BCW interview with short story master Art Taylor

Love short stories? Ever wanted to write one? You could do no better than to take advice from award-winning short-story artist Art Taylor. Art’s with us today to give us an inside look into his process and journey to publication. But first, a little background:

Art Taylor

Art Taylor is the author of the story collection The Boy Detective & The Summer of ’74 and Other Tales of Suspense and of the novel in stories On the Road with Del & Louise, winner of the Agatha Award for Best First Novel. He won the 2019 Edgar Award for Best Short Story for “English 398: Fiction Workshop,” originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and he has won three additional Agatha Awards, an Anthony Award, four Macavity Awards, and four Derringer Awards for his short fiction. His work has also appeared in Best American Mystery Stories, and he edited Murder Under the Oaks: Bouchercon Anthology 2015, winner of the Anthony Award for Best Anthology or Collection, and California Schemin’: Bouchercon Anthology 2020. He is an associate professor of English at George Mason University

The Boy Detective & The Summer of ’74 and Other Tales of Suspense features 16 stories that have collectively won an Edgar Award, an Anthony Awards, four Agatha Awards, three Macavity Awards, and three Derringer Awards. From his first story for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in 1995 to his latest for Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine — the title story, 25 years in the making — this collection charts the development of Art Taylor’s career so far, and turns the page toward more stories still ahead.

Connie Berry, BCW: Art, welcome to Buckeye Crime Writers! You’ve won just about every award there is for your short crime fiction. Who are the writers who inspire you, and what first attracted you to this particular genre?

Art Taylor: I’ve been extremely fortunate for all the generosity the mystery community has shown my work — and I’ve felt fortunate too for all the many writers throughout that tradition who’ve guided my own work. Whatever I might know about plotting and pacing, about surprise and suspense, it probably stretches back along some indirect line to my own early favorites: Encyclopedia Brown, Nancy Drew, The Three Investigators. (And I’ve enjoyed re-discovering that last series again now, reading them to our 9-year-old son, Dash). My teenage years were fed by Agatha Christie, Ian Fleming, John D. MacDonald, and a lot of issues of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and more recently I find myself coming back again and again to Stanley Ellin and Patricia Highsmith and, just lately, some of Ruth Rendell’s short fiction. And there’s a whole batch of literary authors too who’ve inspired; my wife and I recently watched the Hemingway documentary on PBS, and I was reminded how influential he was on my idea of how short fiction could work.

These are all older writers, I know, and there are others today too who both wow me as a reader and urge me onward from a writer’s perspective as well — year after year new discoveries and delights! — but I hesitate to name any for fear of leaving out too many great writers and great friends.

CB: How would you describe the differences between short fiction and full-length novels? Some people assume writing short fiction is easier than writing longer works. In your experience, is this true?

AT: Ha! Given that I’ve never successfully written a traditionally structured novel myself, it seems like I’d have to say short fiction is easier! But the truth is, I’m not sure that’s the case.

Because of my own reading and love of short stories, my mind just seems to have geared itself somehow toward thinking in the short form, and I do like the idea of being able to keep in my head the various parts of a story I’m working on — something I simply can’t do with a longer narrative. But I’ve heard the opposite too from well-known, prolific novelists who’ve told me they struggle to write short stories — it just doesn’t come naturally to them, not enough space to do what they want to do.

The novel seems to me a work that relies on accumulation — whether more characters or more depth into some characters or more plot lines and more subplots and more… words, obviously.

The short story, by comparison, relies on subtraction, trimming and condensing and compressing — or at least that’s the way I work, usually writing longer drafts and then deciding what really needs to be there for the story.

I recently wrote the essay “The Short Mystery” for the new Mystery Writers of America handbook How to Write a Mystery, and as I emphasized there, short fiction requires a little more concentrated focus, as well as attention to economy and efficiency. Instead of a full portrait of a setting, what’s the detail or two that will bring it alive? Instead of a long conversation, what bits of dialogue are necessary to develop character, push the plot forward, or — ideally — do both at the same time? I personally like all that folding and compressing and distilling.

