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 to celebrate the new anthology Hooked on Urban Legends—And Murder! this week. The collection, edited by Donna Andrews, Barb Goffman, and Marcia Talley, features short stories by members of the Chesapeake Chapter of Sisters in Crime, including Ellen Byerrum, Ginny Fite, Shari Held, Kathryn Holland, Smita Harish Jain, Meghan Lewis, Jane Limprecht, Alan Orloff, Pat Remick, KM Rockwood, Daphne Silver, Shannon Taft, Robin Templeton, and Joseph S. Walker, as well as the editors themselves. Last week, we hosted an essay by Pat Remick, on her story “Screaming Jenny,” and this week, Shannon Taft steps up to reflect on the three stories she first wrote for the collection—before closing in on “The Cave Man,” the one ultimately accepted for the book.
An attorney in DC, Shannon Taft has published short fiction in a variety of magazines and anthologies, and her story “Monster,” originally published in the collection Reckless in Texas, was selected for Best American Mystery and Suspense 2024. More recently, she won the 2026 St. Martin’s Minotaur / Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Competition for Ghost of a Clue, forthcoming later this year or early next. Find out more about her and her work here.
Stay tuned for essays ahead by Ellen Byerrum Robin Templeton. And hey! Today is pub day for Hooked on Urban Legends—And Murder! so you can read all the stories by ordering the book here!
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.
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Very nice start and explanation. AND, you have the BEST character names!