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.
Level Best Books released The Most Dangerous Games at the end of August, so we’re a little behind here timing-wise, but I’m very excited about celebrating this latest project from Deborah Lacy, whose work I’ve followed in many forms: as a short story writer herself, as a force behind the scenes for mystery conventions, and as the powerhouse behind the long-time blog Mystery Playground. This new project has a brilliant theme. As the call for submissions stated: “What happens when a game gets out of hand? The most dangerous games are the ones that lead to murder. Chess simulates war, the high stakes of professional sports, mind games, trapped in a board game . . .” And what a group of contributors answering that call! The anthology features stories by Heather Graham, K.C. Selby, Alan Orloff, Shannon Taft, P.M. Raymond, Kerry Hammond, Rebecca Lugones, L.L. Kaplan, BV Lawson, Stephen M. Pierce, Maya Corrigan, Bruce Kubec, JD Allen, Jane Limprecht, donalee Moulton, Kirlagh James, Robert Lopresti, LaToya Jovena, Sharyn Kolberg, Shawn Reilly Simmons, Chris Chan, and Daphne Silver.
The First Two Pages is hosting essays by three of these contributors, beginning this week with L.L. Kaplan—talking about her first published story, “The Hack Job.” To her credit, though, she writes with such authority about craft choices in the essay that I didn’t know it was her first fiction until I read her bio—and the momentum is building, with another story, “Chocolate Karma,” already in the pipeline for publication next year. You can find out more about her work on Instagram and on Facebook as well as at her website: LLKaplanAuthor.com.
Pick up The Most Dangerous Games at Amazon here—and stay tuned next week for another essay 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.
Kaplan-Hack-Job
