Author Ellie Stevenson
In the latest post on her author blog, novelist Ellie Stevenson, one of the guest authors at our inaugural event, spreads the word for HULitFest, encouraging attendance at future events.
It’s also a fascinating discussion of the importance of first lines in works of fiction – well worth a read! What’s your favourite first line? She’s quoted mine – George Orwell’s from Nineteen Eighty-Four. Though I also love Alison Morton’s from Inceptio, the first in her Roma Nova series, which begins:
“The boy lay in the dirt in the centre of New York’s Kew Park”
Thus from the very beginning that this is going to be an attention-grabbing alternative history set-up. Great stuff!
The first of Ellie’s novels
I also love the example Ellie’s quoted from her own debut novel, Ship of Haunts:
“Not every girl gets stalked by a ghost. Or haunted by a ship. The ghost was called Lily but the ship came first. It always did. The ship was Titanic. I drowned on that ship.”
Maybe at the next festival we could offer a quiz, inviting people to connect famous first lines with novels… What do you think?
