It's a good place to start.

The beginning.

There, I did it.  I've already fallen into one of those boxes.  I'm one of those people that start with the beginning.

Some writers start with the end, whether it's seconds before the crucial moment that changes everything you've assumed or whether it is truly with the ending it doesn't matter.  They are Enders.

I am, clearly, a Starter.  Start with the start.  Begin with the beginning.  Lead from the front.

Yet no one chooses the middle.  That grey area where the reader is neither launched into the depths of the characters, the complexity of the plot or cast hurtling toward the tingling climax of the intertwining tales narrowing into one, unthinkable execution.

My debut novel, Children of G.O.D., starts at the end.  Well, to be honest, its starts beyond the end.  The narrator/protagonist/muse reflects upon events that have not yet occurred.  It is all about perspective.  Events that have not yet come into our awareness, to us, have not yet occurred yet the individual telling the story knows of them already, so they must have happened.

It is this sense of perspective that is key.  Either the writer judges that giving away the ending, to start, is acceptable as, chances are, the reader would have forgotten about them by the time they reach the ending.  On the other hand, the writer decides that the ending is far too good, far too important, to be the starting block to launch the story from and trusts in their abilities so much that they will ensnare the reader until the bitter end with nothing but the first chapter, at best.

I am neither, and both.

The beginning to Children of G.O.D. begins beyond the end as the end is far to important to be exposed at the star.  Yet the beginning is so abstract, and so far removed from the final point, that it is key to show where the story is heading.

It is a decision that I do not envy any new author making and yet I find a deep satisfaction that I have reached beyond that point.  I certainly look forward to hearing the first reader's comments on it's execution, or hearing opinions that call for mine.

Jensen Carter