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.
Mary Feliz joins us today to talk about the opening pages of her latest novel, Disorderly Conduct, released last week. This is the fourth in her Maggie McDonald Mystery series, which also includes Address to Die For, Scheduled to Death, and Dead Storage.
You can find more about Mary and the series at her website, and in addition to checking our her books, be sure and seek her out in person at readings and conferences if you can. She’s great fun to talk with, and as my son learned quickly at Malice, she has the best swag too!
Please use the arrows and controls at the bottom of the embedded PDF to navigate through the essay. You can also download the essay here to read off-line.
Thanks so much for the introduction and the opportunity to to participate in this terrific way to examine one of the trickiest skills in our craft, Art. And…thanks for the shout-out about my swag. I’m going to have to up my game to keep in Dash’s good graces! I’d love to hear from other writers and readers about what they need to see in the first two pages and/or how I or other writers may fall short.
Thanks for taking part here, Mary — and congrats again on the new book! No pressure on the swag, of course, though we were mightily impressed at Malice, as I said…. 🙂