We attended ShortCon 2026, the conference for short mystery fiction, last June. It was a long day of presentations and fascinating Q & A’s with some of the top figures in the mystery community, and we learned a lot and won many, many new books to read!

We were invited by Art Taylor, one of the presenters at ShortCon, to contribute essays to his “The First Two Pages” series. Authors take published stories and dissect the openings, discussing their process and how the story came to be.

Jessica’s essay, focusing on “Woodpeckers,” originally published in Shotgun Honey Presents: Thicker Than Water, is now available to read online! She chose to analyze this story because it placed in the Honor Roll of that year’s Best Mystery Stories of the Year, and Michele Slung, the first reader for that series, was one of the speakers at the conference.

You can read the essay online here. Jennifer’s essay, analyzing “Stranger,” published in Writer’s Digest, will go live in a week.