First Lines...

"I still use a manual typewriter ( a 1953 Underwood portable, in a robin's-egg blue) because the soft pip-pip-pip of the typing of keys on a computer keyboard doesn't quite fit with my sense of what writing sounds like. I need the hard metal clack, and I need those keys to sometimes catch so I can reach in and untangle them, turning my fingers inky. Without slapping the return or turning the cylinder to release the paper with a sharp whip, without all that minor havoc, I feel I've paid no respect to the dead. What good is an obituary if it can be written so peaceably, so undisturbingly, in the dark of night?"

... The Coffins of Little Hope by Timothy Schaffert coming April 2011