Welcome back to the Darley Anderson blog after our summer/Frankfurt Book Fair break.

Did you miss us? We missed you. Hope you’ve all had a brilliant time in the sun reading only great stories and that the writing process has been kind to those of you who write.

We’re excited to get going again and we’ll be hitting the road running with the latest in the 11 Ways Not To Start Your Novel series any minute now.

But first, we’ve had some great responses to our challenge to name those five novels that start with their protagonist waking up. (If you haven’t yet had a chance to play go back now to 11 Ways Not To Start Your Novel No. 6 before we give away the answers.)

To set your minds at rest here are the authors and their books responsible for those opening lines:

1. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road – When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he’d reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him
2. Rick Riordan’s Heroes of Olympus: The Lost Hero – Even before he got electrocuted, Jason was having a rotten day. He woke in the back seat of a school bus, not sure where he was, holding hands with a girl he didn’t know.
3. Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and Other Stories – As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect
4. S J Watson’s Before I Go To Sleep – The bedroom is strange. Unfamiliar. I don’t know where I am, how I come to be here. I don’t know how I’m going to get home.
5. Douglas Adams’ Life, The Universe and Everything – The regular early morning yell of horror was the sound of Arthur Dent waking up and suddenly remembering where he was

Did you get them all? Have you read them all?

Excellent. Then we’ll continue…