Art Taylor's Blog, page 39

The First Two Pages: “The Dark House Down the Street” by Richard Helms

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 a second week at the First Two Pages, I’m welcoming a contributor to the new anthology Writers Crushing COVID-19: An Anthology for Coronavirus Relief, edited by Lawrence Kelter, with proceeds benefitting the Book Industry Charitable Foundation. Last week, Lynn Chandler Willis introduced her story “The Cough,” and this week, Richard Helms talks about “The Dark House Down the Street.” I didn’t realize when I scheduled these posts, but both writers live in my own home state of North Carolina—and in fact, another writer with NC ties (I won’t name who) confused me with Rick several years ago, long enough ago that I don’t remember the details about how we got confused.

But no worries about that confusion, given Rick’s fine resume as a writer, including twenty novels, a Thriller Award, two Derringer Awards, and numerous other nominations for those awards and other prizes. His latest successes? His new novel, Brittle Karma, comes out in October, and that same month will see the publication of this year’s Best American Mystery Stories, which includes Rick’s story “See Humble and Die” from The Eyes of Texas.

Enjoy Rick’s essay below on his story for Writers Crushing COVID-19, and stay tuned next week for Scott Adlerberg’s essay on his story for another COVID-19 anthology, Lockdown: Stories of Crime, Terror, and Hope During a Pandemic, edited by Nick Kolakowski and Steve Weddle.

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.

The First Two Pages: “The Cough” by Lynn Chandler Willis

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’ll admit it: As the coronavirus has upended everything about life in the United States and around the world, I’ve been finding it hard to do most anything—especially write. With that in mind, I’m doubly amazed at the writers who have not only kept writing but have written stories directly in response to this crisis—and amazed too at the editors who have already shepherded into print short story anthologies about COVID-19. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be featuring contributors to two such anthologies: Writers Crushing COVID-19: An Anthology for Coronavirus Relief, edited by Lawrence Kelter, and Lockdown: Stories of Crime, Terror, and Hope During a Pandemic, edited by Nick Kolakowski and Steve Weddle. Both are charity anthologies, with proceeds benefiting the Book Industry Charitable Foundation, and both feature stellar line-ups of writers—just click through the links above to see for yourself!

Today, Lynn Chandler Willis talks about her story “The Cough” from the first of these anthologies. Lynn is the author of the Ava Logan mystery series, which includes Tell Me No Lies, Tell Me No Secrets, and Tell Me You Love Me. Her tagline is “Small Towns, Big Characters”—and her essay on “The Cough” focuses on both sides of that slogan, as you’ll see below. Check out more of Lynn’s work at her website 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.

Willis-Cough

Review & Interview: Thanks to Mark Stevens

Thanks to Mark Stevens for his review of The Boy Detective & The Summer of ’74 in Colorado’s Four Corners Free Press—and for kindness and enthusiasm both for the book and for my writing in general! I particularly appreciated these lines: “Taylor writes like a kid who just discovered the mystery/suspense sandbox, quickly recognizes that most of the cool stuff has already been sculpted, and decides to simultaneously mimic and reimagine what’s already in place. The results are highly original. Taylor shifts tone, voice, and narrative style with ease.”

As a companion to the review, Mark interviewed me for his blog—and I appreciated both his thoughtful questions and his indulgence with my long answers to those questions too! You can find that interview here.

And do check out Mark’s work as well at his website—both a terrific novelist and a fine short story writer too.

The First Two Pages: “The Red Taxi” by Ted Burge

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.

Each summer Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine publishes the winner of The Wolfe Pack’s Black Orchid Novella Award; this year, AHMM‘s July/August features a very special winner, since Ted Burge’s “The Red Taxi” is also the author’s first published story! It’s also a unique tale because of its futuristic setting—something the story balances while also paying tribute to canonical elements of the Nero Wolfe novels and stories, as you’ll see in the essay below. As Burge’s bio says, he works with “a team that makes visual effects tools used by artists creating video game cinematics.” But as this award-winning story promises, there’s a career ahead for Burge as a mystery writer 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.

Burge-Taxi

Contemporary Literary Criticism: Elizabeth Hand

Though I share regularly about some of my courses and my teaching, I don’t often talk here about my other work in academia—some of it more routine; recently, for example, I’ve been a peer reviewer on a journal article, and I’m working now to review a tenure application by a professor whose work overlaps somewhat with my own. But I’m pleased to share here a bit of scholarly work I participated in last year—serving as a consultant for a selection of essays on Elizabeth Hand in Contemporary Literary Criticism, volume 448, which was just recently published.

I greatly admire Elizabeth Hand’s work, particularly her Cass Neary novels, which I’ve taught in my literature classes at Mason, and it was an honor to be invited to help compile a series of previously published critical essays focused on her larger career, ranging from 1990’s Wintersong through the present—a diverse and exciting range of novels, novellas, short stories, and more.

