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.
Steve Liskow is a distinguished short story writer whose short fiction has twice won the Black Orchid Novella Award and once been named a finalist for the Edgar. You can find his stories in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, Mystery Weekly, and other journals and anthologies.
He’s a great novelist too, often with a topical eye, touching on issues including teen sex-trafficking, school shootings, and drug abuse. His latest, Back Door Man, is part of a series featuring PI Zach Barnes and centers on a cold case that may include rape and drug trafficking.
And Steve is also a fine blogger. I’ve enjoyed sharing space with him at SleuthSayers for many years and have learned much from him both about the art of fiction and about the world of music—drawing on his own background as a musician.
Find out more about all these many sides of Steve at his website here.
Steve’s essay below on his new story “Messin’ With The Kid” is the first in a series of posts featuring contributors to the new issue of Black Cat Mystery Magazine from Wildside Press. Stay tuned over the next two weeks to hear from Ramona DeFelice Long and Su Kopil!
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.
Liskow-Messin
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That is a smoking beginning. I have BCMM on my kindle, and will be reading the rest of that story ASAP