First Lines Meme

Snaffled from just about everywhere on my LJ friends list at the moment - the First Lines from my current writing projects:

The Desert Song (short story - Apocalyptic Australian Western)
Jacob left town at sunrise and walked west, stopping only at noon to rest in the shade beneath an outcrop of blood-red sandstone.

A Plan for Pierrot (short story - Clowntown presents Clown-noir)
"Come on, P, cheer up," I said, placing an arm around Pierrot and patting him gently on the shoulder.

Once Upon a Time in Clowntown (short story - Clowntown presents a Silly-String Western)
The cowboy stood atop the ridge and looked down upon the town.

The Darkling Crowd (short story - Horror)
It was somewhere between the tail-end of autumn and the first snufflings of winter that Nicholas first noticed the shadows flitting through the crowds.

And the Dead to Speak (short story - Science Fiction)
Their bodies float around me in perfect orbits, inscribing great arcs of beauty across an endless field of stars.

Help Yourself (novel - Transgressive Anti-Self-help dark fantasy)
Sceptic, cynic, pessimist, atheist.

The Revenant (novel - Horror/Australian Ghost Story)
The two brothers weren't looking for bones; they were searching for peace and solitude and an escape from the thoughts and emblems of death that had filled the old homestead with a dense fug of depression.