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.
This past Sunday—December 8, Pretend to Be a Time Traveler Day—the Barnes & Noble in Fairfax, VA hosted the launch event for Crime Travel: Stories of Crime and Time Travel, a new anthology edited by Barb Goffman. Sadly, Barb herself couldn’t make it, but the contributors who did attend—James Blakey, Eleanor Cawood Jones, Adam Meyer, Cathy Wiley, and me— had a great time chatting with moderator Donna Andrews about all things time travel: our own stories, the various methods of time travel, favorite time travels books and movies, and when we might travel to if only….
Other contributors to the anthology include Melissa H. Blaine, Michael Bracken, Anna Castle, Brendan DuBois, David Dean, John M. Floyd, Barb Goffman, Heidi Hunter, Barbara Monajem, and Korina Moss—and while neither Melissa H. Blaine nor Heidi Hunter could come to the launch, I’m glad to have hosted Melissa H. Blaine at the First Two Pages last week, discussing her story “Living on Borrowed Time” and to welcome Heidi Hunter this week to talk about her story “No Honor Among Thieves.”
Heidi Hunter spent a decade investigating real-life crimes—financial ones, to be specific—and now writes about fictional ones. Her short stories have appeared in Flash Bang Mysteries and Mysterical-E as well as the anthology A Murder of Crows. You can find out more about her work at her author blog https://hollyhyattauthor.wordpress.com/.
You can also find out more about her story “No Honor Among Thieves” below. And as a bonus, here’s the first review of Crime Travel from Mark Baker at Carstairs Considers—5 stars!
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.
Hunter-No-Honor
Love the idea of time travel as an adventure and using that to jump start the story!
Thanks for this look at your story, Heidi. Adventure is one of the wonderful elements of time travel. Going to a distant time, not knowing exactly what you’ll find. If you can’t do it in real life, then fiction is a great substitute. And for anyone reading this, I’ll share that in the book’s introduction Donna Andrews says of Heidi’s story: “In ‘No Honor Among Thieves,’ Heidi Hunter successfully pulls off more unexpected twists than most writers even try.” The story is well worth the read!
Thanks. I didn’t know I was doing so many twists until they happened! Sometimes the story writes itself.