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.
Last week at the First Two Pages, James D.F. Hannah talked about his story “Temptation is a Gun” from the new anthology Trouble No More, edited by Mark Westmoreland and published by Down & Out Books. The full list of contributors to that collection is a wonder, also including Bill Baber, C.W. Blackwell, Jerry Bloomfield, S.A. Cosby, Nikki Dolson, Michel Lee Garrett, Curtis Ippolito, Jessica Laine, Brodie Lowe, Bobby Mathews, Brian Panowich, Rob Pierce, Joey R. Poole, Raquel V. Reyes, Michael Farris Smith, J.B. Stevens, Chris Swann, N.B. Turner and Joseph S. Walker—and yours truly, too! And this week at the blog, I’m pleased to welcome J.B. Stevens, introducing his story “A Trailer on the Outskirts of Town.”
J.B. is a terrific writer—both a short story writer and a poet and with books in both directions. His poetry collection The Best of American Cannot Be Seen was published by Alien Buddha Press; several of his short stories are linked from his website and his short story collection This Will Not End Well is available for free there as well; and another fiction collection, A Therapeutic Death, will be coming out next year from Shotgun Honey. You can read more about J.B. and his work at his website—and be sure to follow him on Twitter too!
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.
Stevens-Trailer