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.
We’re continuing our focus on Hot Shots: Celebrating Thirty Years of the Short Mystery Fiction Society, by welcoming a third contributor to the First Two Pages: Meg Opperman, writing about her story “Twilight Ladies,” which won the Derringer Award for Best Short Story in 2016. In the essay below, Meg focuses on the inspiration for the story and on the steps she took both to build her main character and build the reader’s connection to that character, their sympathy with her plight.
Meg’s stories have appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Black Cat Mystery Magazine, and Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, among other publications. And in addition to her success in the mystery genre, she is now thriving in another direction: romantasy! You can find more about her and her work—under the name Meghan Maslow—at her website here: www.meghanmaslow.com.
Hot Shots, edited by Josh Pachter, reprints 28 Derringer Award-winning stories—one for each year the awards have been presented, from Kris Neri’s “L.A. Justice,” which won in the Short Story category the first year, to Josh Pachter’s own “The Wind Phone,” which won in the same category last year. The First Two Pages has already hosted two contributors: Doug Allyn on “Famous Last Works,” which won the Best Long Story Derringer in 2010, and BV Lawson on “The Touch of Death,” winner of the Best Short Story Derringer in 2012.
And here’s the full list of stories included in the collection—which you can pick up here. Plenty to enjoy in these pages, whatever kind of crime fiction you like best, and glad to have a story of my own included in these pages too.
1998: “L.A. Justice,” by Kris Neri (Best Short Story)
1999: “Pretty Kitty,” by Joyce Holland (Best Flash Story)
2000: “Just a Man on the Sidewalk,” by Carol Kilgore (Best Flash Story)
2001: “The Cabin Killer,” by Henry Slesar (Best Puzzle Story)
2002: “All the Fine Actors,” by Earl Staggs (Best Short Story)
2003: “Closure,” by Dave White (Best Short Story)
2004: “Notions of the Real World,” by Dorothy Rellas (Best Mid-Length Short Story)
2005: “Viscery,” by Sandy Balzo (Best Mid-Length Short Story)
2006: “Secondhand Shoe,” by Patricia Harrington (Best Flash Story)
2007: “Cranked,” by Bill Crider (Best Mid-Length Story)
2008: “The Gospel According to Gordon Black,” by Richard Helms (Best Long Story)
2009: “No Flowers for Stacey,” by Ruth McCarty (Best Flash Story)
2010: “Famous Last Words,” by Doug Allyn (Best Long Story)
2011: “Pewter Badge,” by Michael J. Solender (Best Short Story)
2012: “The Touch of Death,” by BV Lawson (Best Short Story)
2013: “When Duty Calls,” by Art Taylor (Best Long Story)
2014: “Luck Is What You Make,” by Stephen D. Rogers (Best Flash Story)
2015: “The Kaluki Kings of Queens,” by Cathi Stoler (Best Short Story)
2016: “Twilight Ladies,” by Meg Opperman (Best Short Story)
2017: “The Phone Call,” by Herschel Cozine (Best Flash Story)
2018: “The Cop Who Liked Gilbert and Sullivan,” by Robert Lopresti (Best Short Story)
2019: “Dying in Dokesville,” by Alan Orloff (Best Short Story)
2020: “On the Road with Mary Jo,” by John M. Floyd (Best Short Story)
2021: “The Great Bedbug Incident and the Invitation of Doom,” by Eleanor Cawood Jones (Best Short Story)
2022: “The Downeaster ‘Alexa,’” by Michael Bracken (Best Long Story)
2023: “My Two-Legs,” by Melissa Yi (Best Short Story)
2024: “The Referee,” by C.W. Blackwell (Best Flash Story)
2025: “The Wind Phone,” by Josh Pachter (Best Short Story)
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.
Opperman-First-Two-Pages
