Art Taylor's Blog, page 9

Suffolk Mystery Authors Festival • Saturday, March 16

I’ll be celebrating my birthday this year by interviewing my good friend Donna Andrews as the headline event at the Suffolk Mystery Authors Festival—one of our favorite mystery events and such a thrill to be part of the program again in 2024!

This year’s festival takes place Saturday, March 16, at the Suffolk Conference Center, adjacent to the Hilton Garden Inn on the beautiful Suffolk Riverfront, 100 East Constance Road, Suffolk, Virginia. And here’s the schedule for the day—though need to point out that the VIP Reception has already sold out!

11:30am-12:45pm
VIP Reception (PRIVATE)
Advance Tickets Required; Limited Space; Includes Private Meet & Greet with Featured Authors, refreshments, souvenir ticket, and a festival swag bag full of goodies/books! 

1:00pm
Festival Opens to the General Public

1:00-1:50pm
Opening Session:
Interview of Donna Andrews, Headliner, by Art Taylor

1:00-6:00pm
Featured Author Signings
Meet the authors and have your books signed! A limited number of books by each author will be available for purchase. Attendees are welcome to bring their own copies of books for signing. 

2:00-3:00pm
Panel #1: Woman of the People: Inspiring Female Characters

Single mothers, cops, attorneys, journalists, everyday women—today’s heroines balance relationships and careers…and often rescue themselves. Whether you’re looking for a heartwarming romance, a thrilling mystery, or a thought-provoking drama, discover how these exceptional authors are redefining the genre and creating empowered female protagonists. 

Moderator: Shawn Reilly Simmons
Featuring:  Courtney G. Foutz; Kristin Kisska;
​K.L. Murphy, Nancy Naigle, and Christine Trent

3:15-4:15pm
Panel #2: Nerve Shredders: Crime Fiction To Keep You Up At Night

Are you a fan of mystery novels that keep you on the edge of your seat? Do you want to know how writers come up with unforgettable villains and create plots that feel like they were ripped straight from the headlines? Fans of thrilling suspense, nail-biting mysteries, and captivating investigations won’t want to miss out as these talented writers discuss their craft, share insights into their creative process, and answer your burning questions.  

Moderator:  E.A. Aymar
Featuring:  Lee Clark; ​Sara E. Johnson; Hugh Lessig;
​Rick Pullen; and Stacy Woodson

4:30-5:30pm
Panel #3: Cozy Does It: The Quirky Small Town Detective

If you’re a fan of Agatha Christie or JB Fletcher, you know the amateur sleuth is more popular than ever. Curl up with a cup of tea and lose yourself in the charming and suspenseful world of cozy mysteries. From the charming settings to the eccentric characters, learn from these dynamic cozy authors what makes a killer mystery that will keep readers guessing until the very end. 

Moderator:  Grace Topping
Featuring:  Melissa Bourbon; ​Amy Patricia Meade;
​Mindy Quigley; and Cathy Wiley

6:00pm
Festival Closes to the General Public

The First Two Pages: “Razing the Bar” by Leigh Lundin

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 our fourth and final essay celebrating Murder, Neat: A SleuthSayers Anthology, it’s a true honor to welcome one of the founding members of the SleuthSayers blog, Leigh Lundin, introducing his story “Razing the Bar.” Here, as with his blog posts (and behind the scenes, with his monthly emails to the SleuthSayers family), Leigh reveals his trademark mix of wit and irreverence and thoughtfulness. Even his bio is a joy to read! I won’t spoil any of that until you check it out yourself; instead, I’ll just focus on his short story publications in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and more—a distinguished career.

The essay below follows on the heels of David Edgerley Gates writing about his story “Shuffle Off to Buffalo,” Melodie Campbell on “The Mob, the Model, and the College Reunion” and Lawrence Maddox on “Deep Time.”

