Art Taylor's Blog, page 27
October 26, 2021
The First Two Pages: “A Trailer on the Outskirts of Town” by J.B. Stevens
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 at the First Two Pages, James D.F. Hannah talked about his story “Temptation is a Gun” from the new anthology Trouble No More, edited by Mark Westmoreland and published by Down & Out Books. The full list of contributors to that collection is a wonder, also including Bill Baber, C.W. Blackwell, Jerry Bloomfield, S.A. Cosby, Nikki Dolson, Michel Lee Garrett, Curtis Ippolito, Jessica Laine, Brodie Lowe, Bobby Mathews, Brian Panowich, Rob Pierce, Joey R. Poole, Raquel V. Reyes, Michael Farris Smith, J.B. Stevens, Chris Swann, N.B. Turner and Joseph S. Walker—and yours truly, too! And this week at the blog, I’m pleased to welcome J.B. Stevens, introducing his story “A Trailer on the Outskirts of Town.”
J.B. is a terrific writer—both a short story writer and a poet and with books in both directions. His poetry collection The Best of American Cannot Be Seen was published by Alien Buddha Press; several of his short stories are linked from his website and his short story collection This Will Not End Well is available for free there as well; and another fiction collection, A Therapeutic Death, will be coming out next year from Shotgun Honey. You can read more about J.B. and his work at his website—and be sure to follow him on Twitter 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.
Stevens-Trailer
October 24, 2021
Dean Jobb at Fall for the Book • Monday, October 25
On Monday evening, October 25, I’ll be interviewing Dean Jobb about his terrific new book, The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream: The Hunt for a Victorian Serial Killer.
I already had the chance to talk with Dean at the History Book Festival back in the summer and looking forward to this second talk as part of the Fall for the Book Festival.
Be sure to register here for this virtual event, beginning that night at 7 p.m.
October 19, 2021
The First Two Pages: “Temptation is a Gun” by James D.F. Hannah
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.
Mark Westmoreland has assembled a terrific line-up of writers for the new anthology Trouble No More, released last week by Down & Out Books and featuring stories inspired by Southern rock and the blues. Contributors include Bill Baber, C.W. Blackwell, Jerry Bloomfield, S.A. Cosby, Nikki Dolson, Michel Lee Garrett, James D.F. Hannah, Curtis Ippolito, Jessica Laine, Brodie Lowe, Bobby Mathews, Brian Panowich, Rob Pierce, Joey R. Poole, Raquel V. Reyes, Michael Farris Smith, J.B. Stevens, Chris Swann, N.B. Turner and Joseph S. Walker—and I’m proud to have my own story, “Little Martha,” in the mix as well!
This week and next, I’m hosting First Two Essays by contributors to Trouble No More—beginning today with James D.F. Hannah on “Temptation is a Gun.” It’s a terrific essay, not only insightful about the story itself but also gesturing toward Southern literature generally—and Hannah’s prose is a joy always. I particularly loved the line about his writing process being “sketchier than convenience store sushi.”
Hannah won the Shamus Award for Best Original Private Eye Paperback for Behind the Wall of Sleep from his Henry Malone series, which also includes Midnight Lullaby, Complicated Shadows, She Talks to Angels, and Friend of the Devil. His short fiction has appeared in Rock and a Hard Place, Crossed Genres, Shotgun Honey, The Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Trouble No More, and Only the Good Die Young: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Billy Joel. Follow him on Twitter here.
And stay tuned for next week’s essay by J.B. Stevens!
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.
Hannah-TroubleOctober 17, 2021
Two Events in Victorian England!
My next two events ahead focus on one of the most notorious killers in Victorian England and the greatest detective of the era too.
On Monday evening, October 25, I’ll be interviewing Dean Jobb about his terrific new book, The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream: The Hunt for a Victorian Serial Killer. I already had the chance to talk with Dean at the History Book Festival back in the summer and looking forward to this second talk as part of the Fall for the Book Festival. Be sure to register here for this virtual event, beginning that night at 7 p.m.
Then on Saturday, November 6, I’ll be at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore—in person!—for the 42nd (?!?!) annual “Saturday with Sherlock Holmes,” presented in partnership with several local Sherlock Holmes scion societies: the Six Napoleons of Baltimore, the Sherlockians of Baltimore, and Watson’s Tin Box of Ellicott City. The event begins at 11 a.m., and the subject of the day’s talks will be extraordinary objects in the canon—though my own chosen object seems perhaps more ordinary than extraordinary: “Cycling with Sherlock: Bicycles in the Adventures of ’The Solitary Cyclist’ and ’The Priory School.’” Find more information here.
Hope to see you soon—either virtually or in person!
