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.
This week continues our series featuring contributors to the anthology Daydream Believer: Crime Stories Inspired by the Songs of The Monkees! So far, we’ve welcomed Lina Chern with an essay on her story “Our Own World” and James D.F. Hannah on “Me & Magdalena”—and today, Michel Lee Garrett talks about “Last Train to Clarksville,” which…. thank you very much, the song is now running nonstop through my head. Edited by Lawrence Allan and Michelle Kubitz, the collection also features short stories by Eric Beetner, Libby Cudmore, Michael Downing, Jeff Esterholm, Paul J. Garth, Sean Patrick Little, Alan Orloff, Raquel V. Reyes, Keith Roysdon, Holly West, and Lawrence Allan. (I won’t list any more songs in case you’re susceptible to earworms yourself.)
Author, poet, and transgender activist, Michel Lee Garrett is the author of Born a Ramblin’ Man: Fourteen Tales of Thieves, Killers, Vagabonds, and Lost Souls (Shotgun Honey, 2025). She also edited Burning Down the House: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of the Talking Heads (Shotgun Honey, 2024) and Transcendent Love: True Stories of T4T Relationships (forthcoming next year from JKP Books), the first book from a major publisher to explore relationships between trans people in their own words. You can find out more about her poetry and previous work at her website: leegarrett.net.
More Monkees ahead—stay tuned! Or just pick up the collection yourself, of course!
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.
