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 here. 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, my good friend Alan Orloff—a good friend of Bonnie’s as well—joins us to discuss the first two pages of his story “Getting Away” from the debut issue of Black Cat Mystery Magazine. This is the first of a series of three posts on stories from that issue, so stay tuned!
Alan’s novels range from his debut, Diamonds for the Dead, an Agatha Award finalist, to his latest, Running from the Past, an Amazon Kindle Scout selection. Lately, he’s also established himself as a fine short story writer, with six publications just this year in anthologies and magazines alike. Check out his website here for more info.
And enjoy his essay here on how to draw readers into your own short fiction. Please use the arrows and controls at the bottom of the embedded PDF to navigate through the essay.