I never participated in this meme when it made the rounds, but better late than whatever.

The working title for the Jani short I'm working on is "Incident on a Small Colony." The working first line is:

The receiving dock stank of berries.

Memorable, elegant, evocative first lines--I have no gift for them. I tried one at the start of CODE, and if I had it to do over...I don't know if I'd have done it quite like that. The next three books began with short lines of dialogue, the characters already *bam* in the middle of something. I have developed a penchant for starting *bam* in the middle of something. If I ever opened a book with the weather, I'd probably keep it to two words of character's internal thought. Pissing rain. Or something similar.