, huge, slimy, and mindless, stumbling around in the stinking swamp of my subconscious, never finding a tar pit big enough to hold it.