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.
Curtis Ippolito has been steadily building a killer reputation as a short story writer, including being named a Derringer Award finalist, a Macavity Award finalist, and an Anthony Award finalist too—that latter one, two, three years in a row before bringing home this year’s Anthony for his story “Something to Hold On To” from Dark Yonder 6. (You can read more about Curtis’s short fiction here.) But in addition to giant steps as a writer, he also took a big leap this fall as an editor, with an anthology that’s been making news ever since it’s release in late September. Here’s the description from Rock and Hard Place about On Fire and Under Water: A Climate Change Crime Fiction Anthology:
Our world is changing dramatically before our eyes.
Increased average global temperatures have wreaked havoc on ecosystems, economies, and people’s lives. Fires rage. Flood waters rise. Storms and heat waves are occurring out-of-season and are becoming increasingly more dangerous and more frequent.
Neighborhoods are being destroyed. People are losing their lives and livelihoods. Still, some politicians, some pundits, and some corporate oligarchs continue to deny reality and refuse to take responsibility and necessary action to mitigate this existential crisis.
Those who did the least to cause this crisis will suffer the most from its consequences.
In On Fire and Under Water, the new crime fiction anthology from Rock and a Hard Place Press, we explore the intersection of climate change and crime, through the lens of fifteen short stories from some of today’s best crime fiction writers. Edited by Anthony Award-winning author Curtis Ippolito and the editorial team at RHP Press, the stories contained within this anthology peel back the curtain on the ways in which climate change impacts real people in their most desperate hour.
Some say the world will end in fire. Some say flood. In On Fire and Under Water, you get both.
This week, we begin welcoming several contributors to On Fire and Under Water to discuss their contributions to the collection—both the stories themselves and what prompted their interest in the subject.
First up is Kendall Brunson, who’s been making her own mark both in the world of short fiction and in film circles too. A graduate of the MFA Program at UC Riverside, Kendall has been published in Kelp Literary Review, 100 Word Story, Fearsome Critters, and more, and her short films—as both writer and director— have played at the Final Girls Berlin Film Fest, The Loft Cinema, and Wasteland Film Festival. Kendall and I first met—all too briefly!—at the Nashville Bouchercon, and such a joy to see her star continuing to rise since then. You can follow her on Instagram.
And in addition to reading Kendall’s essay below, stay tuned for more ahead from Michael Downing and Richie Narvaez.
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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