October 12, 2021
The First Two Pages: “The One” by Eve Elliot
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 two-part series featuring contributors to the new anthology Cemetery Plots of Northern California, presented by Capitol Crimes, the Sacramento Chapter of Sisters in Crime. The collection, released earlier this month, features stories by Donna Benedict, Melissa H. Blaine, Jenny Carless, Chris Dreith, Eve Elliot, Elaine Faber, Kenneth Gwin, Kim Keeline, Virginia Kidd, Nan Mahon, Jennifer Morita, Karen Phillips, Richard Schneider, Terry Shepherd, and Joseph S. Walker. Last week, Kim Keeline appeared at The First Two Pages, discussing her story and this week, I’m so pleased to welcome Eve Elliot with her story “The One.”
Born in Canada and now living in Ireland, Eve Elliot wears many hats in the storytelling world—as a voice actress, a romance novelist, and now a writer of crime fiction too. Her first work in this new genre was the audio whodunit The Death of Dr. Davidson, and her story “The One” brings her even more fully into the mystery world. Find out more about all her work at her website: www. eveelliot.com.
And be sure to sign up for the virtual launch party for Cemetery Plots on Sunday, October 24—more info here!
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.
Elliot_The-First-Two-Pages-of-The-OneOctober 11, 2021
Publication Day: Trouble No More
The new anthology Trouble No More: Crime Fiction Inspired by Southern Rock and the Blues is now playing at a concert venue near you! ….or, um, available for purchase from a wide range of booksellers, linked at the webpage for the collection at Down & Out Books.
Edited by Mark Westmoreland, Trouble No More features short stories by Bill Baber, C.W. Blackwell, Jerry Bloomfield, S.A. Cosby, Nikki Dolson, Michel Lee Garrett, James D.F. Hannah, Curtis Ippolito, Jessica Laine, Brodie Lowe, Bobby Mathews, Brian Panowich, Rob Pierce, Joey R. Poole, Raquel V. Reyes, Michael Farris Smith, J.B. Stevens, Chris Swann, N.B. Turner and Joseph S. Walker, and I’m proud to have my very very short story “Little Martha” in the mix as well.
At a mere 415 words, “Little Martha” was inspired by one of the shortest (the shortest?) song written by the Allman Brothers. You can read a bit more about my approach to the story here.
Pleased to be part of the book! And I’ll be hosting a couple of the contributors at the First Two Pages in coming weeks too—stay tuned for more.
October 6, 2021
“Love Me Or Leave Me” in Music of the Night
The contributors to the forthcoming Crime Writers Association anthology Music of the Night have been announced by Flame Tree Press—and I’m thrilled to have my story “Love Me Or Leave Me” included! (The full title is “Love Me or Leave Me: A Fugue in G Minor,” but no idea whether that subtitle might make the cut.)
The anthology, edited by the great Martin Edwards, will be released next February in the U.K., and it features a terrific list of contributors. Below is the contents list I’ve cut and pasted from the Flame Tree Press blog.
Contents List: Abi Silver – Be Prepared Alison Joseph – A Sharp Thorn Andrew Taylor – Wrong Notes Antony M. Brown – The Melody of Murder Art Taylor – Love Me or Leave Me Brian Price – The Scent of an Ending Cath Staincliffe – Mix Tape C. Aird – The Last Green Bottle Chris Simms – Taxi Christine Poulson – Some Other Dracula David Stuart Davies – Violin – CE Dea Parkin – The Sound and the Fury Jason Monaghan – A Vulture Sang in Berkeley Square Kate Ellis – Not a Note L.C. Tyler – His Greatest Hit Leo McNeir – Requiem Martin Edwards – The Crazy Cries of Love Maxim Jakubowski – Waiting for Cornelia Neil Daws – The Watch Room Paul Charles – The Ghosts of Peace Paul Gitsham – No More ‘I Love You’s’ Peter Lovesey – And the Band Played On Ragnar Jónasson – 4×3 Shawn Reilly Simmons – A Death in Four Parts Vaseem Khan – Bombay BluesSuch an honor to be among this group of fine writers—looking forward to more ahead about this anthology!
October 5, 2021
The First Two Pages: “Nameless” by Kim Keeline
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 year, many of us had Sacramento on our minds—with the 2020 Bouchercon there having been transitioned to a virtual conference in mid-October—and I’d been steeping myself in California generally, and Sacramento as a specific setting in many cases, as the editor for the Bouchercon anthology California Schemin’. That collection featured a terrific line-up of writers, including guests of honor Scott Turow, Walter Mosley, Anne Perry, Anthony Horowitz, Cara Black, and Catriona McPherson as well as many authors new to me—and new to the mystery world too!
