The plot audition

Sometimes, I ask my plots to audition. I ask them to try out for their roles as novels that will dominate my life for a year or more by writing them as short stories first. Occasionally, they succeed as both. Bitter Crossing, the first Peyton Cote novel, was “Autumn’s Crossing” in the Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine.Usually, if the plot is best served as a 40-chapter meal, it becomes apparent: