The First Two Pages: “Kate Chopin Tussles with a Novel Ending” by Ana Brazil

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.

Earlier this year, I hosted Deborah Lacy at the First Two Pages with an essay on her story “Please See Me” from the anthology Fault Lines: Stories by Northern California Crime Writers. A couple of months later, Ana Brazil, another contributor, reached out to ask about hosting several more contributors to the collection—something I’m pleased to do, beginning this week with Ana herself, talking about her story “Kate Chopin Tussles with a Novel Ending.” Fault Lines is the first anthology produced by the Northern California Chapter of Sisters in Crime, and I’ll also be welcoming two other contributors in upcoming weeks: Susan Kuchinskas and Margaret Lucke, who also edited the collection.

“Kate Chopin Tussles with a Novel Ending” is Ana Brazil’s second published short story, and her third, “Miss Evelyn Nesbit Presents,” appears in the anthology Me Too Short Stories, a collection featured at the First Two Pages in October. Her debut historical mystery, Fanny Newcomb And The Irish Channel Ripper, was released by Sand Hill Review Press and won the IBPA 2018 Benjamin Franklin Gold Medal for Historical Fiction. Find out more about Ana and her work at her website: http://www.anabrazil.com.

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.