CB: Has your writing changed over the years? If so, how?

AT: I’ve actually had the chance recently to reflect on this very question. The hardcover of my new collection, The Boy Detective & The Summer of ’74 and Other Tales of Suspense, comes with an extra perk: a separate pamphlet with the earliest draft of the title story; that earliest draft, titled “Burying the Bone,” dates back to the 1994 — more than twenty-five years before the final version, “The Boy Detective & The Summer of ’74,” was published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. (You can read the AHMM story for free at my website right now.) Looking at the two stories side by side, the other one looks thinner to me, and not just because the final version is three times longer than the original. I hope I’ve become a better writer when it comes to crafting characters who are more complex and plots that have more layers to them and folding in some thematic weight to the whole thing too. Plus there’s the whole question of endings — the hardest thing for me to write, always, but I do hope I’m better now at getting them tuned right, not just easy wrap-ups but some image or action or statement that resonates a bit more, carries the reader forward beyond the last line, giving them something more to think about.

I started to say I think I’m in general better at the whole economy, efficiency, focus thing too, but “The Boy Detective” is nearly 12,000 words long, and the draft of a story I’m revising right now —  “The Adventure of the Castle Thief” — is more than 18,000 words, so what the heck do I know? I’m still learning — always!

The Boy Detective & The Summer of ’74/Art Taylor

CB: You recently collaborated with your wife, Tara Laskowski, on a short story entitled “Both Sides Now” for The Beat of  Black Wings: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Joni Mitchell (Untreed, 2020). Is that the first time you’ve written together? How did that work?

AT: Tara and I were really pleased with the end result, a series of letters between husband and wife — “both sides” of their story, to echo the song — with the husband in prison trying to encode messages about where his wife can find a stash of stolen money and the wife having some plans of her own. There’s a playfulness to the story, I hope — both in the codes and in the twistiness of the relationship — but the writing process was a little more grueling, I have to admit. Tara is a much quicker writer, while I spend too long staring at the page, trying to figure out what this character should want or do or say next. Tara would send me her section and then wait and wait and wait and… and when I sent finally sent my section back, she’d whip up her next one and shoot it back my way and… her wait would begin again.

Despite the differences in our process, we did write another story together, one that we really love, actually, but it’s a kind of fan fiction, using some well-known, well-loved characters, and we have no idea if we’ll ever get permission to have it published.

CB: As a teacher in the English department of the George Mason University, you meet young people aspiring to be writers. What is the best advice you can give them?

AT: It seems simple, but: Keep writing!

I’m consistently amazed by the imagination and the dedication of students in my classes — and their productivity too. In any given creative writing course, I regularly require students to write two stories a semester — a pace I could hardly keep myself — and yet they step up to the challenge time and again, with drafts that often still need a lot of polish but that nearly always show great creativity and energy and potential, something on the page that wasn’t there before, something they can work with. One of the great joys of my work is following students in our BFA program in creative writing from their first semesters at Mason through their last — watching their writing evolve and improve so much in such a short span of time. And I always hope that they’ll carry that momentum forward, keep writing, keep growing.

That’s good advice for all of us, of course: keep getting words on the page, keep trying to make the next story better than the last, don’t put down the pen, even if it seems the easier thing to do.

And I’ll add “keep reading” too, because that’s another way I learn — by seeing how other writers have done it and trying to make some of those same moves myself.

CB: What’s coming next for you?

AT: Needless to say, the past year has been difficult for nearly everybody, and in 2020, I wrote very, very little — despite my own advice above to “Keep Writing!” More recently, though, I’ve been gaining traction again. I’m revising one big story now — “The Castle Thief,” as I mentioned — and have a couple more already out on submission. Fingers crossed that I’ll have good news before long.

And I’ve got a few novels ideas lurking around… just trying to figure out how to regear my brain in that direction too.

