Breaking new! …more than a year (and more) after we started the project.
Richie Narvaez and I are currently under contract with Bloomsbury Academic for the craft textbook Short Crime, Mystery, and Suspense Fiction: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology—part of a series Bloomsbury is doing that already includes volumes on both Fantasy Fiction (by Jennifer Pullen) and Speculative Fiction (by Benjamin Warner and Rob Tanner).
Richie and I are drawing on our work in the classroom, on presentations/webinars for SinC and MWA groups, and on models from classic lit up to the present, and we’re exploring not only story lengths from flash to novella but also looking at linked-story collections and the novel-in-stories—and we hope that the scope of our project might be of use both for students of creative writing and for writers at all stages (aspiring to established).
The anthology portion of the book will sample various subgenres and various lengths with a specific focus on contemporary (not classic) stories, to give readers a sense of the current landscape for the genre(s), some highlights of what’s being published today.
As part of the book itself and the supplemental material, we’re also planning to include interviews with folks from the short mystery community.
Stay tuned for more news ahead!