Starting a novel is a nerve-wracking endeavor.
In a few lines, you must:

• set the tone for the whole book,
• capture the interest of your prospective audience,
• impress them enough to buy your work, and
• avoid millions of cliches (“It was a dark and stormy night…”)

Around 1995, I remember Penguin Books ran a contest, giving away an entire library of Classics to the person who correctly identified 50 opening lines taken from selected novels under their imprint.

The contest was challenging as it required people to go to the library or bookstores, since e-books at that time were limited to Gutenberg.org, which had less than 1000 public domain works available online before 1997 – ’95 was not exactly “pre-Internet”, but early days to be sure.

Luckily, I was working at a bookstore at the time, so I slaved away during breaks, scribbling authors and titles on my entry form, trying to decipher which words belonged to whom. For an English nerd, it was a fun game, exposing me to tidbits of great literature, and showing me how Melville, Joyce, Woolf and Flaubert kicked off their stories.

With the proliferation of e-books, Kindles, Kobos and Nooks in the last few years, text is easier to find online, and many authors have websites that give readers first-chapter excerpts. So, I rounded up the opening lines from a wide sampling of popular romance writers, and created a miniature contest of my own. Here is the result: a short, silly quiz.

CAVEAT: I know many of you don’t read romance. It doesn’t matter – take the quiz anyhow. It’s very fast, just ten questions, and I promise you’ll get a laugh out of some quotes and most titles; and yes, they’re all real, I didn’t invent anything. Wait ’till you get to the rutabagas. No cheating please!

Romance Novel “Opening Lines” Pop Quiz: if you get all 10 right, I will buy you a timbit.

[QUIZZIN 1]