Art Taylor's Blog, page 16

Simply Write Podcast

Thanks to Polly Campbell for having me as a guest at her Simply Write podcast—out this week wherever you listen to your podcasts (here’s the Apple link) but also featured at Polly’s substack page, with some extras as well.

So pleased she was enthusiastic about my new collection The Adventure of the Castle Thief and Other Expeditions and Indiscretions—enjoyed chatting about that and about my writing process and teaching and more.

Check out the substack post here for links and more.

The First Two Pages: “Perfect Partner” by Vinnie Hansen

In April 2015, B.K. Stevens debuted the blog series “The First Two Pages,” hosting craft essays by short story writers and novelists analyzing the openings of their own work. The series continued until just after her death in August 2017, and the full archive of those essays can be found at Bonnie’s website. In November 2017, the blog series relocated to my website, and the archive of this second stage of the series can be found here.

This week begins a series of essays by contributors to Hook, Line, and Sinker: The Seventh Guppy Anthology, organized by the Guppy Chapter of Sisters in Crime, edited by Emily P.W. Murphy, and published by Wolf’s Echo Press in late January. With a focus on “grifters, con artists, and their marks” and settings ranging from “Tudor England to tomorrow’s headline” (I love that phrase), Hook, Line, and Sinker features fresh fiction by (in order of appearance) C. N. Buchholz, Lida Bushloper, Susan Daly, Steve Shrott, Kait Carson, Judith Carlough, Sandra Benson, Sally Milliken, Wrona Gall, M. R. Dimond, Mary Dutta, Kim Keeline, Shannon Taft, Merrilee Robson, Lisa Anne Rothstein, KM Rockwood, Frances Stratford, Jane Limprecht, Vinnie Hansen, Ann Michelle Harris, A. W. Powers, Kate Fellowes, and M. A. Monnin.

We’ll host three authors from the anthology at the First Two Pages this month—beginning with Vinnie Hansen, who’s a fine short story writer with more than fifty tales to her credit and also a good friend too, I’m happy to say. (Always fun to get another email from Vinnie or catch up with her online in one direction or another!)

In addition to her short fiction, including appearances in previous Guppy anthologies and another recent 2023 publication at Mystery Magazine, Vinnie is also the author of the standalone novels One Gun and Lostart Street and the Carol Sabala Mystery Series. You can find more about Vinnie and her work at her website.

Stay tuned for essays ahead over the next two weeks from Sandra Benson and Kate Fellowes as well! And check out the Wolf’s Echo Press website for links to buy Hook, Line, and Sinker in both ebook and paperback.

Please use the arrows and controls at the bottom of the embedded PDF to navigate through the essay. You can also download the essay to read off-line.

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The Writer’s Center Magazine—Times Two!

The Winter/Spring issue of The Writer’s Center Magazine is out—and what fun to have been interviewed for two of the features here!

In “Coloring Within the (Out)lines,” Virginia Hartman looks at the differences between writers who are plotters and those who are pantsers (flying by the seat of their…). She and I chatted as she was working on the article, and I appreciate her includes parts of our conversation alongside thoughts and tips by Alice McDermott, Jeffery Deaver, and more. Virginia is a professor at George Washington University, teaches courses at The Writer’s Center, and is the author most recently of The Marsh Queen. Find out more about Virginia and her work here.

Later in the issue, Anu Altankhuyag looks at “Writing After College” with a panel including Abdul Ali, who’s taught at several area universities; Gabrielle Lucille Fuentes, a professor at the University of Maryland; and both Gregg Wilhelm and me from George Mason University. Anu was actually one of my own students at Mason, and I’m thrilled now that she’s on staff at The Writer’s Center and doing great there—a good start to her own life after college!

You can subscribe to The Writer’s Center Magazine for free here—and the new issue should be up for viewing there soon too.

The First Two Pages: “The Cost of Living” by Saul Golubcow

In April 2015, B.K. Stevens debuted the blog series “The First Two Pages,” hosting craft essays by short story writers and novelists analyzing the openings of their own work. The series continued until just after her death in August 2017, and the full archive of those essays can be found at Bonnie’s website. In November 2017, the blog series relocated to my website, and the archive of this second stage of the series can be found here.

