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.
Today marks the third and final essay in a series focused on The Most Dangerous Games, edited by Deborah Lacy and published last month by Level Best Books. So far, we’ve hosted L.L. Kaplan on “The Hack Job” and LaToya Jovena on “Six Questions,” and this week, we’re welcoming K.C. Shelby, reflecting on the thoughts and decisions behind the opening of “Murder & Mystery: Live in Five,” a story that’s mystery with a side of speculative fiction. As she explains in the essay below, she “didn’t want the overall feel of the story to be sci-fi,” but the setting is 2044 and the game here is a virtual one, and I was interested to hear about this balancing of genres, this weighting in one direction or another. And in that regard, it’s worth mentioning that her website includes a range of short fiction publications, mystery here, more literary there, and a forthcoming story, “Earth to Echo,” in Flash Point Science Fiction in October. Great breadth here.
Joining Jovena, Kaplan, and Shelby in The Most Dangerous Games are an equally broad range of contributors, including Heather Graham, Alan Orloff, Shannon Taft, P.M. Raymond, Kerry Hammond, Rebecca Lugones, BV Lawson, Stephen M. Pierce, Maya Corrigan, Bruce Kubec, JD Allen, Jane Limprecht, donalee Moulton, Kirlagh James, Robert Lopresti, Sharyn Kolberg, Shawn Reilly Simmons, Chris Chan, and Daphne Silver.
Pick up The Most Dangerous Games at Amazon here, and thanks to these three contributors for the terrific essays—on equally fine stories!
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.
First-Two-Pages-Essay-by-K.C.-Selby
