Art Taylor's Blog, page 48

Saturday, December 7: SinC Author Extravaganza!

On Saturday, December 7th, I’ll be joining 20 mystery authors from Northern Virginia, DC, and Maryland for an annual extravaganza hosted by the Chesapeake Chapter of Sisters in Crime. The fun kicks off at 1 p.m. at the Reston Regional Library, 11925 Bowman Towne Dr, Reston, VA. (You can also find the FB event page here.)

Here’s the list of participating authors—I’m there toward the end!

William AdeDonna AndrewsE.A. AymarMark BerginEllen ButlerMaya CorriganBarb GoffmanSherry HarrisEleanor Cawood JoneLibby KleinMaureen Klovers Tara Laskowski Con LehanEileen McIntireAlan OrloffJosh PachterColleen ShogaArt TaylorGrace ToppingCathy WileyStacy Woodson

Scrawl Books, a terrific indie bookstore based in Reston, will be on hand to sell books by participating authors—and we’ll be glad to sign those books too, of course!

And stay tuned—because the next day in Fairfax, I’ll be joining another group of writers (some overlap!) for the launch of the new Crime Travel anthology. You can find info on that event here!

The First Two Pages: “Two Hundred Miles” by Margaret Lucke

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.

Rounding out a short series featuring contributors to the anthology Fault Lines: Stories by Northern California Crime Writers, I’m glad to welcome the collection’s editor, Margaret Lucke, to talk about her own story in the book, “Two Hundred Miles.” Reading the essay myself, two things stood out to me. First, I was intrigued that the first two pages of her story are, in fact, nearly half of the story’s full length—interesting to see how much is packed into such a short space. Second, I appreciated Lucke’s emphasis that though she is the editor here, she hadn’t chosen her own story for the collection; instead the story was picked by a committee who read the submissions. Many ways to work an anthology, of course, but always interesting to hear how certain stories find their way in.

In addition to her editing duties, Margaret also writes widely—as the author of four novels in two different series and of more than sixty short pieces, including stories and articles and (I’m fascinated!) scripts for mystery weekends. Such fun! Her novel A Relative Stranger was a finalist for the Anthony Award for Best First Novel, and a second novel, Snow Angel, continues that series. Her upcoming book House of Desire follows up House of Whispers—each with focus on “love, ghosts, and murder.” You can find out more about all her work at her website: www.margaretlucke.com.

In addition to the essay below, check out the earlier essays by contributors to Fault Lines: Deborah Lacy on “Please See Me,” Ana Brazil on “Kate Chopin Tussles with a Novel Ending,” and Susan Kuchinskas on “No Fault Murder.”

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.

Lucke-Two-Hundred

Festival Announcements, A Launch Party, and More!

While there are a couple of events coming up in early December—including the Sisters in Crime Author Extravaganza on Saturday, December 7, and the Crime Travel Launch Party on Sunday the 8th, both in Northern Virginia—this past week has brought announcements of two festivals in March 2020 that I’m thrilled to be a part of: the Virginia Festival of the Book in Charlottesville and the High Road Festival of Poetry and Short Fiction in Winston-Salem, NC.

Also planned this past week: the launch party for The Boy Detective & the Summer of ’74 and Other Tales of Suspense—sharing the stage with Amber Sparks, author of And I Do Not Forgive You: Stories and Other Revenges, with Tara Laskowski interviewing each of us—on Saturday, February 29, at One More Page Books in Arlington, VA. Yay!

Here’s a quick run-down of these upcoming events—with more details to come!

Saturday, December 7, 2019



Author Showcase, Sisters in Crime Chesapeake Chapter, Reston Regional Library, 11925 Bowman Towne Drive, Reston, VA • 1 p.m.



Sunday, December 8, 2019



Book Launch: Crime Travel, Barnes & Noble, 12193 Fair Lakes Promenade Drive, Fairfax, VA • 1 p.m.



Saturday, February 29, 2020



Short Story Extravaganza, including the book launch for The Boy Detective & the Summer of ’74 and Other Tales of Suspense, and a conversation with Amber Sparks, author of And I Do Not Forgive You: Stories and Other Revenges, and Tara Laskowski, author of One Night Gone and two short story collections, One More Page Books & More, 2200 N Westmoreland Street, Arlington, VA • time tbd



Thursday-Sunday, March 18-22



Virginia Festival of the Book, Charlottesville, VA



Saturday, March 28, 2020



Seminar: “Something Is Going to Happen,” High Road Festival of Poetry and Short Fiction, Embassy Suites, 460 North Cherry Street, Winston-Salem, NC • 3:45 p.m.

Bouchercon Anthology 2020

I’m so thrilled that Michele Drier, Holly West, and the other organizers of Bouchercon 2020 have invited me to serve as the editor of next year’s conference anthology—California Schemin’!

It was one of the honors of my career to edit the Raleigh Bouchercon anthology Murder Under the Oaks in 2015, winner of the Anthony Award the next year for Best Anthology or Collection, and I’m hoping to see as many fine stories in this new anthology as that one boasted and an equally fine mix of established and up-and-coming writers.

