The Shorter the Story the Sweeter the Truth

I want to be a really good short story writer. It's an art.

I know contemporary writers who are masters of the craft, and I've vowed to take a class or two from them when the opportunities present themselves. Meanwhile, I write short stories to satisfy my soul, and get better at it.

My love of story and reading came from writing these less-than-book length offerings when I was about eleven or twelve. Our house was, thankfully, filled with all kinds of books, anthologies, and magazines. I remember my fascination reading Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue. The charge of excitement and adventure I received at reading Richard Connell's The Most Dangerous Game, and Frank Stockton's The Lady or The Tiger. And, I devoured the individual books in the Odyssey by Homer (the Robert Fitzgerald translation).

When a short story is done right, it has all the power of a novel to transport a reader to a different level of consciousness and curiosity about the world--past, present, and future. There's something about the form's brevity that heightens the morality or truth or revelation of the story. For me, these epiphanies have stayed with me a lifetime.

The short story structure is usually one of three-acts. An introduction to the conflict, an act or discovery or confrontation that's presented with high stakes, followed by the denouement. It's a fun way to think about the design. And each act has its creative challenges.

This fall I'm honored to be included in two anthologies edited by talented writers in their own right, and in the company of a slate of brilliant authors.

The first is Crime Ink: Iconic. It's a groundbreaking new crime fiction anthology inspired by queer icons. Groundbreaking because each story in the anthology is written by a queer author. Edited by John Copenhaver and Salem West, and published by Bywater Books. Crime Ink: Iconic is available now for preorder.

My story: Finding Jimmy Baldwin imagines celebrated, Black queer writer, James Baldwin returning to Harlem in 1954, after a half-dozen years in Paris, only to go missing. It's a psychologically-dark, social justice story about betrayal, friendship, and vengeance.

Coming September 2, 2025

The second compilation of short crime fiction is in an anthology called Double Crossing Van Dine. This time each short story breaks one of the twenty rules created by mystery writer S.S. Van Dine in 1928 that were published in American Magazine. See the twenty rules, here, compiled by the Sisters in Crime (Indiana Chapter).

My short story: What Dreams are Made of breaks rule # 2

No willful tricks or deceptions may be played on the reader other than those played legitimately by the criminal on the detective himself.

I don't think so!!

The part-time sleuth in the story, a member of a 1930s theatre company in Baltimore, Maryland, is intimately involved with the duplicity of the double cross in this fun story of mistaken identity and family allegiance. Double Crossing Van Dine, published by Crippen & Landru is sure to become a collector's item.

For Preorder