Art Taylor's Blog, page 59

The First Two Pages: “The Prometheus Effect” by Teel James Glenn

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, Nikki Bonanni asked me to lead the afternoon craft session at Deadly Ink Academy, the first day of this past summer’s Deadly Ink Mystery Conference. My session focused on pacing—a crash course of sorts in plotting, escalating conflict, and more with an eye toward helping aspiring writers get going on their stories. At least that’s what I thought.

Several exercises are part of the presentation, including writing a six-sentence story and fleshing it out using dialogue, narration, description, exposition, and interiority—the latter drawn from Michael Kardos’ terrific book The Art and Craft of Fiction. Quickly, it became clear that one “aspiring writer” in the front row was nailing each exercise step after step, crafting story and scene with tremendous wit, cleverness, and precision. What could I possibly teach him? Or the several others who soon joined in with stellar contributions?

Turns out many of the workshop attendees were published authors already working at the peak of their craft: Teel James Glenn the first I mentioned above, along with Carol Gyzander, Christopher Ryan, and others who’ve since become fine friends.

Teel and I in particular bonded over a section of my powerpoint on Lester Dent’s master plot recipe—so I was thrilled when he offered to write a First Two Pages essay about one of his stories literally in the Lester Dent tradition: “The Prometheus Effect” from the anthology The New Adventures of Lynn Lash, stories featuring Dent’s early characters.

Teel has written widely across genres in both novels, anthologies, and magazines, the latter including Weird Tales, Spinetingler, SciFan, Mad, Fantasy Tales, and Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine. He’s also had wide experiences beyond writing, including “a forty-year career as a stuntman, fight choreographer, swordmaster, jouster, illustrator, storyteller, bodyguard, actor and haunted house barker.” You can find out more at his website or his blog.

In the meantime, enjoy this intro to “The Prometheus Effect”—a killer first two pages that will leave you wanting the full novella for sure.

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.

Glenn Prometheus Effect

LitHub: Classic American Crime Fiction of the 1920s

It was fun to see The Literary Hub excerpt my Washington Independent Review of Books review of Leslie Klinger’s latest book—the annotated Classic American Crime Fiction of the 1920s. I’m in good company with reviews by Michael Dirda at the Washington Post and Steve Donoghue at Open Letters Review. (…though I’ll admit, neither my editor, Holly Smith, or I thought of my review as a flat-out “rave,” as LitHub tagged it.)

See the round-up here.

Podcast Interview: Tell the Damn Story

Back at Deadly Ink, Christopher Ryan and I sat down for a short chat on writing, teaching, and more—part of his podcast series Tell the Damn Story. The interview is now up here—and hope people enjoy!

Chris is a fine writer across a wide range of genres and forms: crime thrillers, including City of Woe, part of the larger City series; pulp adventures featuring Blackjack in collaboration with Alex Simmons, (co-host of the podcast); YA novels, including Genius High; children’s books, such as The Ferguson Files; and much more!

Check out Chris’s website for more complete information—and stay tuned for Chris’s appearance at my own website as part of the First Two Pages series early next year!

The First Two Pages: Murder With All the Trimmings by Shawn Reilly Simmons

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.

Now that we’re past Thanksgiving, it’s officially OK to look toward December holidays, right? This past weekend, Turkey Day behind us but plenty of leftovers still in the fridge, our son Dash had us unpacking all the Christmas decorations and putting up the tree—carols blasting at full volume. And my wife Tara and I broke out an anthology of Christmas mysteries too. ’Tis the season, after all!

All that in mind, I’m glad to welcome my good friend Shawn Reilly Simmons to the First Two Pages, celebrating her new novel, Murder With All the Trimmings, the sixth book in her Red Carpet Catering Mystery series—this one with caterer Penelope Sutherland home for the holidays and investigating the death of one of the Big Apple Dancers on the eve of the annual Christmas Extravaganza. Can the holidays be saved?

