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.
Rounding out our series celebrating contributors to Friend of the Devil: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of the Grateful Dead, the First Two Pages welcomes Faye Snowden, who has not only established herself as a fine novelist but also as a distinguished writer of short fiction—already racking up honors, despite writing in the essay below that she’s “trying to build my short story chops.” Faye’s novel A Killing Rain won Gold in the thriller and suspense category at the 2022 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards; was long-listed for the 2022 Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger Award; and was named one of the best novels in southern gothic crime fiction of 2022 by CrimeReads, too. And two of her short stories have been selected for the Best American Mystery & Suspense anthology series: “One Bullet. One Vote” and “The Obsession of Abel Tangier,” both originally published in the Low Down Dirty Vote anthologies. You can find out more about Faye and her work at her website.
Friend of the Devil is the latest music-themed anthology from editor Josh Pachter, and the First Two Pages has already hosted three other contributors here: Avram Lavinsky with an essay on “Lady with a Fan”; Linda Landrigan on “Born Cross-Eyed”; and David Avallone on “The Golden Road (To Unlimited Devotion).” The collection also features Bruce Robert Coffin, James D.F. Hannah, Vinnie Hansen, James L’Etoile, G.M. Malliet, Twist Phelan, Joseph S. Walker, and more.
You can find more information on the full anthology here, available from Down & Out Books.
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.
Snowden-Althea