This October, a year later, I’m pleased to see Cemetery Plots of Northern California coming out—a new anthology by Capitol Crimes, the Sacramento Chapter of Sisters in Crime—not only because of the setting but also because of the reunion of several folks from California Schemin’: Catriona McPherson wrote the introduction to Cemetery Plots, and Chris Dreith and Kim Keeline have new stories here too—writers I was thrilled to “discover” among the anonymous submissions to the Bouchercon anthology. The full list of contributors also includes Donna Benedict, Melissa H. Blaine, Jenny Carless, Eve Elliot, Elaine Faber, Kenneth Gwin, Virginia Kidd, Nan Mahon, Jennifer Morita, Karen Phillips, Richard Schneider, Terry Shepherd, and Joseph S. Walker. And the chapter will be hosting a virtual launch party on Sunday, October 24—more info here!
Chris Dreith contributed a First Two Pages essay last year about her story “Old Soles” for California Schemin’, and today Kim Keeline writes about “Nameless” from Cemetery Plots—with a focus on cutting down longer drafts into shorter ones, something Kim and I have actually discussed in the past, so I much appreciate her focusing on that topic here.
Though this is only Kim’s third published story, I want to stress she’s already earned fine acclaim for her work: her first story, “The Crossing” from the anthology Crossing Borders, was named a finalist for the Derringer Award for Best Short Story earlier this year. You can find out more about Kim and her work at her website here. And circling back to Bouchercon: Kim is organizing Bouchercon 2023 for San Diego too.
Stay tuned next week too for an essay by Eve Elliot on her story for Cemetery Plots!
Please use the arrows and controls at the bottom of the embedded PDF to navigate through the essay.
October 1, 2021
The First Two Pages: “The Very Last Time” by Juliet Grames
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 September/October 2021 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine celebrates the publication’s 80th year. As editor Janet Hutchings wrote in her “Letter from the Editor” in the new issue, EQMM was founded as “a new type of publication, intended to bring all of the different types of mystery, from the whodunit to noir fiction, from the mean-streets private eye tale to psychological suspense, from the police procedural to ‘literary’ stories, together between common covers. Founding editor Frederick Dannay described the venture as ‘frankly experimental’.”
EQMM‘s continued success is a testament to that diversity of genre, form, and style—and it’s with those qualities in mind that I’m particularly pleased to welcome Juliet Grames to The First Two Pages today to discuss her story “The Very Last Time” from this latest issue of the magazine. Already a tremendous success in the literary world, thanks to her debut novel The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna, Grames is also the curator of the Soho Crime imprint at Soho Books, and “The Very Last Time” marks her first published crime fiction—though as she explains in the essay below, the story draws equally on her love of speculative fiction too.
Many different types of genre in one? A bit of the “frankly experimental” in the process?
I hope you’ll enjoy Grames’ essay below, and the story itself in the new issue of EQMM, which also features short fiction by Jerome Charyn, Hilary Davidson, David Dean, Trey Dowell, William Burton McCormick, Bill Pronzini, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, and more.
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.
Grames-Very-Last-TimeSeptember 28, 2021
The First Two Pages: “Love Happy” by Frankie Y. Bailey
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 first time I met Frankie Y. Bailey in person was at Malice Domestic, likely around a decade ago, though I don’t remember the year. We were in the hallway, just outside a panel about the start, and I was both excited and in awe—trying to explain to Frankie how much I appreciated her work, how often I’d drawn on it for my teaching, how useful her insights and observations had been for my students, and… And a woman standing near us (I don’t remember who!) had overheard the conversation and seemed puzzled. Frankie caught the puzzlement before I did and turned to explain: “Art’s talking about my nonfiction writing” —which, I’ll admit now, was all I knew of Frankie’s work at that point: Out of the Woodpile: Black Characters in Crime and Detective Fiction and African American Mystery Writers: A Historical and Thematic Study. (And in later classes, I would also draw heavily in the classroom on a Sisters in Crime project which Frankie helped prepare: “Report for Change: The 2016 SinC Publishing Summit Report on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the Mystery Community.”)
Needless to say—and as that person who overheard our conversation knew too—in addition to Frankie’s research and scholarship and nonfiction writing, she’s a fiction writer too! She’s written novels in two series—one featuring amateur sleuth Lizzie Stuart, another with Albany police detective Hannah McCabe—and a number of short stories, including the one she’s discussing here today.
Frankie’s essay on her story “Love Happy” is the final in a series featuring contributors to the new anthology Monkey Business: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Films of the Marx Brothers, edited by Josh Pachter and published by Untreed Reads. Other contributors include Donna Andrews, Jeff Cohen, Lesley A. Diehl, Brendan DuBois, Terence Faherty, Barb Goffman, Joseph Goodrich, Robert Lopresti, Sandra Murphy, Robert J. Randisi, Marilyn Todd, Joseph S. Walker, and Pachter himself.
I hope you enjoy Frankie’s essay below, and do check back on the previous essays in this series from Monkey Business contributors Jeff Cohen on “Horse Feathers” and Robert J. Randisi on “Go West.”
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.
Bailey-Love-Happy
