Art Taylor's Blog, page 18

The First Two Pages: “The Only Living Boy in New York” by Tom Mead

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.

Last week, Frank Zafiro offered up an essay on his story “A Hazy Shade of Winter,” kicking off a series of First Two Pages posts by contributors to the new anthology Paranoia Blues: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Paul Simon, edited by Josh Pachter and published by Down & Out Books. This week, the series continues with Tom Mead reflecting on some of the research he did for his story “The Only Living Boy in New York”—and reflecting as well on how this story, dark and noirish, stands in contrast to his usual work.

As Tom explains in the essay below, he usually writes “whodunits in the vein of John Dickson Carr or Ellery Queen”—including his highly acclaimed debut novel, the locked-room mystery Death and the Conjuror, and his recently announced forthcoming follow-up, The Murder Wheel. Tom has also published short fiction in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, among other venues. You can find out more about his work at his website.

Paranoia Blues features a wide range of crime writers, including E.A. Aymar, Martin Edwards, Cheryl A. Head, Edwin Hill, Racquel V. Reyes, and Gabriel Valjan, among many others—all writing stories inspired by Simon’s music, both from his years as half of Simon & Garfunkel and then as a solo artist.

Tom’s essay below is a winner, and I particularly loved his walk through some of the terrific conspiracy thrillers of the 1970s—I’m a fan as well! And stayed tuned for more essays in the coming week by Cheryl A. Head and Edwin Hill too.

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.

Tom-Mead

A Saturday with Sherlock

November 5 marks the 43rd annual “Saturday with Sherlock Holmes” at the Enoch Pratt Library in Baltimore—and online too!—and I’m grateful to have been invited to speak again at this year’s event.

The topic of this year’s celebration is place, and here’s the opening paragraph of the event listing:

From foggy London to remote Australia to the wilds of Dartmoor, there are many curious places in the Sherlock Holmes stories. Eight local Sherlockians talk about their favorites, including Sherlock’s home at 221B Baker Street; his favorite restaurant, Simpson’s in the Strand; the exclusive Diogenes Club; lovely Montague Street; dangerous Ballarat, Australia; Cheeseman’s, Sussex, home to a vampire; and misty, hound-haunted Dartmoor. 

I’ll be speaking about the Diogenes Club—or speaking around the topic of the Diogenes Club? My talk is titled “It’s All Greeks to Me”—and that plural is deliberate. (You’ll see.)

Check out full event information here—for in-person or for participating virtually!

The First Two Pages: “A Hazy Shade of Winter” by Frank Zafiro

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.

Josh Pachter is on a roll—with two new collections in recent news. Crippen & Landru has recently published The Adventures of the Puzzle Club, gathering the original puzzle club stories by Ellery Queen alongside Pachter’s continuation of the series as well as his stories featuring E.Q. Griffen. And this week Down & Out Books releases Paranoia Blues: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Paul Simon, the fifth “inspired by” anthology that Pachter has edited (after anthologies drawing from the songs of Joni Mitchell, Jimmy Buffet, and Billy Joel, and the films of the Marx Brothers).

For Paranoia Blues, Pachter invited nineteen crime writers—including E.A. Aymar, Martin Edwards, Cheryl A. Head, Edwin Hill, Tom Mead, Racquel V. Reyes, and Gabriel Valjan—to write stories inspired by Simon’s music, both from his partnership with Art Garfunkel and as a solo artist. Only song from each album is represented, except in the case of Bridge Over Troubled Water, an album which inspired two stories.

We’ll be hosting four of these contributors with First Two Pages essays, beginning today with Frank Zafiro talking about “Hazy Shade of Winter.” (Wait, wasn’t that a Bangles song? and where’s that anthology, huh? Pachter probably has it in the works… And if so, sign me up!)

