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 a series of essays on the anthology The Most Dangerous Games, edited by Deborah Lacy and published last month by Level Best Books. Last week, we hosted L.L. Kaplan, talking about her first-ever publication (see her essay on “The Hack Job” here), and this week we’re moving from emerging author to established one: LaToya Jovena, whose short stories have been published in both Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock too, in addition to being selected for the Best American Mystery & Suspense anthology—woo hoo! Emerging, established… what caught my eye at the start of LaToya’s essay is her line “I hate to admit this, but it wasn’t until this blog post that I realized I start most stories with the setting.” I love this line, because of the sense that whatever stage we’re at, we’re all (me included, I need to stress) still learning something about craft, still seeing fresh things about our own approach—and having to analyze and then articulate our own craft choices can bring that kind of recognition.
As with the best storytellers, LaToya moves from a catchy opening to a cliffhanger of an ending, urging readers to pick up the anthology to find out more—and I’ll echo that call to action here. The Most Dangerous Games offers a great theme: “What happens when a game gets out of hand? The most dangerous games are the ones that lead to murder. Chess simulates war, the high stakes of professional sports, mind games, trapped in a board game . . .” And the contributors list is terrific, including both Jovena and Kaplan and also Heather Graham, K.C. Selby, Alan Orloff, Shannon Taft, P.M. Raymond, Kerry Hammond, Rebecca Lugones, BV Lawson, Stephen M. Pierce, Maya Corrigan, Bruce Kubec, JD Allen, Jane Limprecht, donalee Moulton, Kirlagh James, Robert Lopresti, Sharyn Kolberg, Shawn Reilly Simmons, Chris Chan, and Daphne Silver.
Pick up The Most Dangerous Games at Amazon here—and stay tuned next week for another essay too!
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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