The official call for entries is at the Bouchercon 2020 website, but glad to include those guidelines here as well:

Bouchercon 2020 Sacramento invites you to submit a short story for the conference anthology, California Schemin’, to be published for Bouchercon 2020, October 15-18, 2020, in Sacramento, California.

California Schemin’—Bouchercon Anthology 2020 will feature stories by the conference’s guests of honor:  Scott Turow, Walter Mosley, Anne Perry, Anthony Horowitz, Cara Black, and Catriona McPherson. Editing the anthology will be Art Taylor—winner of the Agatha, Anthony, Derringer, Edgar, and Macavity Awards for his own short fiction. The collection will be published by Wildside Press in late September 2020, with all profits from book sales donated to 916 Ink, a creative writing nonprofit that provides workshops for students grades 3-12 in the Sacramento area to help “transform them into confident writers and published authors.”

The deadline for submissions will be March 1, 2020; see full guidelines below. Authors will be notified when the final selections have been made, sometime in June 2020. An announcement about contributors will be made on the Bouchercon 2020 website after all contributors have been confirmed.

Anthology authors will receive $75 and one copy of the anthology and will be invited to participate in a Bouchercon anthology panel and signing at the conference.

GENERAL GUIDELINES:

Submissions:
Submit your story as an email attachment, in Word .doc or docx, to Bconanthology2020@gmail.com.

The email subject line should read: [your last name goes here], Anthology Submission, [title of story goes here].  For example, Smith, Anthology Submission, All That Glitters Is Not Gold

All author contact information must be in the COVER EMAIL ONLY. Include your real name, your pen name (if you want the story to be published under a different name), your address, phone number, preferred e-mail address, and word count for the story.

There should be no identifying information anywhere on the story.
Stories must be original – not previously published anywhere else.

Stories should be between 1,500 and 5,500 words.

One story submission per person ONLY.

Deadline for submission is midnight on March 1, 2020. Manuscripts MUST be received by that date.

Mandatory Manuscript Guidelines:

Word count: 1,500 to 5,500. Theme: California Schemin’—following that phrase wherever it might take you.

Attach your story to the email. Word doc or docx only. There should be no identifying information in the manuscript. ALL identifying information must be in the cover email.

Use a legible standard font such as Courier or Times New Roman at 12 pt size; no fancy fonts or formatting, please. Italicize (don’t underline) words that are to be italicized.

Indent the first line of new paragraphs by a half-inch tab. Do not simply add additional spacing at the start of each paragraph.

Denote scene breaks with a centered hashtag: #.

Double-space with one-inch margins on all sides.

Questions? Contact Michele Drier, co-chair, Bouchercon 2020 . Info@bouchercon2020.org.

The First Two Pages: “No Fault Murder” by Susan Kuchinskas

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 focus on contributors to Fault Lines: Stories by Northern California Crime Writers, an anthology produced by the Northern California Chapter of Sisters in Crime. Back in May I featured Deborah Lacy with her story “Please See Me,” and last week’s essay by Ana Brazil kicked off a series spotlighting three more contributors—a series which today features Susan Kuchinskas discussing the first two pages of her story “No Fault Murder.”

Susan is a novelist, short story writer, and more. Her debut novel, Chimera Catalyst, earned an honorable mention in the science fiction category at the San Francisco Book Festival, and the sequel, Singularity Syndrome, is due out next year. Her short stories have been published at Shotgun Honey, Switchblade, and elsewhere. But as you’ll see from her website, she’s written widely outside of genre fiction as well.

For a taste of her fiction—and her thoughts on writing fiction—check out the essay below.

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.

Kuchinskas-No-Fault-Murder

The First Two Pages: “Kate Chopin Tussles with a Novel Ending” by Ana Brazil

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.

Earlier this year, I hosted Deborah Lacy at the First Two Pages with an essay on her story “Please See Me” from the anthology Fault Lines: Stories by Northern California Crime Writers. A couple of months later, Ana Brazil, another contributor, reached out to ask about hosting several more contributors to the collection—something I’m pleased to do, beginning this week with Ana herself, talking about her story “Kate Chopin Tussles with a Novel Ending.” Fault Lines is the first anthology produced by the Northern California Chapter of Sisters in Crime, and I’ll also be welcoming two other contributors in upcoming weeks: Susan Kuchinskas and Margaret Lucke, who also edited the collection.

“Kate Chopin Tussles with a Novel Ending” is Ana Brazil’s second published short story, and her third, “Miss Evelyn Nesbit Presents,” appears in the anthology Me Too Short Stories, a collection featured at the First Two Pages in October. Her debut historical mystery, Fanny Newcomb And The Irish Channel Ripper, was released by Sand Hill Review Press and won the IBPA 2018 Benjamin Franklin Gold Medal for Historical Fiction. Find out more about Ana and her work at her website: http://www.anabrazil.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.

