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.
“Every day a little death / In the parlor, in the bed, / In the curtains, in the silver, / In the buttons, in the bread.” So go the opening lyrics of Stephen Sondheim’s “Every Day a Little Death” from A Little Night Music—and while the phrase there may have been metaphorical, twenty authors from the worlds of mystery fiction and theater alike, have taken it much more literally, contributed a wider range of “malfeasance, misdemeanor and . . . murder” in a collection bearing the same name. Every Day A Little Death: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Stephen Sondheim, edited by Josh Pachter and published by Level Best Books, will be making its debut on March 22—and the First Two Pages is pleased to be celebrating the book by hosting several contributors reflecting on the stories.
First up is Brian Cox, who nimbly straddles the intersection of both subsets of contributors. On the mystery side, Brian is the former managing editor of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, working under Cathleen Jordan, and more recently, his story “The Surrogate Initiative” was selected for the 2020 edition of Best American Mystery Stories. And in the theater world, he’s the artistic director of Pencilpoint Theatreworks in Ypsilanti, Michigan and a playwright as well: Clutter, produced at Theatre Nova in 2017, won the Wilde Award for Best New Script, and his children’s plays Stone Dragon Stew and Welcome to Candy Kingdom have been produced across the United States and around the world.
Brian’s essay on his story “Being Alive” (inspired by the song from the musical Company) is the first essay in a series of four—so stay tuned for more essays ahead by Fleur Bradley, J.A. Hennrikus, and Jeffrey Sweet.
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.
Being-Alive-Brian-Cox
