The First Two Pages: “Salt, Sand, Clay” by Cindy Martin

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.

First things first, I’m not sure what happened to January—in case anyone’s been following the blog closely enough to notice that the First Two Pages’ holiday break became a winter break and then some. But even if belated, I’m glad to be kicking off 2025 celebrating the new—and eighth!—Guppy Anthology, Gone Fishin’, featuring stories by members of the Guppy Chapter of Sisters in Crime. Edited by James M. Jackson and published by Wolf’s Echo Press (buylinks at their website here), the new collection is subtitled Crime Takes a Holiday, but as the press materials clarify, “In these twenty-three stories, Crime Steals, Disrupts, Upends, Wrecks, Destroys and/or Shatters a Holiday”—all of which sounds much more fun to read about. And as a great example of how a holiday can get disrupted and upended, Cindy Martin offers an essay exploring the inspirations behind her story, “Salt, Sand, Clay,” and the ways in which “underlying tensions” at the start of a vacation can quickly become bigger issues. As she writes in her essay, “Something dark and deadly will taint the tropics.”

Cindy might count herself newer to the fiction game—she’s had four short stories published, all in the last year, and she’s working on her first novel, the thriller Relentless—but she draws on more than two decades of experience as a successful storyteller, thanks to her work as a producer of America’s Most Wanted. The essay below also explores that background, which skills carry forward into fiction, which don’t, and how they differ.

I’m grateful to Cindy for the insightful—and exciting!—reflections on the first two pages of “Salt, Sand, Clay,” and I’m looking forward to hosting more contributors to Gone Fishin’ over the next few weeks!

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.