selecting parts of specific posts to show on static home page and read more

Hi there

Does anyone know if there is a way to select the first say, 60 words of specific posts to display on a static homepage with a read more link back to the actual post?

I don’t want xposts from xcategory, I want to be able to write a post, then ideally click somewhere to say that that post is to display on the home page in part with a read more that links back to the entire post. I would be writing articles rather than posts. I will only want two or three posts on the home page and they could be from different categories, really old or recent – depending on what topic I want to promote at the time.

Ideally it would be a plugin so I can ask at the time of posting, worst case scenario, I guess even the right php code that I go in and change each time I want to change the post.

Thanks

Lisa