First Three Paragraphs of My Second Novel

Pete Miller was dying, and it was wonderful. He’d heard that dying was an awful thing. Maybe it would have been a dreadful thing: if he had to stay in this hospital bed, listening to that machine chime away his existence one beep at a time. Instead, he found, dying was much more like dreaming. Beep. One moment he was passing sewing pins into his lungs, the next he was running across a field, wind burning back his hair. He was a fast runner. Beep. The stalks of wheat tickled his thighs. They’d itch later, but not now. Many things would happen later. He’d hurt later. He’d be old later. He’d die later.

Now he was a boy, running with rock and roll in his bones.

Beep.