So, there’s a “writing” competition, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. The point is to write the worst first line ever. And the best of those worst lines wins. It all started “on a dark and stormy night…” Today’s #1lineWed request is the worst line in a WIP. At the moment, with editor brain and no nails as my real editor and beta reader both peruse the book, I want to post one of my favorite first lines. So, without further ado. here is the opening to THAT OL’ BLACK MAGIC.
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This was only Day One of what was shaping up to be a bloody weird week and the gods had been drinking again. Too bad Sade Marquis didn’t have that option. She was on duty. Dammit. Not to mention it was only ten in the morning. However, if things got any stranger, she might change her mind.

She occupied the one booth that gave her a broad view of the whole place. Déjà Vu. All over again. Back in the early days, right after graduating from the FBI Academy, the New Orleans Field Office had been her first assignment. She’d leased an apartment upstairs from Déjà Vu. The bar-restaurant combo became a second home. Open twenty-four/seven, she could eat no matter the time of day.

Jax Martine—or as she liked to think of him “a Jax of all trades”—sailed by her table and two glasses of ice water appeared in his wake. He was human, but Sade would bet dollars to donuts there was a witch in his family tree. She glanced at her watch and wondered if she could squeeze in a late breakfast. She was meeting her partner, who had no concept of time. Werewolves were like that.

Catching Jax’s attention, Sade wiggled her fingers through a complicated series of gestures. A plate with eggs, bacon, and French toast—real French toast made from thick-cut slices of crusty French bread—appeared a few minutes later, along with two more glasses of ice water to replace the ones she’d drained.

She was on her third cup of post-breakfast coffee when two girls sitting at the bar stirred. Their attention swiveled to the front door, eyes on the prime specimen of fae male swaggering into the shadowed space. Back-lit by a sunshine nimbus, Ariel made quite an entrance. Sade looked to heaven for a reprieve that didn’t come. Her day just kept getting better and better.
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And thus starts the story of FBI Agent Sade Marquis, her Werewolf partner, a gargoyle, a fae, and an infernal dragon. Along the way, there’s a very sexy vampire  And I’ll admit to a bit of prejudice about Sade and Sinjen. They are a pair of my favorite heros and heroines. Writers, have either a favorite line or one that’s awful? And readers, are there any lines that make you stare and go “huh?”? Or one that makes you go, “Oh!”?