And in addition to those four from the SleuthSayers family, Murder, Neat also features short fiction by co-editors Michael Bracken and Barb Goffman and Joseph D’Agnese, David Dean, O’Neil De Noux, Eve Fisher, John M. Floyd, Kristin Kisska, Janice Law, R.T. Lawton, Steve Liskow, Robert Lopresti, Bob Mangeot. Travis Richardson, Stephen Ross, Mark Thielman, Brian Thornton, Jim Winter, and Elizabeth Zelvin—plus my own story, courtesy of being a SleuthSayers alum.

Do check out the full anthology here—and congratulations again to all the contributors!

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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The First Two Pages: “Shuffle Off to Buffalo” by David Edgerley Gates

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 Two Pages continues a celebration of the new anthology Murder, Neat with an essay below by David Edgerley Gates on his story “Shuffle Off to Buffalo”—following up on essays these last two weeks by Melodie Campbell on “The Mob, the Model, and the College Reunion” and Lawrence Maddox on “Deep Time.” David is a terrific author whose short fiction has been nominated for the Edgar, Shamus, and Thriller Awards and been anthologized in the Best American Mystery Stories series four (four!) times. His recent work includes the spy novella The Kingdom of Wolves (I’m a big fan of David’s espionage stories myself), and he’s currently writing a Western gothic, The Misfortunes of Octavio Medina. Find out more about his work at his website.

Murder, Neat, edited by Michael Bracken and Barb Goffman, was released February 13 and features writers from the group blog SleuthSayers, including (in addition to the folks already mentioned) stories by Joseph D’Agnese, David Dean, O’Neil De Noux, Eve Fisher, John M. Floyd, Kristin Kisska, Janice Law, R.T. Lawton, Steve Liskow, Robert Lopresti, Leigh Lundin, Bob Mangeot. Travis Richardson, Stephen Ross, Mark Thielman, Brian Thornton, Jim Winter, and Elizabeth Zelvin—and I’m pleased to have a story in there as well, thanks to being a SleuthSayers alum.

Hope you enjoy David’s fun essay below—and stay tuned for more one more contributor from Murder, Neat next week! In the meantime, be sure and check out the full anthology 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.

Gates-Shuffle

The First Two Pages: “Deep Time” by Lawrence Maddox

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.

We’re continuing a series of First Two Pages essays by contributors to Murder, Neat, a new anthology edited by and featuring writers from the group blog SleuthSayers and centered on the theme of drinking establishments. Last week, we welcomed Melodie Campbell on “The Mob, the Model, and the College Reunion,” and this week, Lawrence Maddox chats about “Deep Time”—and about the joys (and perils!) of the con job. Oh, and there’s a little bit about time travel too. Maybe.

Lawrence’s fiction has appeared in the anthologies Orange County Noir and 44 Caliber Funk: Tales of Crime, Soul, and Payback; he’s the author of the novella Fast Bang Booze; and more recently, he contributed another novella, The Down and Out, to Frank Zafiro’s series A Grifter’s Song, from Down and Out Books. He also scripted the Hong Kong kickboxing flick Raw Target, and the indie musical Open House.

Murder, Neat, edited by Michael Bracken and Barb Goffman, also features stories by Joseph D’Agnese, David Dean, O’Neil De Noux, Eve Fisher, John M. Floyd, David Edgerley Gates, Kristin Kisska, Janice Law, R.T. Lawton, Steve Liskow, Robert Lopresti, Leigh Lundin, Lawrence Maddox, Bob Mangeot. Travis Richardson, Stephen Ross, Mark Thielman, Brian Thornton, Jim Winter, and Elizabeth Zelvin—and I’m included as well, thanks to being a SleuthSayers alum.

Congratulations to all the contributors, and thanks to Melodie and Lawrence for offering essays on their stories. Stay tuned for more previews of Murder, Neat over the next couple of weeks. And be sure and check out the full anthology 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.

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The First Two Pages: “The Mob, the Model, and the College Reunion” by Melodie Campbell

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.

