The First Two Pages: “The Bridge” by Abby L. Vandiver

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.

Last week, two stories from Midnight Hour: A Chilling Anthology of Crime Fiction from 20 Authors of Color were named finalists for this year’s Edgar Awards: “The Vermeer Conspiracy” by V.M. Burns and “Lucky Thirteen” by Tracy Clark—terrific honors not only for these contributors but everyone involved in the collection, including editor Abby L. Vandiver. And Abby joins us at the First Two Pages this week to complete a first series of essays by contributors to the book; we’ve already had E.A. Aymar on “The Search for Eric Garcia,” Faye Snowden on “Chefs,” and David Heska Wanbli Weiden on “Skin”—and both Valerie Burns and Tracy Clark have agreed to write reflections on their stories ahead too! (Coincidentally, two of the other finalists were already featured last year at the First Two Pages: “Blindsided” by Michael Bracken & James A. Hearn from Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and “The Locked Room Library” by Gigi Pandian from Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Another finalist, R.T. Lawton, author of “The Road to Hana” from AHMM, will also be writing an essay ahead, but the last finalist, Cornell Woolrich, hasn’t yet answered my emails about his EQMM story, “The Dark Oblivion”…. I’ll keep watching my inbox….)

Abby L. Vandiver, who also writes as Abby Collette, is the author most recently of the Ice Cream Parlor Mystery Series, including A Deadly Inside Scoop and A Game of Cones. You can find out more about her novels and stories at her website here.

In addition to the authors already mentioned, Midnight Hour also includes stories by Frankie Y. Bailey, Callie Browning, Christopher Chambers, H-C Chan, Jennifer Chow, Rhonda Crowder, Tina Kashian, Richie Narvaez, Stella Oni, Gigi Pandian, Delia C. Pitts, Raquel V. Reyes, and Elizabeth Wilkerson.

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.