First Lines

Tanya Ward Goodman

First lines of novels can either make you stand there in the bookstore, lie there on your bed, grab you so that you don't so much as read but slither into a story and get lost, or they can make you sigh and put them down. Even if I hadn't already read parts of Leaving Tinkertown, by Tanya Ward Goodman, my dear friend and writer extraordinaire, I would be floored by it. The memoir just arrived in my mail yesterday, and I'm nearly halfway through. Here's the first line:

I was conceived in a pickup camper on the New Mexico State Fair Grounds when my parents were on the road with the carnival.

You all need to hop on over to your local bookstore and order it, or go to Amazon and buy it. Right now. This moment. Today. Leaving Tinkertown is about a woman and her father, a beloved and eccentric artist who died too young of Alzheimer's disease.

I'm so excited for the world to finally read Tanya's story, I can't stand it!

Here's another excerpt:

Although they had stopped traveling with the carnival full time, Dad still packed up his brush box and hit the road a dozen times or more each year to work as a showpainter. Sometimes he painted brand new rides like the Sea Dragon and the Flying Bobs in a factory in Wichita, Kansas, but most of the time he headed out to one dusty lot after the next to slap color on rides that had been kicking around the road season after season. Carny folks call this being "with it," which means that even if you're not on the road, the road is always with you.



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