CB: Art, thank you so much for stopping by and sharing your story. I’m looking forward to “The Castle Thief!” Best of luck — and keep writing!

BCW Member Book Release: Andrew-Welsh Huggins’ An Empty Grave

Andrew Welsh-Huggins

Andrew Welsh-Huggins releases the newest book in his Andy Hayes Private Investigator series, An Empty Grave, on June 30 at Gramercy Books in Bexley, in an event moderated by fellow Buckeye Crime Writer member Connie Berry. Eileen Curley Hammond interviewed him recently about his accomplishment.

ECH: Seven books in for this series. Do you delight in finding new Columbus places to feature in your books?

AWH: I always enjoy sneaking in references to Columbus, whether long-time landmarks like the Statehouse or real-life restaurants like Club 185 in German Village (though I’m careful not to put any bodies into actual establishments). The one downside of using real businesses is the risk they’ll close and no longer be current. Fingers crossed, all the restaurants that Andy visits in An Empty Grave are still operating — for the moment!

ECH: You have a full-time job as well as writing novels. How do you carve out time to write?

AWH: I’ve managed to settle into a system where I work for a couple of hours each morning before I start work as a reporter. I have a short commute in non-pandemic times, and for the moment no commute at all as I continue to work mostly from home, so I’m fortunate that way.

ECH: You edited (and contributed to) Columbus Noir. Was it more fun corralling other authors, or do you prefer the solitude of writing your own series?

AWH: I enjoy working on my own material, but I also really liked editing Columbus Noir because I got to work with such great writers. In that situation, it was also exciting to be creating something that showcased Columbus and its amazing crime writing community.

ECH: I love how you meld what’s happening in Andy’s personal life with the cases he is working on and how his journey to outlive his past continues. What can you share from the new book?

AWH: Andy’s younger son, Joe, undergoes a crisis involving life at home with his mom and stepdad, and Andy has to make some hard decisions about increasing his involvement in Joe’s life despite the erratic and sometimes dangerous life of a private eye (at least a fictional one). Andy also meets a woman who he thinks may finally be the one, but as usual, complications arise.

ECH: This book is number seven in this series. How many more Andy Hayes books will there be?

AWH: My standard response is, at least one more, although I have plenty of ideas that could propel the series for a while. I like hanging around Andy’s world so I’m hopeful to keep the series going.

ECH: Where can we find your book, and do you have any appearances scheduled?

AWH: My book will be available at local bookstores and at the Ohio University Press website (www.ohioswallow.com). If you order through June 18, you can enter promo code OHIOSUN on the website shopping cart to activate a 40% off discount. 

ECH: Would you like to share an excerpt from An Empty Grave?

AWH:

An Empty Grave/Andrew Welsh-Huggins

“WHAT ABOUT MURDER?”

Even in the crowded restaurant, conversation at high Saturday-night boil, the question turned heads at more than a few tables. I gestured for the stranger to sit, but he shook his head and repeated the query. Joe and Mike, despite how accus­tomed they were to such interruptions, stared in fascination at the ungainly man looming over us like that relative at Thanksgiv­ing you’ll do anything to avoid but secretly can’t stop glancing at to see what happens next. I sighed, aware of the attention we were attracting and realizing there was no easy way around our predicament.

“Murder?” I said.

“You heard me. Do you investigate it?”

“I usually leave that to the police.”

“But what if they won’t?”

“Won’t what?”

“What if the police won’t investigate a murder?”

“That’s not been my experience.”

“Then maybe you haven’t been paying attention to what’s really going on.”

“Listen, we’re running late, and I don’t have time to talk right at the moment.”

“So you’re just like all the rest? You won’t help me. Is that it?”

“I can’t help you because I don’t know what you’re talking about. I also can’t help the fact I’m running late. Now if you’ll excuse me—”

“Fine,” he said, squeezing himself into the booth beside Joe before I could object. “I’ll start from the beginning. My dad was a cop, and someone killed him. And I need help finding the bas­tard who did it.”

