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.
The Chesapeake Chapter of Sisters in Crime and Wildside Press have recently published the latest volume in the award-winning Chesapeake Crimes anthology series: Fur, Feathers, and Felonies, edited by Donna Andrews, Barb Goffman, and Marcia Talley. I’m a proud member of this chapter of Sisters in Crime, and I’ve been thrilled to have had stories in other recent volumes in the series. Though I don’t have one in the new anthology (I couldn’t come up with an animal-themed tale!), the line-up of writers is terrific, and I’m glad to be hosting three of them here at the First Two Pages today and over the next two weeks reflecting on their contributions.
First up is Karen Cantwell, who has also had stories in two previous volumes: Chesapeake Crimes: They Had It Comin’ and Chesapeake Crimes: This Job Is Murder. In addition to her fine short stories, she is also an accomplished novelist, with both the Barbara Marr Murder Mystery series and the Sophie Rhodes Ghostly Romance series. Find out more about her work at her website here.
And stay tuned over the next couple of weeks for essays from contributors Shari Randall and Robin Templeton!
Please use the arrows and controls at the bottom of the embedded PDF to navigate through the essay. You can also download the essay here to read off-line.
Cantwell Sunset
I loved this story. I picture Humphrey Bogart as Johnny and Sally Struthers as Mary.
Good job, Karen!
There are so many things I love about this story, but of all of them I think the snappy dialogue is my favorite. So much fun to see how you created the characters in Sunset Beauregard. Thank you, Art and Karen, for this peek into the process.