The First Two Pages: “Not A Day Goes By” by J.A. Hennrikus

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.

I first got to know Julie Hennrikus well back in 2016 when her debut book, Just Killing Time, written under the name Julianne Holmes, was a finalist for the Agatha Award for Best First Novel. I was impressed with her from the start both as a writer and as a person, and that impressiveness has only continued to grow over the years since. She’s continued to excel as a novelist, with 10 books now over three different series—the most recent of them being The Garden Squad series—and she’s executive director of Sisters in Crime as well; if you haven’t already checked it out, do listen to the SinC podcast series she hosts, terrific conversations. All that is on top of her long-time career in theater and the performing arts—more than three decades in that business, juggling creativity and arts administration and more with grace and ease. And while she says in the essay below that “Short stories are not my forte,” she seemed the perfect person to step in as a contributor to the new anthology Every Day A Little Death: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Stephen Sondheim, edited by Josh Pachter and published by Level Best Books. And circling back to that SinC podcast series, her interview this week is with Josh Pachter himself!

Julie’s essay below joins two others in the Sondheim series so far: Brian Cox’s essay on “Being Alive” and Fleur Bradley’s on “Sunday in the Park with George.” And we’ll have one more essay ahead next week 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 to read off-line.