Shawn and I first met at the annual Malice Domestic convention, which Shawn helps to organize and run—so smoothly always!—and we’ve been friends for many years, bonding over our love of mysteries, celebrating one another’s successes, and sharing stories about parenting young boys: our Dash just a bit younger than Shawn’s son Russell. And speaking of Dash, I’ll never forget his first visit to Malice, when Shawn presented him with a little welcome bag full of fun toys—brightening his day and ours as well.

Dash, Tara, Tara’s mom Ann, and I braved the elements to attend Shawn’s launch party when Henery Press published the first two Red Carpet Catering books—Murder on a Silver Platter and Murder on the Half Shell. All of us have been thrilled with how the series has progressed since then. And I’m constantly amazed at how Shawn does all she does: writing, parenting, Malice Domestic, and her latest role as one of the editors at Level Best Books too!

In the essay here, Shawn offers a glimpse at Murder With All the Trimmings. No better way to kick off the holidays!

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.

Simmons Trimmings

The First Two Pages at the Washington Independent Review of Books

For my latest column at the Washington Independent Review of Books, I look back at the last year of hosting the First Two Pages, the blog series started by the late B.K. (Bonnie) Stevens. Here’s a glimpse at the essay:

Bonnie herself was a master short-story writer and a fine novelist, and she thought deeply about craft. As much as I admired her work on its own terms, that appreciation was deepened further whenever she talked about her goals for a piece and how she implemented those goals.

I can’t help but think that our friendship with one another deepened because of many shared thoughts about the craft of writing — including, for example, our mutual love of Edgar Allan Poe’s theories about the importance of the single effect in short fiction. For a great introduction to Bonnie’s excellent short fiction, please do check out her collection Her Infinite Variety: Tales of Women and Crime from Maryland-based Wildside Press.

With “The First Two Pages,” Bonnie gave writers an opportunity to reflect on their own aesthetic preferences and choices; gave other writers access to perspectives and strategies that might inspire and enhance their own writing; and gave readers a glance inside the machinery of stories they’d admired.

Read the full post here.

Sisters in Crime Mystery Author Extravaganza—Saturday, December 1

The Chesapeake Chapter of Sisters in Crime is hosting its annual end-of-year Mystery Author Extravaganza on Saturday, December 1—this year with some extra extravaganzaness: 26 authors taking part! And I’m pleased to be one of them, along with my wife, Tara Laskowski, too.

This year’s event is at the Reston Regional Library, 11925 Bowman Towne Drive, Reston, VA, and the program starts at 1 p.m.—with book sales gearing up a half-hour before that, thanks to Tom and Kathy Harig of Mystery Loves Company, one of our favorite local booksellers and a great supporter of our region’s mystery community.

Each author will have a couple of minutes to share information about their publications and other news this year. I’ll be talking, for example, about a couple of stories I published, including “English 398: Fiction Workshop” in the July/August issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.

In addition to my wife and me, participating authors include William Ade, Donna Andrews, E.A. Aymar, Karen Cantwell, Maya Corrigan, Barb Goffman, Sherry Harris, Eleanor Cawood Jones, Libby Klein, Maureen Klovers, Eileen McIntire, Adam Meyer, Melinda Mullett, Alan Orloff, Josh Pachter, Shari Randall, Susan Reiss, Verena Rose, Colleen Shogan, Shawn Reilly Simmons, Lane Stone, Robin Templeton, Cathy Wiley, and Stacy Woodson.

We look forward to seeing many friends, fellow writers, and fans there!

 

Blast from the Past, Still Relevant Today?

Two Thanksgivings ago, right after the 2016 election (perhaps some people remember it?), I wrote a column for the Washington Independent Review of Books about how how to survive the holidays ahead.

I was thinking about the column earlier this week, and then this morning, my friend Becky Muth shared it on Facebook—adding that it was still relevant this holiday season and, in her words, “lots of days besides Thanksgiving too.”

you can find the column hereChiming in, my editor at the WIROB has said she’ll post again tomorrow, and —with suggestions about what to read, what to eat, what to drink, and more.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

The First Two Pages: Duty, Honor, Hammett by Stacy Woodson

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.