I first learned about Saul Golubcow’s collection The Cost of Living and Other Mysteries from the fascinating interview that Paula Gail Benson did with Golubcow last summer at The Stiletto Gang. In the interview, Golubcow talked about his detective, Holocaust survivor Frank Wolf; about how Wolf was inspired by his father-in-law, who lost his own family during the Holocaust; and about the qualities that the two share: extensive knowledge across a wide range of disciplines, a trust in the powers of critical analysis, and a resilience in the face of tremendous challenges. (He talked about much more too, so please do click through to the link above. Another feature on Golubcow and his work can be found at Washington Jewish Week.)

I’d planned on hosting Golubcow soon after that, so his appearance at the First Two Pages is belated a bit—but I’m so pleased to finally be welcoming him this week with a terrific essay, where he elaborates on several aspects of Frank’s character and of Frank’s grandson Joel too, who narrates the stories.

The Cost of Living and Other Mysteries is available now from Wildside Press. Hope folks will check out this fascinating collection!

Please use the arrows and controls at the bottom of the embedded PDF to navigate through the essay. You can also download the essay to read off-line.

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Read for Free: “The Invisible Band”

Thanks to my editors, Andrew McAleer and Gay Toltl Kinman, and to our publisher Down & Out Books for making my story “The Invisible Band,” a finalist for this year’s Agatha Award for Best Short Story, available to read for free for a limited time.

Be sure and order the full anthology (buy links here at the Down & Out website) for additional stories by Doug Allyn, Lori Armstrong, O’Neil De Noux, Brendan DuBois, Martin Edwards, John Floyd, Carolina Garcia-Aguilera, Kristen Lepionka, Lia Matera, and P.J. Parrish—plus John McAleer’s “The Case of the Illustrious Banker,” a recently discovered 1937 manuscript that has now been published for the first time.

Hope folks enjoy—and look forward to seeing everyone at Malice Domestic in April!

Please use the arrows and controls at the bottom of the embedded PDF to navigate through the essay. You can also download the essay to read off-line.

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“The Invisible Band” Named Finalist for the Agatha!

This year’s Agatha Awards finalists have been announced—and such a thrill to see my story “The Invisible Band” from Edgar and Shamus Go Golden on the slate of nominees for Best Short Story!

It’s terrific to be alongside so many brilliant writers and fine friends up and down the list here—and special shout-outs to the other short story finalists: Barb Goffman, Cynthia Kuhn, Lisa Q. Mathews, and Richie Narvaez.

The full list of nominees is below—looking forward to seeing everyone in April at Malice Domestic!

Best Contemporary Novel
Bayou Book Thief, Ellen Byron (Berkley Prime Crime)
Death By Bubble Tea, Jennifer J. Chow (Berkley)
Fatal Reunion, Annette Dashofy (Level Best Books)
Dead Man’s Leap, Tina de Bellegarde (Level Best Books)
A World of Curiosities, Louise Penny (Minotaur)

Best Historical Novel
The Counterfeit Wife, Mally Becker (Level Best Books)
Because I Could Not Stop for Death, Amanda Flower (Berkley)
The Lindbergh Nanny, Mariah Fredericks (Minotaur)
In Place of Fear, Catriona McPherson (Mobius)
Under a Veiled Moon, Karen Odden (Crooked Lane Books)

Best First Novel
Cheddar Off Dead, Korina Moss (St. Martin’s)
Death in the Aegean, M. A. Monnin (Level Best Books)
The Bangalore Detectives Club, Harini Nagendra (Constable)
Devil’s Chew Toy, Rob Osler (Crooked Lane Books)
The Finalist, Joan Long (Level Best Books)
The Gallery of Beauties, Nina Wachsman (Level Best Books)

Best Short Story
“Beauty and the Beyotch,” Barb Goffman (Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, Feb. 2022)
“There Comes a Time,” Cynthia Kuhn, Malice Domestic Murder Most Diabolical (Wildside Press)
“Fly Me to the Morgue,” Lisa Q Mathews, Malice Domestic Mystery Most Diabolical (Wildside Press)
“The Minnesota Twins Meet Bigfoot,” Richie Narvaez, Land of 10,000 Thrills, Bouchercon Anthology (Down & Out Books)
“The Invisible Band,” Art Taylor, Edgar & Shamus Go Golden (Down & Out Books)

Best Non-Fiction
The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and Their Creators, Martin Edwards (HarperCollins)
The Handbook to Agatha Christie: The Bloomsbury Handbook to Agatha Christie, Mary Anna Evans and J. C. Bernthal (Bloomsbury Academic)
The Science of Murder: The Forensics of Agatha Christie, Carla Valentine (Sourcebooks)
Promophobia: Taking the Mystery Out of Promoting Crime Fiction, Diane Vallere Ed. (Sisters in Crime)
Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman, Lucy Worsley (Pegasus Crime)

​Best Children’s/YA Mystery
Daybreak on Raven Island, Fleur Bradley (Viking Books for Young People)
In Myrtle Peril, Elizabeth C. Bunce (Algonquin Young Readers)
#shedeservedit, Greg Herren (Bold Strokes Books)
Sid Johnson and the Phantom Slave Stealer, Frances Schoonmaker (Auctus Publishers)
Enola Holmes and the Elegant Escapade, Nancy Springer (Wednesday Books)

The First Two Pages: “The Pearl of the Antilles” by Carolina Garcia-Aguilera

In April 2015, B.K. Stevens debuted the blog series “The First Two Pages,” hosting craft essays by short story writers and novelists analyzing the openings of their own work. The series continued until just after her death in August 2017, and the full archive of those essays can be found at Bonnie’s website. In November 2017, the blog series relocated to my website, and the archive of this second stage of the series can be found here.

Thanks to Doug Allyn (“The Dead Snitch”), Brendan DuBois (““Scars of Love“), Lia Matera (“The Party”), and now Carolina Garcia-Aguilera for penning delightful First Two Pages essays this month on their stories the anthology Edgar and Shamus Go Golden: Twelve Tales of Murder, Mystery, and Master Detection From the Golden Age of Mystery and Beyond, co-edited by Gay Toltl Kinman and Andrew McAleer. Carolina’s essay on her story “The Pearl of the Antilles” rounds out this series and explores how history and geography both can help both inspired and determine a story—in this case, the setting of 1940s Havana.

These four contributors are part of a stellar line-up for the anthology, which also includes Lori Armstrong, O’Neil De Noux, Martin Edwards, John Floyd, Kristen Lepionka, and P.J. Parrish. (Oh, and me too!) The centerpiece of the collection is John McAleer’s “The Case of the Illustrious Banker,” first written in 1937, only recently rediscovered, and now being published for the first time—a true cause for celebration.

As Carolina writes in her essay, she has less trepidation about writing long than about writing short: “For me, writing a 100,000-word manuscript was easier than an 8,000-word short story… I was much more comfortable taking my time to lay out a story—structure, pacing, dialogue, descriptions, etc.—and condensing it into just a few thousand words would take a great deal of planning.”

While Carolina’s short story is the order of the day—and hopefully you’ll find it comes together nicely!—she’s also a novelist, and I’ll encourage you to check out one of her ten books, perhaps especially the Shamus Award-winning novel Havana Heat.

And stay tuned next week for something entirely different!

Please use the arrows and controls at the bottom of the embedded PDF to navigate through the essay. You can also download the essay to read off-line.

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The First Two Pages: “The Party” by Lia Matera

In April 2015, B.K. Stevens debuted the blog series “The First Two Pages,” hosting craft essays by short story writers and novelists analyzing the openings of their own work. The series continued until just after her death in August 2017, and the full archive of those essays can be found at Bonnie’s website. In November 2017, the blog series relocated to my website, and the archive of this second stage of the series can be found here.

