The First Two Pages: “Please See Me” by Deborah Lacy

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.

I’m pleased to welcome Deborah Lacy to the First Two Pages for the second time in my tenure here. She previously appeared with an essay about her story “Taking Care” from Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine‘s May/June 2018 issue, and today she talks about “Please See Me” from the new anthology Fault Lines: Stories by Northern California Crime Writers, edited by Margaret Lucke and produced by the Northern California Chapter of Sisters in Crime—the first anthology produced by the chapter!

“Please See Me” has a fascinating structure, which you’ll get a glimpse of in the essay below—proof of both Deb’s ambitions and her prowess as a short story writer. In addition to the two stories she’s written about at this blog, she’s also had short fiction published in Mystery Weekly Magazine and in the anthologies Blood on the Bayou and Shhh…Murder!, among other places. And Deb is a dedicated blogger too—editor-in-chief of the website Mystery Playground.

Check out Deb’s essay below and the full story in Fault Lines, which also features contributions by Ana Brazil, Jenny Carless, Diana Chambers, David Hagerty, Vinnie Hansen, Katherine Bolger Hyde, Judith Janeway, Mariah Klein, Mariella Krause, Susan Kuchinskas, Bette Golden Lamb, J.J. Lamb, Margaret Lucke, Susan C. Shea, Robin C. Stuart, Nancy Tingley, CJ Verburg, and C.M. West.

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.