Frank writes (I love this tagline) “gritty crime fiction from both sides of the badge.” A former police officer himself (a twenty-year career, retiring as a captain), he has written police procedurals, PI novels, and hardboiled tales too. He also hosted the crime fiction podcast Wrong Place, Write Crime. You can find out more about him and his work at his website here.

Enjoy Frank’s essay below, and stay tuned for essays by three more contributors 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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Reading Journal: The Talented Mr. Ripley

Much of my reading is done as a result of a course I’m teaching or a talk I’m giving—but the good news: This means I’m often reading some terrific novels, stories, essays, and more.

I jumped on such an opportunity when a librarian at the Chevy Chase Neighborhood Library asked me to be the guest speaker for a discussion on Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley, part of the library’s series My Brilliant Friend: Friendship, Loyalty and Betrayal in Fiction. Highsmith has been a huge influence on my own work, both in terms of her fiction and maybe even more so through her own craft book, Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction, particularly the section on laying/layering “lines of action” in fiction.

While I’ve often thought about teaching The Talented Mr. Ripley in one of my classes at Mason, I haven’t yet, though I’ve frequently assigned the first chapter of the book as part of my “Writing Suspense” course, as a way of exploring that idea of “lines of action,” how a skillful author introduces them, how they might then get twisted and tightened over the course of a full story or entire novel.

With the library chat, I was able to explore this idea more fully and to follow a couple of those lines over the course of the whole book. And the attendees were sharp readers, generous with their perspectives and questions—a real joy start to finish.

And what a joy to simply to reread this book! I’d read all five of Highsmith’s Ripley novels back in 2015 as part of New Year’s resolution, but learned something new again this time revisiting. And a bonus: After chatting with a friend down in Atlanta while I was rereading the book this time, he decided to suggest it as the next selection for his own book club—and I’m hoping to zoom in for that talk too!

In other news, other reading: I read Daphne du Maurier’s “The Birds” aloud with my wife Tara—a Halloween treat (she found it depressing, which… coulda told her that)—and I’ve also been rereading some domestic suspense stories and Sue Grafton’s A Is For Alibi for my “Women of Mystery” course.

Great reading in all directions.

The First Two Pages: “Disco Is Dead” by Jeffrey Marks

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.

What a joy to host my good friend Jeffrey Marks this week at the First Two Pages—celebrating his first appearance in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and the start of a new series of stories, as he explains in the essay below. Not only is Jeff a fine friend, but he’s also a writer I greatly admire and one whose nonfiction work I’ve leaned on in the classroom for many years. In fact, I regularly draw from Jeff’s book Atomic Renaissance for my Women of Mystery class and just recently featured a quote from that book on a Powerpoint. Jeff’s a publisher as well, now heading up Crippen & Landru, which he took over from Douglas Greene a few years ago. Crippen & Landru is the premier publisher of short mystery fiction collections, and I’m honored that C&L presented my own collection,The Boy Detective & The Summer of ’74 and Other Tales of Suspense, two year ago.

I was also honored to be an early reader of Jeff’s story “Disco Is Dead,” and I told him that I felt sure it would be a great fit at Alfred Hitchcock or Ellery Queen. So glad I was right there!

In addition to reading his essay below (and searching out the terrific story in full in the new issue of AHMM!), you can find out more about his work at his website—and be sure to follow him on Facebook and on Twitter too. And do check out the Crippen & Landru site too—great reading in all directions.

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 Artisan-Cheese Incident” by Michael Hock

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.

The men who created Columbo and Murder, She Wrote. The writer of The Body Snatcher, adapted four times on the big screen. The father of Rambo. These writers and more than 800 more have been part of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine‘s Department of First Stories since the feature debuted in 1949—a history that also includes Charles Ardai, Laura Benedict, David Dean, Brendan DuBois, Martin Edwards, Stanley Ellin, Harry Kemelman, Nancy Pickard, and James Yaffe, among many others. I was honored to make my own mystery debut as part of this series, and I’m thrilled now to welcome a good friend into these ranks: Michael Hock, whose story “The Artisan-Cheese Incident” debuts today in EQMM‘s November/December issue. And thrilled to welcome him to the First Two Pages as well to introduce the new story!