Brazil-Kate-Chopin

Saturday, November 23: Leave No Stone Launch Party with LynDee Walker

On Saturday, November 23, my good friend LynDee Walker will celebrate the launch of her new novel Leave No Stone, the second book in her new Faith McClellan Series, at the Barnes & Noble in Richmond, VA’s Chesterfield Town Center—and I’m so honored that she’s invited me to be part of the program too! I’ll be in conversation with LynDee about the new book and the new series as well as her earlier Nichelle Clarke novels and her career in general, which has been marked by some very nice news lately!

The event begins at 2 p.m. at the Barnes & Noble, Chesterfield Town Center, 11500 Midlothian Turnpike, Richmond, VA. And here’s a quick preview of Leave No Stone too:

Shortly after a young mother mysteriously disappears, a serial killer begins leaving corpses and clues across the Texas Hill Country. Texas Ranger Faith McClellan and her mentor, veteran Ranger Archie Baxter, are assigned to the case.

But this killer is more clever—and sadistic—than any they’ve ever encountered, and the list of seemingly unrelated female victims is growing by the day—an attorney, a pastor, a stay-at-home mom. Each murder features a missing ring finger, severe head trauma, and a cryptic message carved into the corpse. But these gruesome calling cards provide more questions than answers, and with the best coroner in the state unable to identify the murder weapon, Faith and Archie are flying blind.

With the young mother still missing and a mounting body count, it’s up to Faith and Archie to solve the mystery. Before the killer strikes again…

Look forward to celebrating with LynDee on Saturday, November 23!

The First Two Pages: Graveyard Shift by Melissa Yi

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 always a pleasure to welcome a fellow SleuthSayer—fellow former SleuthSayer in both our cases!—to the First Two Pages, given that group blog’s reputation for fine writers and for quality and provocative reflection. But Melissa Yi wears even more hats than novelist and blogger. She’s also an emergency physician, a career she’s drawn on for her Hope Sze medical thrillers—the seventh of which, Graveyard Shift, was released earlier this fall. That book is the subject of her essay today, in which she also looks at the ways that one profession informs the other—and also at how she has to work differently on the page than in real life.

Yi’s novels have been named among the best Canadian suspense books by the Globe and Mail, CBC Books, and The Next Chapter. Her short fiction has also received numerous honors, including being named a finalist for both Canada’s Arthur Ellis Award and for the Derringer Award. You can find out more about her work at her website, or connect with her on both Facebook and Twitter.

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.

Yi-Graveyard-Shift

Macavity Award Win!

We’d just finished trick-or-treating and had sat down for Halloween dinner when the news from Bouchercon popped up on my phone: A Macavity Award win for “English 398: Fiction Workshop” for Best Short Story?!?! Hooray!

I’m so thrilled to be in such good company with this year’s other award winners: Lou Berney’s November Road for Best Novel, John Copenhaver’s Dodging and Burning for Best First Novel, Sujata Massey’s The Widows of Malabar Hill for the Sue Feder Memorial Award for Best Historical Mystery, and Sarah Weinman’s The Real Lolita for Best Nonfiction. Congrats to them and to all the finalists, particularly the authors of the fine contenders in the short story category: Craig Faustus Buck, Leslie Budewitz, Barb Goffman, Barry Lancet, and Gigi Pandian.

And thanks to Donna Andrews for stepping up to accept the award and to deliver my acceptance speech, which I’m pasting below.

I’m very sorry not to be at this year’s Macavity Awards presentation in person, but as the Opening Ceremonies are going on, my wife Tara and I are out trick-or-treating with our son Dashiell—who’s dressed as Bond, James Bond, complete with a white dinner jacket and a plastic martini glass in hand (juice only, shaken, not stirred).

But no matter how much candy Dash gets tonight, I guarantee that nothing could be sweeter than learning that my story “English 398: Fiction Workshop” has won this year’s Macavity Award.

Thank you to the subscribers to Mystery Readers Journal and to the members of Mystery Readers International for their support—not just for my story but also for those by Barb, Barry, Craig, Gigi, and Leslie as well, and congratulations to them again for their fine work.

Thank you also to Janet Rudolph for all that she does for the mystery community and for friendship over many years.

And thank you also to Janet Hutchings, my editor at Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, for believing in “English 398: Fiction Workshop” and for her encouragement and support of my work.

Finally: my wife Tara and I look forward to seeing everyone tomorrow when we get to Dallas—so thrilled to be arriving after such a great start to Bouchercon’s 50th year.

CrimeReads: “State of the Crime Novel”

I appreciate the various roundtables that CrimeReads has hosted in recent years in advance of major mystery conferences—panel discussions on a range of questions and featuring the finalists for each conference’s awards. I’ve been fortunate to appear on several such discussions in the past, and I’m glad to be part of the conversation on “The State of the Crime Novel” in advance of this week’s Bouchercon in Dallas.

Check out the fine group of writing contributing to that conversation here. And look forward to seeing everyone later this week!