February 13 is publication day for Murder, Neat, a new anthology edited by and featuring contributors to SleuthSayers, a group blog that’s home to some of the finest short story writers at work in the mystery genre today. Michael Bracken and Barb Goffman helmed the collection, and each of them penned stories as well, alongside short fiction by Melodie Campbell, Joseph D’Agnese, David Dean, O’Neil De Noux, Eve Fisher, John M. Floyd, David Edgerley Gates, Kristin Kisska, Janice Law, R.T. Lawton, Steve Liskow, Robert Lopresti, Leigh Lundin, Lawrence Maddox, Bob Mangeot. Travis Richardson, Stephen Ross, Mark Thielman, Brian Thornton, Jim Winter, and Elizabeth Zelvin. And hey! I’m pleased to be included as well, thanks to being a SleuthSayers alum and still-occasional guest writer.

To help celebrate the anthology, I’ll be hosting essays by several contributors, beginning with Melodie Campbell on her story “The Mob, the Model, and the College Reunion.”

Melodie is the author of more than 60 short stories in addition to her 17 novels, and her work has won ten awards, including the Derringer from the Short Mystery Fiction Society and the Arthur Ellis in Canada. Her latest book is The Merry Widow Murders from Cormorant Books, already praised as “the high society flair of Death on the Nile meets a 1920s ocean liner.” You can connect with Melodie at her FaceBook page here.

Stay tuned for more previews of Murder, Neat over the next few weeks. And be sure and check out the full anthology 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.

Campbell-Murder-Neat

“Two For One” in Murder, Neat

Murder, Neat: A SleuthSayers Anthology features short fiction by members of the group blog SleuthSayers, whose contributors include some of the best short story writers in the genre. Edited by Michael Bracken and Barb Goffman, the collection features 24 stories, all touching on drinking and drinking establishments of some kind—”from dive bars to wineries.”

I’m proud to be a SleuthSayers alum—not in the rotation anymore but with occasional guest posts—and so pleased to be included in the new collection. My own story, “Two for One,” follows a woman who’s wanting a little more adventure in her life—both gustatory and with gusto in romantic directions too. But as she tries to break free of some of the routines she and her boyfriend have established, will she end up biting off more than she can chew? …or to keep with the anthology’s title, end up sipping more than she can savor?

Murder, Neat is published by Level Short, an imprint of Level Best Books, and will be on sale February 13—just in time for Valentine’s Day.

Watch the SleuthSayers blog for previews of the stories—and stay tuned for a series of First Two Pages essays by several of the contributors as well, beginning on release day!

AWP Panel: “It’s a Crime! Genre Fiction’s Bad Rap (Sheet) in Academia’s Mean Streets”

I’m joining Richie Narvaez, Edwin Hill, and David Heska Wanbli Weiden on a panel about teaching crime fiction at this year’s AWP Conference in Kansas City. “It’s a Crime! Genre Fiction’s Bad Rap (Sheet) in Academia’s Mean Streets” will take place on Thursday, February 8, at 1:45 p.m. in Room 3501AB of the Kansas City Convention Center (Level 3).

Here’s the write-up:

Crime fiction has often struggled to be taken seriously in literature classes and creative writing workshops, even as the students themselves are avid fans of suspense, thrillers, true crime podcasts, and more. Professors who teach crime fiction as literature (class, race, and social justice as thematic cores) or use it as models for aspiring writers (plotting, pacing, getting readers to turn the page) explore the genre’s strengths for academia and offer tips on bringing it into the classroom.

For more information, and a brief panel outline, check out the event description at the AWP site.

I’ll also be hanging out some at the George Mason University/Watershed Lit booth—and thrilled with some of the other Mason faculty and alums who are part of the event line-up as well, including the other panel on crime fiction! Check out that information here.

See you in Kansas City!

“We Keep The Wall Between Us As We Go” in Mystery Tribune

Warring neighbors, clashing perspectives, and a journey back to the heart of their conflict. Taking its title from a line in Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall,” my story “We Keep The Wall Between Us As We Go” appears in the latest issue of Mystery Tribune.

