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.
For our second essay on a series celebrating new anthology Daydream Believer: Crime Stories Inspired by the Songs of The Monkees! we’re pleased to welcome back James D.F. Hannah, a terrific short story writer whose work has been selected twice for the Best American Mystery & Suspense anthologies; you can find his short fiction in publications including Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Vautrin, Rock and a Hard Place, Dark Yonder, and Shotgun Honey and in the anthologies Eight Very Bad Nights, Playing Games, and Under the Thumb in addition to the new one here. He’s appeared two times before at the First Two Pages—writing about his EQMM story “A Tear in his Hand” and about his story “Temptation Is a Gun” in the collection Trouble No More. (I usually try to avoid having repeat authors in the series, but when their reflections are so insightful craft-wise… which is why I laughed at the opening line of the essay below…)
Daydream Believer also includes short fiction by Eric Beetner, Lina Chern, Libby Cudmore, Michael Downing, Jeff Esterholm, Michel Lee Garrett, Paul J. Garth, Sean Patrick Little, Alan Orloff, Raquel V. Reyes, Keith Roysdon, Holly West, and Lawrence Allan—and do check out Lina Chern’s essay from last week on her story “Our Own World.”
More ahead—stay tuned!
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.