This volume also includes essays on Amrita Pritam and Thomas Pynchon.

Thanks to Richard Layman for inviting me to be part of this project.

The First Two Pages: “Mala Suerte” by E. Gabriel Flores

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 best short stories provide readers a sense of a world existing beyond the page—before the first page, beyond the final one, and all along the edges as well. One of the reasons I invited E. Gabriel Flores to contribute a First Two Pages essay today was not only the strength of the first two pages of “Mala Suerte,” her latest story for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, but the power of the story’s first line: “As they drove away from the Glass Man’s house, Carmelita asked the question that had haunted her all her life.” In just a few words, this sentence gestures toward the wider world and the longer life lived—the longer life haunted (that tension)—but at the same time it dramatically emphasizes the importance of this immediate moment: Why ask this question now?

Seems easy, doesn’t it? But the next challenge is to make the rest of the story live up to the breadth and weight of that first line.

You’ll discover Carmelita’s question in the essay below and you’ll learn more about Flores’ craft choices here and throughout the story—a balancing act in many ways. And while the craft choices are of primary importance, I also loved hearing about how Flores’ personal history helped inspire this tale as well.

“Mala Suerte” is Flores’ third story for EQMM. Her first, “The Truth of the Moment,” won the 2017 Robert L. Fish Memorial Edgar Award. And she’s now working on a mystery novel as well. Find out more about her work at her website 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.

Flores-Mala

Archive: Mystery in the Midlands

For anyone who missed this past Saturday’s Mystery in the Midlands, the conference presentations were recorded and are available online now here. This specific link goes to the short story panel I was on with John M. Floyd and Tara Laskowski and our moderator Dana Kaye, but you can choose any of the other five parts of the program from this page too (upper lefthand corner under Mystery in the Midlands).

As those who did watch live already know, I encountered some pretty severe technical difficulties—disappearing myself and then unable to hear Tara at other points. Apologies again to her for interrupting her—and apologies to everyone for what I know was frustrating in many ways!

But hope everyone enjoyed the full conference—such a great time overall!

Black Cat Mystery & Science Fiction: “Restoration”

The Black Cat Mystery & Science Fiction EBook Club is showcasing my story “Restoration” this week as part of new line of short stories selected and presented by Barb Goffman. The story is available for free for Black Cat Club members or is 99 cents for non-members. (But really, you should join.)

“Restoration” was originally published in the first issue of Crime Syndicate Magazine nearly five years ago, and what’s distinctive about it here is that it meets both the “Mystery” side of the Black Cat Club and the “Science Fiction” side as well. The story examines the intersection of insurance and cloning—with the idea of “victim replacement” for families who have lost loved ones to violent crimes.

The Black Cat Mystery & Science Fiction EBook Club, presented by Wildside Press, offers free books and stories each week from the publisher’s extensive catalog, plus discounts on other purchases as well.

Find out more here—and thanks to Barb Goffman for selecting my story for her new series!

The First Two Pages: “Crow’s Nest” by John M. Floyd

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, I’m welcoming to the First Two Pages one of the finest and most prolific short story writers that I know: John M. Floyd. John’s accolades and accomplishments are many. He’s published short stories in more than 250 different magazines, journals, anthologies and more. His stories have been included in three different volumes of the Best American Mystery Stories series. He’s been an Edgar Award finalist, and the Short Mystery Fiction Society has honored him with four Derringer Awards and with the Edward D. Hoch Memorial Derringer Award for lifetime achievement. Not only is John a tremendously accomplished writer, but he’s also very thoughtful and articulate about his craft and generous with his advice in those directions too, as you can see for yourself by browsing through his regular essays at SleuthSayers.

All that would offer plenty of reasons to welcome him to the First Two Pages, but his appearance this week is especially timely, since John, Tara Laskowski, and I will be discussing short stories on panel together this Saturday, July 25, as part of the free virtual conference Mystery in the Midlands, co-hosted by the Southeastern Chapter of Mystery Writers of America and the Palmetto Chapter of Sisters in Crime. Our panel will be from 10:30-11:15 a.m.—and thanks to the organizers for the cool graphic they made for our part of the show as well! Please do register here to join us.

With that event on the horizon, I reached out to John and asked him if he could write an essay on a favorite recent story of his or one which offered some particularly good craft lessons or challenges that might be of interest. He chose “Crow’s Nest” from the January/February 2020 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Hope you’ll enjoy his reflections below on the first two pages of that story—a fine one! And check out more about John and his work at his website 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.

Floyd-Crows-Nest

July Newsletter: Awards, Recent Reads, and A Cover Reveal!

I just released my June newsletter—now a July newsletter. (Where does the time go?)

In addition to some recent news—award mentions for Tara and me, hooray!—it also includes the cover for the forthcoming Bouchercon anthology California Schemin‘, some other recent reads I’ve enjoyed lately, and a preview of upcoming events… um, event.

Check out the full newsletter here!