But no fences needed within the issue, because I’m in great company with short fiction by friends including Reed Farrel Coleman, Jeff Markowitz, and Alan S. Orloff as well as Nick Petrie, Sharon Hunt, Albert Kanach; essays, interviews and reviews by Heather Levy, Zakariah Johnson, and Dale Davis; and a preview of the new graphic novel “Where The Body Was” by award-winning duo Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips.

Check out Mystery Tribune number 21—great cover, great contents, and I’m thrilled to be part of the package!

The First Two Pages: The County Line by Steve Weddle

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.

Like so many others in the crime fiction world, I’ve been eagerly anticipating Steve Weddle’s new novel, The County Line, officially released February 1—a long-awaited follow-up to his 2013 debut book, Country Hardball, a novel-in-stories that the New York Times called “downright dazzling.” I loved that first book, taught it in my “Crossing Genres” course at George Mason University soon after it was published, and was grateful to Steve for Skyping in to talk to the class. (And right there’s an indication of how long we’ve been waiting for this new book, Steve—Skype!) Two years ago at Do Some Damage, Steve teased us with a glimpse at his work-in-progress, then called Cottonmouth Tomlin and the Last Outlaw Camp, and then in January of this year, The County Line was an Amazon Reads pick, and preview readers sent the book soaring up several Amazon bestseller lists: literary fiction, historical fiction, heist, romance (romance?!), and more.

Eryk Pruitt hosted Steve for an interview at Do Some Damage earlier this month, and it’s a real honor to welcome Steve here today for another kind of preview of the new novel—an essay of how he’s bringing readers into the world of the novel and glimpsing at the conflicts ahead.

Eagerly awaiting February 1!

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.

Weddle-First-Two-Pages-TCL

The First Two Pages: “Rendering” by Sophia Lynch

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, the First Two Pages hosted one author’s debut in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine: James D.F. Hannah writing about “A Tear in His Hand.” This week, we host another debut: Sophia Lynch with her story “Rendering.” But there’s a significant difference. While Hannah has already distinguished himself with short fiction elsewhere, “Rendering” is Lynch’s first published story ever—appearing in EQMM’s Department of First Stories, a section of the magazine that has hosted an all-star group of writers over its history: the creators of Columbo and Murder, She Wrote (William Link & Richard Levinson), the father of Rambo (David Morrell), the author of The Body Snatcher (Jack Finney) and the current president England’s Detection Club (Martin Edwards) as well as Charles Ardai, Laura Benedict, David Dean, Brendan DuBois, Stanley Ellin, Harry Kemelman, Nancy Pickard, James Yaffe, and many others who’s gone on to great things. (I debuted there too, I should add.)

No pressure, Sophia…

…though honestly, both her story and her essay below show such confidence and such careful perceptiveness (about self, about storytelling, about people, about the world) that there’s no doubt that “Rendering” is the first step in a very promising career. You’ll find out more about Lynch in the essay itself, but as she writes in the bio at essay’s end, “keep an eye out. She’ll be around.”

While the Department of First Stories is regularly one of the first sections of EQMM I seek out, what also caught my here was the editor’s note that Lynch had written this story while a student of Scott Loring Sanders’ and that he’d recommended her EQMM‘s way. I’ve admired Scott’s work for many years and we’ve often corresponded, so it was good to see that connection, and I share his joy in recommending students’ work to magazines whenever I can help—a great feeling to see stories go from the classroom into publication. With EQMM in particular, I’ve been thrilled to have two of the students I’ve worked with get work accepted for this Department: Michael Hock, who wrote here about “The Artisan-Cheese Incident” and… oh, but I’m not sure that news has been announced yet. Stay tuned for another First Two Pages sometime ahead!

And in the meantime, congratulations to Sophia Lynch on the new story—the first of many 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.

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