Art Taylor's Blog, page 19

The First Two Pages: “In a Land of Fear and Denial” by Lisa de Nikolits

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 Lisa de Nikolits for reaching out and letting me know about the Mesdames of Mayhem‘s latest anthology, In the Spirit of 13, celebrating the group’s 10th anniversary and featuring new short stories by de Nikolits and other 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, 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.

I’ll be hosting several contributors to the anthology at the First Two Pages, beginning today with de Nikolits herself, with Rosemary McCracken and M.H. Callway ahead.

Lisa’s a prolific writers of novels and short stories both, and her latest release, Everything You Dream Is Real, a sequel to her novel The Rage Room, will be released October 18. You can check out more of Lisa’s work at her website—and, of course, read her essay below for a sample as well!

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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My September Newsletter

My September Newsletter includes news on a new story, reflections on recent events and reading, and four—four!—giveaways!

Check it out here.

The First Two Pages: “Keep Me In Your Heart” by Alex Segura

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.

Back in the summer, to commemorate the release of Lawyers, Guns, and Money: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Music of Warren Zevon, I welcomed several contributors to the First Two Pages, including Laura Ellen Scott on her story “Crawling Distance,” Nick Mamatas on “Detox Mansion,” and William Boyle on “Something Bad Happened to a Clown.” In that last post, I promised that Alex Segura would be appearing the following week with an essay on his story “Keep Me In Your Heart”—but the world had other ideas, it seemed. Plans undone? Intentions undermined? That might be a Zevon theme as well.

I’m thrilled now to welcome Alex to round out the series of essays—and give all of us another opportunity to shout out the anthology, which also features short fiction by my co-editor Libby Cudmore as well as Gray Basnight, Dana Cameron, Hilary Davidson, Steve Liskow, Paul D. Marks, Matthew Quinn Martin, Josh Pachter, Charles Salzberg, Kevin Burton Smith, and Brian Thornton.

Alex is a good friend and a terrific writer, and his latest novel, Secret Identity, earned starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and Booklist, was called “wittily original” by the New York Times, and how ’bout that word “masterful” from NPR, yeah? Alex is also the author of the Pete Fernandez mystery series, a slew of great comics and graphic novels, and some fine short stories too—as with his Anthony Award-winning “90 Miles.” You can find out more about his work at his website.

And if you enjoy the first two pages of “Keep Me In Your Heart” below, here’s an extra bonus: a chance this week to win a copy of Lawyers, Guns, and Money from me! Just check out the contest on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram—commenting at any one gets you entered.

Enjoy!

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: Nancy Drew, Tom Ripley, a President’s Assassin, and More

This past Friday Friday afternoon, as I was reading The Mystery at Lilac Inn in preparation for my “Women of Mystery” course, it struck me what a joy it is to spend an afternoon rereading a Nancy Drew novel on the screened porch on a beautiful day—and to call it “work.”

Also last week, a librarian at the Chevy Chase Neighborhood Library invited me to speak in October meeting as part of their ongoing discussion series My Brilliant Friend: Friendship, Loyalty and Betrayal in Fiction—specifically about Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Talented Mr. Ripley… which, needless to say, I’m thrilled to have a reason to reread.

Reading is one of the key parts of my job, and to be able to immerse myself in a great book or a great story is a true luxury.

Much of that work isn’t solely the reading itself, of course. With Nancy Drew, there’s much ahead to explore with my class in terms of who Nancy Drew is to her readers, what mix of girl power feminism on the one hand (for example) and more conservative values on the other—the roots of that paradox and of its appeal. And with Talented Mr. Ripley ahead, a different kind of appeal, of course—how and why are readers charmed and intrigued by someone with such questionable morals (or lack of them)? And how can some critics argue that this dark tale might well be the great American novel?

Indulging those questions might be its own luxury, of course—but pointing out that it’s not just reading for fun but engagement and analysis that’s the core of the process.

Speaking of reading for fun, though, not everything on my nightstand is for work. I’m so very much enjoying the title novella of the new collection The Dark Ride: The Best Short Fiction of John Kessel. John is not just a friend but a former professor of mine—one integral, in fact, to putting me on the path I’m on now. I’ve always admired his short stories and particularly enjoying this more recent one, about Leon Czolgosz, who assassinated president William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in 1901—and who took a ride called “A Trip to the Moon” at that world’s fair, a ride which forms the second and resonant strand of the story. (Reading this one also keeps me on track to read at least one novella a month this year—my New Year’s Resolution. And if you’re interested in my photos here of books and drinks, visit my Instagram page.)

