Introducing Gabriela Stiteler

Today we’re delighted to introduce Gabi Stiteler, who is joining our blogging team. She’s a dynamo, as those who know her can attest. Gabi moves at the speed of light, doing great work for the crime writing community. We’re excited to read her posts.

  Tell us a little about yourself? What’s your background? Are you a native Mainer? If not, how did you end up in Portland, Maine?

I was born in Pittsburgh and grew up in Northeastern PA and married into Maine. My husband’s grandparents lived in Eastport. When we had kids, we knew Maine was where we wanted to end up. We landed in Portland and love it. We live on a dead end street a few blocks from the water, the kids run around with neighborhood kids playing baseball and basketball and soccer. It’s a bonus that my mother-in-law is an amazing elementary school teacher and her husband is a retired homebuilder. They take the kids for weeks at a stretch and have helped us fix up our house. (It had been vacant for a stretch when we bought it and has needed a little TLC.)

What are your favorite things about Portland?

It’s a great place for us to raise our kids, geographically beautiful, and has an amazing arts scene. I can put a plug in for my neighborhood in particular – we have some great restaurants like Tipo and Woodfords and the Great Lost Bear, and amazing local bookstore, Backcove Books, a great coffee place at Coveside Coffee. Payson Park is always filled with activities from little league to frisbee golf to sword-fighting. And, we have a pretty great neighborhood ice cream place in Sammy Scoops. I’ve also met so many other writers and people in the writing community who go out of their way to be supportive.

Now, turning to crime writing. You’ve had the amazing accomplishment of having your very first submitted story published by Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Tell us about that story, and about how it felt to have it chosen for publication.

So I’ll start with the caveat that I have three manuscripts collecting dust in my desk drawer. Going nowhere.

My luck with short stories has been a little different. I went to Crime Bake in 2022 and was inspired to write a short story on the Downeaster from Boston to Portland. It was about a widowed woman who goes back to her home town to help an old friend who’s been arrested for matricide. (You can actually read the full story here or listen to it here.)

I put it down for a week, looked at it again, and it held up. I sent it to a writer friend who said, “Immediately submit this to Ellery Queen.” Which I did, knowing very little about short story publications. That was in January. By March, Janet Hutchings, the Editor of EQ, purchased it for the Department of First Stories. It made it to print in the September/October edition 2023 and ended up being nominated for the MWA Robert L. Fish Award at the 2024 Edgars. (The Fish Award goes to the best crime story by a first-time writer.) It also made it into the Other Distinguished category for the Best Mystery and Suspense of 2023.

All of which is a little bananas.

What has your publication success been like since then?

I’ve experienced a bit of success since. My short stories have been accepted by publications that include Alfred Hitchcock and Ellery Queen. I’ve also found homes for stories in anthologies like The Best of NE Crime Writing, At the Edge of Darkness: Shotgun Honey Anthology, and Dark Waters (volume 2).

I’ve learned a lot about the process. Different publications move at different speeds. For example, Alfred Hitchcock took over a year to review each of the stories I submitted, which I understand to be pretty normal for the publication. Ellery Queen is usually a little faster. Rejections come more quickly than acceptances. All three of my Ellery Queen acceptances have come between 3 and 4 months.

After a story is purchased, it can take another year for the story to make it to print. For example, I submitted a story to Alfred Hitchcock in March of 2023. Linda Landrigan got back to me in August of 2024 to purchase it. I just learned that it will come out in the March/April Ed for 2025. So that’s two years out from when I originally submitted the story.

So far, you’ve published numerous short stories. One might say you are a short story queen. Do you plan to publish long works as well? Are you working on something?

I’m definitely experiencing a lot of luck with my short stories. But royalty? Stephen Rogers, the MWA NE Chapter president has over 800 short stories floating around. And there’s Barb Goffman. And Michael Bracken. And, you know, Joyce Carol Oates.

I have a notebook full of ideas for longer stories, but am living life in little bites right now because of my work schedule and my children.

As for what I’m working on right now? I have this brilliant idea to work my way through all of the classic tropes of crime writing. Noir. Procedural. PI. Sherlockian. Locked door. Cozy. Historical. Domestic suspense. Thriller. Traditional. You name it and I want to try it. It’s like a love letter to the genre.

Accepted but not published: AHMM has a story called “Quick Turnaround” about a “fixer” who becomes obsessed with a missing woman – out in March 2025. EQMM has two stories. “The Usual Reasons” is with Annie, the widowed divorce attorney from my first story. When her younger sister’s deadbeat ex discovers his uncle’s corpse, Annie reluctantly agrees to look into things. “A Hard Nights Sleep” is about a woman grappling with her husband’s cognitive decline. It explores parental love and, of course, murder.