I’ve been fortunate to have worked with Michael in a number of capacities: as a colleague at George Mason, as part of his thesis committee as he pursued his MFA in Fiction at Mason (one of several degrees he’s earned!), and as a reader of an earlier draft of the story here. I loved the energy and imagination of “The Artisan-Cheese Incident”—the interweaving storylines, Michael’s inimitable style, the humor of it all—and I actually encouraged Michael to submit the story to EQMM. I thought it would be a great fit for the magazine—and so glad to hear I was right.

While “The Artisan-Cheese Incident” is Michael’s first published fiction, he’s had comic essays published at Cracked and at Case in Point. And you can continue to follow Michael and his success as Bad Shakespeare at Twitter.

In the meantime, check out his essay below and pick up the new issue of EQMM to read the full story—a joy start to finish!

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.

Hock-Cheese

The First Two Pages: “Amdur’s Ghost” by M.H. Callway

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.

For the final essay in a series spotlighting contributors to the anthology In the Spirit of 13, I’m pleased to welcome one of the co-founders of the Mesdames of Mayhem, M.H. Callway. As you’ll learn in her essay below, “Amdur’s Ghost,” her story for the new collection, brings back a character featured in “Amdur’s Cat,” her story for the first Mesdames of Mayhem anthology, Thirteen, back in 2013. In the Spirit of 13 celebrates the group’s 10th anniversary, and what a ten years it’s been for them, with several more collections along the way: 13 O’Clock (2015),13 Claws (2017), and In the Key of 13 (2019). If you’re interested in celebrating both the anniversary and the new book, mark your calendar for the Zoom launch party on Sunday, November 13, at 2 p.m. EST. For a free invitation please contact carrickpublishing@rogers.com.

In addition to co-founding the Mesdames and writing the two stories here, M.H. Callway short fiction has won or been short-listed for several awards, including the Bony Pete, the Crime Writers of Canada Award of Excellence and the Derringer. Her novel, Windigo Fire, was shortlisted (under a different name) for the Debut Dagger and later for the Crime Writers of Canada Best First Novel award. You can find out more about her and her work at her website.

The last two weeks here have featured two other contributors—Lisa de Nikolits on her story “In a Land of Fear and Denial” and Rosemary McCracken on “The Fur Coat Conundrum”—and In the Spirit of 13 also features short fiction by Catherine Astolfo, Rosemary Aubert, J.E. Barnard, Jane Petersen Burfield, Melodie Campbell, Donna Carrick, Cheryl Freedman, Therese Greenwood, Marilyn Kay, Blair Keetch, Cat Mills, Lynne Murphy, Ed Piwowarczyk, Rosalind Place, Madona Skaff, Caro Soles, Kevin P. Thornton, Sylvia Maultash Warsh, and Melissa Yi.

Congratulations to all on the new books—and for so many of them, the past ten years together!

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.

Callway

Reading Journal: A Murder Is Announced

This week, my “Women of Mystery” class at Mason is meeting Miss Marple for the first time—in a way, just as the world met her, since we’re reading the very first Miss Marple story, “The Tuesday Night Club,” originally published in Royal Magazine in December 1927 and ultimately the lead tale in the collection The Thirteen Problems in 1932.

But while that’s our introduction to the character, we’ll be spending more time on the 1950 novel A Murder Is Announced. As the title states, the book’s first murder was indeed announced—ahead of time!—in the Personal Column of the village newspaper, a paragraph which other townspeople think is an invitation to a kind of Murder Game (the lights go out, the “killer” touches your shoulder, and you’re down for the count). But when the lights go out and actual gunshots roar forth… well, what seemed like a lark becomes all too real.

