Hi Mike! I had no idea you, too, head read "Rocket City." I will never come up with a first sentence as good as the one in RC, but the one I have settled on is pretty good.

When I was a Fellow at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Carol Houck Smith, a senior editor at Norton, told me she used RC's opening page as a guide in seminars on how to open a novel. That was a big WOW for me, as she is famous in the fiction field.

As far as "pith" goes, I guess we'll see.

I do have one line, coincidentally about pith: What is pith, and why do you need a helmet to go into it?

Cathryn