On Submission: I have a little league story out that I think is pretty good. And I tried a PI story. I’m cautiously optimistic about both.

Done but Waiting: I have another PI story done because the first one was so much fun. I’m just waiting to see how things go before I send it out into the world. I also finished this creepy story about two brothers. It’s really disturbing and I don’t know what I’m doing with it yet.

In Progress: I’m working on another story with Annie, the widowed divorce attorney from my first story. It’s her third story. And I have the outline for a locked door story that takes place on a small Maine island that I’d like to be from the POV of a 14-year-old girl.

Can’t turn this brain off, you know.

You’ve been very involved in the mystery community—the Maine Crime Wave, Sisters in Crime, the New England Crime Bake. What’s that like? Is it true that crime writers really are a community, and a welcoming one?

YES! When I wrote that first manuscript and sent it out into the world, I sent emails to some of my favorite mystery writers, who all wrote back and gave me some variation of the same advice. Start working on your next project and join some writing groups.

I absolutely love the NE crime writing community. I’ve made some amazing friends and have a community of people who cheer me on and celebrate with me.

If you are a Maine-based crime writer, or aspiring writer of any kind, I’d recommend looking into Sisters in Crime and the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance if you haven’t already. Both organizations offer excellent programming and support to writers at any stage in the journey.

For short stories – The Short Mystery Fiction Society Blog is a great resource. You can learn more here. Membership is free and experienced writers share tidbits of wisdom, publication news, and submission details.

As for conferences – Crime Wave and Crime Bake are two wonderful conferences. They’re great ways to meet other writers, agents, and editors. And both conferences are focused on keeping prices affordable, which I appreciate. There are a lot of other great conferences out there, but by the time you factor in travel and hotels, they can get pretty expensive. And I have two kids and tight budget, so both Crime Bake and Crime Wave are great options for me to stay connected and meet people while staying within what I can afford.

The advice to aspiring writers has often been either don’t quit your day job or marry someone with benefits. Do you have a day job?

For the sake of full transparency: I’ve sold 9 stories, ranging in words from 1,500 to 7,500. 4 have gone to publications that pay professional rates of 5-8 cents a word. One sale was to a podcast for $30.00. And the other 4 have gone to anthologies that paid $25.00 a story. So my total revenue this year works out to be around $1,540.00.

So unless you are independently wealthy (I am not), I’d say don’t quit your day job.

And a family? My mother used to get up at 4:30 in the morning for some quiet writing time. How do you find the time to write?

My work schedule is very irregular. Sometimes I’m facilitating meetings at night. Sometimes I leave at 4 in the morning to drive to Connecticut or midcoast for a meeting. And my kids are really active with sports. So afternoons and evenings my husband and I tag team soccer or cross country or baseball or basketball.

So when do I have time to write?

My current routine is writing weekdays in the evening from 8:30-9:30. On the weekends I can write from 7:00-10:00 in the morning. My husband and kids are pretty good about giving me time and space.

My process?

I do a lot of my plotting when I drive, or when I’m sitting at a little league game watching the kids play or when I’m out for a walk. I like to really mull over stories for a while.

Then I start writing in a notebook. Sometimes I sketch out the whole story. Sometimes I just need the first few scenes. Writing by hand really helps me get a better sense for the characters and feeling of a story. But once I have a sense for it? I can usually move pretty quickly and knock out the full story within a few hours.

After I type out the draft and work through it a little, I’ll record it and then go for a walk and listen to get a sense for what works and what doesn’t. I usually share it with a friend or two for big picture feedback. Then I send it out into the world.

As for advice?

Find your community.

Put your work out there.

Ask questions and listen. Take what you need.

And keep writing.

Bio

Gabriela Stiteler is a writer based in Portland, Maine where she lives with her husband, children, and rescue lab. Gabi grew up in Northwestern Pennsylvania on a steady diet of paperback books from the Golden Age of Detective fiction, classic noir films, and Spaghetti Westerns. She’s especially partial to classic tropes reimagined and twisty plots. Lately she’s been thinking about how bad a person can be before they’re irredeemable.

Gabi’s debut short story “Two Hours West of Nothing” was nominated for the Robert L. Fish Award and was an Other Distinguished Mystery and Suspense for the Best American Mystery and Suspense (2024). Her writing has since found homes in publications that include: Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, The Best of New England Crime Writing, Dark Waters (volume 2) and Shotgun Honey Presents.

In her free time, she explores the coastline, walks her dog, and learns to do new things with varying levels of success.

Website : https://www.gabrielastiteler.com