While the mystery here is twisty and surprising, the main reason I teach this is for the portrait the book offers of post-World War II England: economic austerity, intergenerational friction, distrust of foreigners and refugees, a sense of loss and nostalgia for the world of the past. As John Curran writes, in Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks: “Apart from its sublime detective plot, A Murder Is Announced is also a convincing picture of an England stumbling out of post-war austerity. We are no longer in the world of butlers and cocktail receptions; there is no dressing for dinner or questioning the lady’s-maid; no weekend guests or alibis provided by nights at the opera….”

It’s a fascinating book, with plenty to talk about thematically and in terms of the larger context for this text. And such a joy to reread always!

The First Two Pages: “The Fur Coat Conundrum” by Rosemary McCracken

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.

The Mesdames of Mayhem‘s latest anthology—In the Spirit of 13, celebrating the group’s 10th anniversary—is the latest in a distinguished series of collections including Thirteen (2013),13 O’Clock (2015),13 Claws (2017), and In the Key of 13 (2019). The theme of the new collection is “spirits”—but what that word means is up to interpretation. As the marketing materials ask, “Does ‘spirit’ mean ghost or demon—or debunking of same? Or simply the evil in twisted human hearts? Or could it be alcohol?” Tackling the topic are members of this Canadian crime writers collective, including Catherine Astolfo, Rosemary Aubert, J.E. Barnard, Jane Petersen Burfield, M.H. Callway, Melodie Campbell, Donna Carrick, Lisa de Nikolits, Cheryl Freedman, Therese Greenwood, Marilyn Kay, Blair Keetch, Rosemary McCracken, Cat Mills, Lynne Murphy, Ed Piwowarczyk, Rosalind Place, Madona Skaff, Caro Soles, Kevin P. Thornton, Sylvia Maultash Warsh, and Melissa Yi.

Last week at the First Two Pages, de Nikolits discussed her story “In a Land of Fear and Denial,” and this week, Rosemary McCracken returns to the blog with an essay on her story “The Fur Coat Conundrum.” McCracken contributed a First Two Pages essay on her story in the previous anthology as well, “Farewell to the King,” and as with that story, McCracken’s new story was also inspired by her newspaper days, as you’ll see below.

Rosemary has earned accolades for both her short fiction and her novels. Her story for the first Mesdames of Mayhem’s anthology was a Derringer finalist: “The Sweetheart Scamster” in Thirteen, was a Derringer Award finalist in 2014. And her first Pat Tierney mystery novel, Safe Harbor, was a finalist for Britain’s Debut Dagger. To find out more about her books and her career, visit her website here.

We’ll also be hosting M.H. Callway next week to wrap up this series of essays—and if you’re interested in celebrating with more of these authors, do mark your calendars for the Zoom launch party on Sunday, November 13, at 2 p.m. EST. For a free invitation please contact carrickpublishing@rogers.com.

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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Reading Journal: Passion Play

As I’ve mentioned something like a thousand times, I’m writing a boarding school mystery—or eternally trying to. (The novel as a form seems extra challenging to this short story writer.) As part of my research, I’ve been immersing myself in this specific genre, one with many, many iterations out there!

I’m not sure how I’ve so far missed reading W. Edward Blain’s Passion Play, since I’m an admirer of his short stories already—and since he and I have a connection of sorts: He’s the former chair of the English Department at Woodberry Forest, a boarding school in Virginia, and I graduated from the Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Woodberry’s long-time rival. Perhaps needless to emphasize, but both of us have drawn/are drawing on our experiences in that world for our work.

There’s an argument to be made for avoiding novels too much like the one you’re trying to write—don’t want to duplicate anything, don’t want to feel intimidated by the idea that whatever you’re writing has been written before (and possibly better). But I think this kind of immersion can be inspiring in other ways, and I’m already feeling some inspiration from reading Ted’s novel. And specifically, from the very first, I’ve got a new idea: add a map!

I’m still in the early parts of the book but enjoying greatly. More ahead!