Finally, I’ve also been reading more short fiction from the latest issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, which features my own story “We Are All Strangers Here.”

“No Peace for the Wicked” by Martin Edwards“The Skeleton Rides a Horse” by Leigh Perry“Cleaning Day” by Joseph S. Walker“The Kindness of Strangers” by Twist Phelan

This post is part of my weekly “reading journal” for my Reviewing course at Mason. See you next week!

The First Two Pages: “We Are All Strangers Here” by Art Taylor

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.

Without taking away from the normal Tuesday schedule of First Two Pages essays, I’m indulging a little editor’s prerogative here to post an essay of my own, reflecting on my story “We Are All Stranger Here” from the September/October issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, available now. As the essay below mentions, I’ve already written briefly about the genesis of the story for the EQMM blog, but this new piece focuses more directly on sentence-level and phrase-level writing choices in the opening section of the story—specifically with regard to the narrator’s self-awareness and her assessment of others . . . assessments and attention in all directions.

I hope readers will enjoy both the essay and the full story—and be sure to check out the entire issue, which has many terrific authors, terrific stories. I’ve already read the stories by Martin Edwards, Smita Harish Jain, Leigh Perry, and Joseph S. Walker—and looking forward to David Dean’s and Paul D. Marks’ and William Burton McCormick’s and Twist Phelan’s and… a great group here, glad to be among them.

And stay tuned for this coming Tuesday’s regularly scheduled First Two Pages—welcoming Alex Segura with an essay on his story for Lawyers, Guns, and Money: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Music of Warren Zevon!

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 offline.

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The First Two Pages: “Taking Names” by Steven Wishnia

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.

It’s been an honor over the last few weeks for the First Two Pages to host contributors to the anthology Jewish Noir II: Tales of Crime and Other Dark Deeds, edited by Kenneth Wishnia and Chantelle Aimée Osman—and it’s been interesting how many of these authors have emphasized names in their essays. Jeff Markowitz kicked things off with his essay on “The Black and White Cookie” and the question of why his characters aren’t named; Jen Conley reflected in part on her choice of the title character’s name in “Hunter”; and the story by this week’s essayist Steven Wishnia is actually titled “Taking Names.” Rabbi Ilene Schneider went in other directions with reflections on her story “Triangle,” and Steven Wishnia does that too: history, tradition, immigration, labor issues, workplace disasters, New Journalism, and more—as you’ll see below.

Speaking of those issues, Wishnia’s own background overlaps with several of them. His own journalism, for example, focused on labor and housing. He’s also the author of the novel When the Drumming Stops, the short-story collection Exit 25 Utopia, the essay collection A-String to Your Heart, and The Cannabis Companion, which has been translated into six languages.

Othe contributors to Jewish Noir II include Gabriela Alemán, Doug Allyn, Jill D. Block, Craig Faustus Buck, D.M. Evans, Robin Hemley, Ellen Kirschman, Rita Lakin, Joy Mahabir, Zoe Quinton, Eileen Rendahl, Terry Shames, A.J. Sidransky, Lizzie Skurnick, E.J. Wagner, Kenneth Wishnia, Xu Xi 許素細, Elizabeth Zelvin, and Yigal Zur. Much to enjoy!

Please use the arrows and controls at the bottom of the embedded PDF to navigate through the essay. .

Reading Journal: Done? And Next?

I’ll admit that I generally prefer reading a physical copy of a book or magazine or newspaper rather than reading an ebook or reading online, but I’d gotten the book I’ve been reading lately—Sarah Bakewell’s How to Live: A Life of Montaigne—through the Libby app, courtesy of the Fairfax Public Library and of Amazon, which delivered the ebook temporarily to my Kindle. I finished the book Saturday night late and particularly enjoyed it, though at the time I finished it, I thought I still had nearly 20% of the book left to go, based on the line that measures how far I’ve progressed through my reading.

“I’ve still got so much left!” I thought. “How is Montaigne already dying? What is Bakewell going to write about for the rest of this? And why is the ‘chapter’ break for the next section so very very far away?”

I’d forgotten that the book would have a chronology and notes and likely a bibliography and….

Done before I’d expected to be, I realized that I wasn’t sure what to read next. The new issues of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine have stories calling to me, and I’ve got a stack of books on my TBR pile waiting to read and then my New Year’s Resolution about a novella a month and….

No lack of possibilities—and never sure why the choice sometime seems tinged by anxiety… as if I might make the wrong choice?

Is this something others struggle with?

Stay tuned to see what I end up picking next….

Appreciations! (With Spoilers?)