This week continues a series of First Two Pages essays by contributors to the anthology Edgar and Shamus Go Golden: Twelve Tales of Murder, Mystery, and Master Detection From the Golden Age of Mystery and Beyond, co-edited by Gay Toltl Kinman and Andrew McAleer and released in early December by Down & Out Books. Doug Allyn and Brendan DuBois have already offered thoughts on how to capture readers’ interest and focus the key elements of a story quickly and efficiently, along with samples for their own stories for Edgar and Shamus Go Golden—respectively “The Dead Snitch” and “Scars of Love.” And this week, Lia Matera analyzes specific paragraphs of her story “The Party” to explore how the specifics of an era can be worked effectively and productively into a story for fullest effect. As Lia writes in the essay below, “To my mind, it didn’t make sense to set ‘The Party’ in 1920 only to have an occasional character mention it in passing. I wanted it to be as much a part of the setting as the country house where the story takes place. I wanted to show the tensions of the era reaching into the genteel parlor to bedevil my protagonist…”

All of the contributors to the new anthology are winners of either the Edgar or the Shamus Awards—a table of contents also including Lori Armstrong, O’Neil De Noux, Martin Edwards, John Floyd, Carolina Garcia-Aguilera, Kristen Lepionka, and P.J. Parrish, plus John McAleer, whose story “The Case of the Illustrious Banker” by John McAleer—first written in 1937, only recently rediscovered, and now being published for the first time—really served as the genesis of the collection.

While Lia is here officially as a Shamus Award winner for her short story “Dead Drunk” from Scott Turow’s Guilty as Charged, she’s also earned Edgar Award attention as well, with two of her novels having earned Edgar nominations: A Radical Departure and Prior Convictions. You can find more about Lia’s work at her website.

Enjoy Lia’s’s essay below, check out Doug’s and Brendan’s from the couple of weeks, and stay tuned for more contributors still ahead!

Please use the arrows and controls at the bottom of the embedded PDF to navigate through the essay. You can also download the essay to read off-line.

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January Newsletter!

What was meant to be an end-of-year newsletter became a Happy 2023 newsletter instead—published at the one-month-countdown date for my forthcoming collection The Adventure of the Castle Thief and Other Expeditions and Indiscretions, due February 14 from Crippen & Landru (and available for pre-order now, of course).

For more info on that book, on my story “The Invisible Band” for Edgar & Shamus Go Golden, and on my recent reading, click through for the full newsletter—and there are giveaways too!

The First Two Pages: “Scars of Love” by Brendan DuBois

In April 2015, B.K. Stevens debuted the blog series “The First Two Pages,” hosting craft essays by short story writers and novelists analyzing the openings of their own work. The series continued until just after her death in August 2017, and the full archive of those essays can be found at Bonnie’s website. In November 2017, the blog series relocated to my website, and the archive of this second stage of the series can be found here.

One of the marvelous things about our writing communities: A writer you’ve long admired can quickly become a friend. And such was the case with Brendan DuBois, whom I met through Ellen Crosby at a Bouchercon many years ago—trying now to remember which one! I’d been a regular reader of Brendan’s work in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and in the Best American Mystery Stories anthologies (six appearance there now) and in The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century and The Best American Noir of the Century—both of them, and how many authors around can boast that? Needless to say, I was a little in awe (and if you want a little awe yourself, check out more about his novels and stories at his website). Yet since that first meeting, we’ve gotten together at many other conventions, have served together on the Mystery Writers of America board, and have also appeared together in magazines and anthologies—and I’m pleased to be doing so again in Edgar and Shamus Go Golden: Twelve Tales of Murder, Mystery, and Master Detection From the Golden Age of Mystery and Beyond, co-edited by Gay Toltl Kinman and Andrew McAleer and released last month by Down & Out Books.

Last week at the First Two Pages, fellow Edgar and Shamus Go Golden contributor Doug Allyn kicked off the new year with some thoughts on short story openings, and this week, Brendan offers some overviews of his own—along with an excerpt from “Scars of Love,” his story for the collection.

In addition to Doug, Brendan, and me, the anthology also includes Golden Age-themed short stories by winners of either the Edgar or the Shamus Awards, including Lori Armstrong, O’Neil De Noux, Martin Edwards, John Floyd, Carolina Garcia-Aguilera, Kristen Lepionka, Lia Matera, and P.J. Parrish, plus “The Case of the Illustrious Banker” by John McAleer—first written in 1937, only recently rediscovered, and now being published for the first time.

Enjoy Brendan’s essay below—and stay tuned for more contributors still ahead!

Please use the arrows and controls at the bottom of the embedded PDF to navigate through the essay. You can also download the essay to read off-line.

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