...... An author has many choices to make in the opening pages of his book. He wants to tell the reader as much as possible but risks overloading the reader with matters not that important.
...... For example, somebody has suggested I write out a touching scene showing Theresa's father telling her she'd have to be captain of her ship and sometimes the seas would be rough. Perhaps, but when the seas do get rough for Theresa her parents can do nothing to help her. They are not significant characters in the story. I have Theresa say, "I had good parents", and leave the rest to the reader's imagination.
...... Notice also the simple writing style I use, which reflects Theresa's youth. She's only ten when the story begins. Later, situations get far more complicated. Dialogue, especially Prime Minister's Blair's, becomes more sophisticated.
......But enough. The opening pages.................. 
......I’m Theresa, the only child of Edward and Elizabeth Sullivan, and I hope it’s not bragging to say I was cute as heck at age ten. Everybody in the Sullivan clan said so. I was the princess in the Sullivan family of Framingham, Massachusetts because besides being cute I was a whiz in school. All the Sullivans expected great things from me.
......Nobody could have dreamed of what I would do a few years later, and nobody would have believed it if they’d been told, but when this story began I was a little girl who didn’t have much of a clue about anything. My job as a kid was to figure out what the heck was going on and what to do about it. It’s not easy when you’re young and everything is brand new.
......My father was in the Navy. He said I had to be the captain of my ship but sometimes the seas would be rough. I had to learn all I could about the world. Yeah, well, why should I be worrying about it in the fourth grade?
......I was home alone at age ten while my parents worked but I was safe. Mom and dad installed one of those new child safety alert systems. All I had to do was quickly squeeze two buttons on my bracelet three times and the whole street would be blasted with a siren’s earsplitting wail. Neighbors were always around and the security company would alert the police.
......I had good parents. By the time I was ten they convinced me I should get myself through the school years without drug or boy problems. There are girls like that, you know. You wouldn’t think so to look at the news. I find it strange that people are interested in news about troubled girls, but wouldn’t want to associate with them.
......Our house was next to a pond close to the river where all the neighborhood’s kids had spent many happy hours looking for turtles and frogs. I was lounging on the deck reading a book on the school summer list.
......Taking a momentary break from the book, I noticed a red fox walking along the pond's edge. It disappeared behind the little patch of woods which dad let grow wild like most of the neighbors. This was very rare. Red foxes were never seen in broad daylight during the summer months. It didn't happen.
......Then something really amazing happened. It came out of the woods and walked towards me!
......I kept still and waited to see how close it came before noticing me. It was sixty feet away, forty, twenty. By now it was clear it was looking at me.
......I considered running into the house, but curiosity won out.
......The fox reached the four steps of the deck. It came up the steps, stopped, and sat on its haunches staring at me. It did not seem vicious so I waited.
......In an instant, faster than you could blink an eye, a softball sized white ball emerged from the fox and went straight into my stomach.
......I screamed and ran into the house. The fox ran away. I slid the glass deck door closed and locked it just in time to see the fox disappear in the woods. I stood at the glass door for five minutes watching for anything else that might happen. At last I thought it was all over.
......I went into the living room to sit down and think. What was that white thing? I couldn’t come up with any theory. It was nothing I had even seen on those television nature programs.
......Perhaps it was a daydream from not eating enough. Mom had warned me about that. At age ten I was already conscious of my weight and tried to stay skinny. I should eat something.
......I went into the kitchen to prepare an early lunch of fried eggs, a strip of bacon, toast, and milk. I gobbled all this down in a couple of minutes and soon felt better. It was too little eating after all. Nothing had really happened.
......Satisfied, I walked back into the living room to find something else to do. I turned on the television and watched the late morning talk shows for a while.
......I heard fire trucks in the distance blaring their deep toned sirens. These trucks could be heard from a mile away. They were coming closer. And closer. Soon the sound made it obvious they were in the vicinity of our street. My intuition told me this had something to do with the white thing that jumped at me.
......I went out the front door and waited on the lawn. The sirens were very close, and, yes, there they were turning into the street, a tanker truck and a small ladder truck. The two vehicles went halfway down the street and stopped. Already people were coming out of houses to watch the excitement.
......The yellow fire engines had loudspeakers that sent out vocal messages loud enough to rattle windows. A conversation was going on between the firemen and the station.
......“What do you have?”
......“A hundred and fifteen degrees here” a fireman shouted.
......“It‘s seventy here.”
......“Yup. Must be something here.”
......A crowd of neighbors was gathering near the confused firemen. I left the house and walked over to join the onlookers. “What's going on?” I asked one of my girlfriends.
......“They're looking for a fire.”
......The girl's father said, “The temperature jumped up in a few minutes.”
......It was hot. It was nice a little while ago. I thought it over. A fox appears in daylight which never happens, it comes up practically to my feet, the white thing jumps into me, and the firemen look for a fire that doesn't exist. All this happened within an hour. There had to be a connection.
......Before long the fire chief arrived in his yellow sedan. He asked the lead fireman if anything had been found. Then they walked over somebody's property to look at the pond. Nothing there.
......“Could it be a ground fire?” the fireman asked the chief.
......“Not likely with water over there unless there‘s a rock ledge underneath. I suppose we'll have to check it out.”
......Thermistor probes were brought from the station, and firemen spent the rest of the morning pushing the probes a few inches into the ground to check the temperature. They did this on everyone's lawn, the area inside the turn around at the end of the street, and finally went into people's back yards. They found nothing.
......“Weirdest thing I ever saw” said the chief.”
......“How long do we stay here?”
......“Make it four o‘clock. Longer and we'll look stupid.”
......Television news vans came around. It wasn't much of a story; nothing to aim a camera at except fire engines and embarrassed firemen. As for the mystery of the invisible heat source, people don't like news stories that don't have a resolution. The reporters and their crews lost interest and left.
......Around one o'clock, the fire engine megaphone shook the neighborhood with an update.
......“Temperature is down to ninety.”
......“That’s still twenty over. Keep at it.”
......An hour later, the firemen were saying the temperature was seventy-five. I thought it was fun that I was the only one who had a clue what was going on. The firefighters just hung around trading jokes and stories.
......Finally, the lead fireman noticed it was quarter to three and said, “That's enough. We're out of here.”
......The fire trucks went away.
......The busy Boston TV stations didn't take the time to mention this non-event.
......I was young and inexperienced, but I wasn't a dumbbell. If people found out what happened today they‘d pester me about it forever. Cousin Mary was diagnosed a schizophrenic and the whole Sullivan clan was biting their nails waiting for the gene to show up in some other family member. It wasn’t going to be me! I resolved to never tell anybody. Not even my parents would know. They’d think I was crazy like cousin Mary.
......Two days later I woke up early and walked into the living room. Mom was looking intently out the window. “What’s going on?” I asked.
......“There’s some men parked down next to the turn around. They’ve been there all night.”
......I looked and sure enough a van and a four door sedan were parked in the turn around where they could see every house on the street.
......“Mrs. Gagnon said a police car stopped to talk to them at two a.m.” said mom. “They showed IDs and a little later the police left.”
......Dad woke up and heard the same story. As mom and dad got ready for work another police car came around the street, but left without stopping.
......I was alone again. Other people left for work. The morning wore on. The mail truck came by at ten. I walked out to get the mail. Two minutes later the car and van drove away. They had spotted me.
......How did they know about me?
)
I reduced it down to 96,000 words or 355 pages, which matches the Hunger Games books. 
( the Prime Minister has warned the reporters not to open their mouths or they'll never be invited back to the Parliament building again )............
Originally Posted by empresstheresa
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