The First Two Pages: “Book Drop” by Sarah Bresniker

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.

One of the great pleasures of anthologies is the chance to read work by new authors—authors new to you or, in some cases, new to the world entirely. In my own editing of two Bouchercon anthologies—Murder Under the Oaks and this past year’s California Schemin’—I’ve been thrilled to work with veteran and distinguished writers, but I have a softer spot for the stories by debut writers. Similarly, in the First Two Pages series, we’re often hosting writers with great experience, sharing hard-earned perspectives on craft, but it’s also exciting to host a writer with fresh views and a different kind of excitement. And so it is with Sarah Bresniker today, writing about “Book Drop,” her fiction debut in The Fish That Got Away, the latest anthology from the Guppy Chapter of Sisters in Crime. As Sarah explains in her essay, this is the first published of her Arlie Wynne stories, and there’s more material for stories and novels still ahead!

Edited by Linda M. Rodriguez, The Fish That Got Away features twenty stories in all, from a nice range of contributors, both first-time short story writers and veteran talents too: Marcia Adair, Mary Adler, Susan Alice Bickford, Sarah A. Bresniker, MB Dabney, E.B. Davis, P. A. De Voe, Mary Dutta, Gene Garrison, Lori Roberts Herbst, Victoria Kazarian, Melinda Loomis, Cheryl Marceau, Michele Bazan Reed, Cynthia Sabelhaus, C. M. Surrisi, Mark Thielman, Kari Wainwright, Joseph S. Walker, and C. M. West.

Check out last week’s essay by Victoria Kazarian, and stay tuned for one more ahead by Lori Roberts Herbst!

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.