I’ve been hesitant to shout-out some thanks to two folks who helped me with research for “We Are All Strangers Here,” my latest story for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (available in the September/October 2022 issue)—hesitant because calling them out will inevitably be a spoiler of some sort.

And yet, gratitude is due.

First of all, thanks to Luci Zahray, the Poison Lady, for messages back and forth as I teased out possibilities and plans for the story. I won’t reveal exactly what we talked about (that would be a step too far!) but suffice it to say she was a great help. I first met Luci at Malice Domestic—always a joy to see her talks there—and glad to be able to lean on that friendship a bit for my own work. And be sure and catch this recent story about Luci and her work at Texas Monthly!)

After Luci and I had corresponded, I also chatted up D.P. Lyle a bit on the same subject—part of an online event with the North American Chapter of the Crime Writers’ Association. It was a small group in attendance, and something that he said prompted me to ask a follow-up question—one which helped add a little extra extra to everything I was trying to bring together.

Not too many details here, of course… but wanted to say how much I appreciated their contributions, in so many ways.

Reading Journal: Women of Mystery

As the students in my Reviewing course are gaining traction on their own weekly journals, I’m realizing that several of them are feeling anxious on a couple of specific points, especially the ones focusing on reading as opposed to, say, nail polish: 1) they don’t know if they can read anything extra on top of everything they’re already struggling with in their classes, and 2) they’re trying to write full reviews of whatever they’ve consumed.

I’m trying to ease anxieties by stressing that this shouldn’t be too formal and shouldn’t require extra assignments. Like them, most of my own reading is what’s “assigned” for classes—though I’m the one who’s done the assigning—but isn’t that fair game to write about?

My lit course this semester is one I’ve taught several times before: “Women of Mystery”—a survey of mystery and suspense fiction from the mid-1800s onward with a focus on woman writers and women characters (across a range, as it turns out: detectives, victims, or criminals). While I’ve read these texts before, I obviously (is it obvious?) go back and reread them again each time—this past week including C.L. Pirkis’s “Drawn Daggers” (published in the heyday of Sherlock Holmes) and Baroness Orczy’s Lady Molly of Scotland Yard story “The Ninescore Mystery”—appearing just over a decade later, but what a world of difference in terms of how the women detectives work. In the former, Loveday Brooke is navigating layers of authority and expectation about being a woman detectives—subtle championing of her abilities and expertise in comparison to men—while in the latter case, women are praised far more explicitly, even as prejudices persist: “We of the Female Department are dreadfully snubbed by the men, though don’t tell me that women have not ten times as much intuition as the blundering and sterner sex; my firm belief is that we should’t have half so many undetected crimes if some of the so-called mysteries were put to the test of feminine investigation.”

One of the goals of the course is to look at how various texts offers windows into their eras—and how text after text can chart changing social values or fresh challenges to traditional values.

It’s a lot of fun—and hopefully educational too, of course.

That’s what I’ve been reading—and enjoying! And note to my students: No review above—just a quick bit of thought on what I’m reading, that’s about it.

The First Two Pages: “Triangle” by Rabbi Ilene Schneider

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 first women to be ordained as a rabbi in the United States, Rabbi Ilene Schneider found another career as a writer, with an award-winning series featuring another female rabbi: Rabbi Aviva Cohen, who has appeared in three books so far—Chanukah Guilt, Unleavened Dead, and Yom Killer—with a fourth in progress, Killah Megillah. She also wrote the nonfiction book Talking Dirty—in Yiddish? and created a website of questions and answers about Chanukah. But we’re welcoming here today as a short story writer—talking about her latest story, “Triangle” is included in the anthology Jewish Noir II: Tales of Crime and Other Dark Deeds, edited by Kenneth Wishnia and Chantelle Aimée Osman and out now from PM Press.

Ilene is the third contributor to Jewish Noir II to offer an essay here. Jeff Markowitz wrote earlier on “The Black and White Cookie,” and Jen Conley reflected last week on “Hunter”—both of them with a partial focus on names and naming. Ilene’s essay discusses the importance of first lines, last lines, and pacing in between. And we’ll have one more essay next week from Steven Wishnia.

Othe contributors to the anthology include Gabriela Alemán, Doug Allyn, Jill D. Block, Craig Faustus Buck, D.M. Evans, Robin Hemley, Ellen Kirschman, Rita Lakin, Joy Mahabir, Zoe Quinton, Eileen Rendahl, Terry Shames, A.J. Sidransky, Lizzie Skurnick, E.J. Wagner, Kenneth Wishnia, Xu Xi 許素細, Elizabeth Zelvin, and Yigal Zur.

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 offline.

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