In the latest issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Stacy Woodson makes her fiction debut with “Duty, Honor, Hammett” in the magazine’s Department of First Stories—joining a distinguished history of writers that includes Charles Ardai, Laura Benedict, David Dean, Brendan DuBois, Martin Edwards, Stanley Ellin, Jack Finney, Harry Kemelman, William Link & Richard Levinson, David Morrell, Nancy Pickard, and James Yaffe, among many others (the many others including yours truly too, a fact for which I’m regularly grateful).

I was particularly excited about Stacy’s debut story for a number of reasons. Stacy’s a member of our local chapter of Sisters in Crime, the Chesapeake Chapter, and so we run into one another pretty regularly at events. I first met her at Malice Domestic a couple of years ago, and if memory serves, it was after a short story panel, so good to see her succeeding so well in the short story market already. And in terms of the story here—centered in part on Dashiell Hammett’s grave in Arlington Cemetery—I’m a big Hammett fan myself: our son’s name is Dashiell, and we visited the author’s grave ourselves with him a couple of years ago, so the subject matter piqued my interest as soon as Stacy told me about it.

“Duty, Honor, Hammett” was the first story I read when the new EQMM arrived, and a fine story it is—as you’ll begin to understand yourself from her essay below.

Stacy already has three other short stories coming out over the next couple of years—another in EQMM and two in anthologies: Malice Domestic’s Mystery Most Edible and the Chesapeake Crimes anthology Invitation to Murder. You can find out more about Stacy and her work at www.stacywoodson.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.

Woodson Duty Honor Hammett

Hosting at House of Clues!

I’ll be hosting the group chat at House of Clues, a fun new Facebook group, on Monday, November 19. House of Clues gathers a group of writers published by Henery Press, and connects those writers and readers in a discussion on all things crime fiction and more!

Not sure yet exactly what direction the conversation might go in, but guaranteed that short fiction will be one of my topics, plus classic crime fiction, teaching mysteries in the classroom, and maybe even the holidays ahead!

Oh! And I’m planning three giveaways: a signed copy of On the Road with Del & Louise, a signed copy of the Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine featuring my latest story, and copies of two short story collections by my wife, Tara Laskowski .

Looking forward to a fun day at House of Clues—and thanks to Cynthia Kuhn, a good friend and Agatha Award-winning author, for helping to organize all this!

 

Classic American Crime Fiction of the 1920s in the Washington Independent Review of Books

I was super-excited when news broke about Leslie Klinger’s latest project: an annotated edition of five key novels of the 1920s, four featuring iconic sleuths—Charlie Chan, Philo Vance, Ellery Queen, and Continental Op—and the final, Little Caesar, introducing a milestone gangster. When the Washington Independent Review of Books offered me the chance to review it, how could I resist?

That review is up today—with a slight focus on Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest, one of my own favorite novels and one that I teach regularly at George Mason University.

Here’s an excerpt from the review:

Klinger is one of the world’s leading authorities on the mystery genre, and this volume follows much of the approach and format of his landmark three-volume The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, published just over a decade ago.

Klinger’s foreword to this new collection offers a concise but comprehensive history of crime writing — both fiction and nonfiction — in the U.S., England, and beyond. He discusses the evolution of the genre from early true-crime writings, Gothic novels, and more through Poe’s pivotal role and into the 20th century.

Along the way, he spotlights leading figures in the tradition — Arthur Conan Doyle, Katharine Green, Mary Roberts Rinehart, and others — and discusses the emphasis on puzzle mysteries as well as the intersections of crime writing and social documentary.

For each of the works featured in the collection, Klinger offers mini essays mixing biography, critical appraisal, and publication history — and he puts his role as historian and critic above simply being an enthusiast for these titles.

Read the full article here.