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.
At noon each day, my local chapter of Sisters in Crime—the Chesapeake Chapter, serving Northern Virginia, DC, and Maryland—hosts a writing sprint: 10 minutes for participants to share goals, challenges, observations and accomplishments; 45 minutes of writing time; and then another five minutes for reflections on how the sprint went. Writing can be a lonely business, and though I don’t participate every day with the group (not hardly), these shared sessions are helpful and inspirational in so many ways: focused writing time, accountability, and also community—you meet the best people, and everyone cheers everyone else on! In April, one of our sprinters, Mindy Quigley, took home the Agatha Award for Best Contemporary Novel (much celebrating!), and another of our members, DK Snyder, recently had her first story appear in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine—and I’m thrilled to welcome her here today to talk about it.
In addition to the EQMM story, Deborah has also published stories in magazines including Woman’s World, Shotgun Honey, and Cease, Cows (I must find this one!) and in the anthology A Right Cozy Culinary Crime. She is also a winner of Prime Number Magazine’s 53-word story contest, and her work has been longlisted for The Wigleaf Top 50 Very Short Fictions and nominated for Best of the Net. You can find out more at dksnyderauthor.com.
And in the meantime, enjoy the sample below of her story “Home”—and congratulations again!
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.