LET THE record show this whole sorry mess started because, as usual, I bit off more than I could chew.

I’d taken an early-afternoon surveillance gig to shore up my moribund bank account, even though I knew my schedule was tight. In my defense, the job should have been a cinch — trailing a furnace repairman who was claiming workers’ comp for a bad back through Home Depot while he loaded multiple four-by-four timbers onto a cart. Instead, as usual, things got compli­cated. It turned out he was also having an affair — the lumber was destined for the deck he was building for his girlfriend — which meant extra tracking time. As a result, I was late picking up my sons from the houses of my respective ex-wives, as usual, and my plans for dinner at home as part of my custody weekend went out the window.

Plan B was a couple of large pepperonis around the corner at Plank’s on South Parsons. We ate quickly because we had only thirty minutes before movie time — one of the Marvel films, the name of which I’d already forgotten. Something to do with avenging and justice. I was mapping out the fastest route to the theater in my head, Mike was complaining we were going to miss the previews, and Joe was fiddling with his phone when the man approached our table.

“You’re Woody Hayes.”

I looked up. Just what I needed. Another Ohio State football fan eager to berate me for ancient sins I’d spent half my life trying to atone for — not that I’m counting. He was heavy, bald­ing, with thick black-framed glasses just short of factory-floor protective wear. Intensity glowing in his eyes. I thought about making a dash for it. But as often happens to me, there was no place to hide.

“Once upon a time. I go by Andy now. Was there something —”

“I’ve seen you on the news. You’re a private eye.”

“That’s right. An investigator, technically.”

I checked the time on my phone. Twenty-five minutes before showtime. At this point, maybe faster to forget surface streets and head straight for the highway. Cutting it close but still doable, especially if the previews started a minute or two late.

“What kinds of things do you investigate?”

Mike sighed loudly. Joe, despite the sullen mood he’d been in recently, looked on with interest.

“Missing persons, missing money, very rarely missing pets.” I dug for my wallet and retrieved a card. “Maybe you could give me a call?”

And that’s when he asked the question.

“What about murder?”

I GLANCED up the aisle and saw a woman at a far table staring at us. The man followed my gaze. “It’s just my sister. She’s not too thrilled I walked over here.”

That was an understatement. To judge by her expression she couldn’t have been more mortified had the man sauntered up to us in his birthday suit.

I nodded at her. “Your father. When did he die?”

A pause. “Last month.”

“Around here?” I hadn’t heard of any cops being killed recently.

“Yeah. But it took him forty years to die.”

That was just enough to pique my curiosity.

“Keep going,” I said, ignoring Mike’s groan. “But make it fast. We’re in a hurry, like I said.”

Without invitation, he picked up a piece of our pizza and started talking. He said his name was Preston Campbell. He lived nearby, in the house where he and his sister grew up. His father was Howard Campbell, but everyone called him Howie. A beat cop in the late seventies who worked a bunch of pre­cincts but eventually settled for the University District north of Ohio State.

“Lot of guys didn’t like that rotation because of everything happening on campus in those days. The hippies and the music and the protests and everything. He didn’t mind it so much. Plus, back in those days the neighborhood was still intact. Lot of pro­fessors lived around there. But fall of ’79, cops started seeing a bunch of burglaries. Not random, either. Professional. They fig­ured it was a team, knew what they were doing. Had a system for watching places, checking out people’s movements, striking when residents weren’t home. Some professors got cleaned out. University raised a stink and the city put on extra patrols. My dad was assigned a swing shift, 8 p.m. to 4 a.m., to keep an eye on things.”

“We don’t have much time here,” I said.

He continued as if he hadn’t heard me. “So, this one night, him and his partner were coming back from a dinner break. They’re making a pass, up by Indianola and Chittenden, when they see this van that hadn’t been there earlier. They drive by, going slow, my dad at the wheel. His partner notices a guy in the driver’s seat who slumps down real low when he sees the cruiser. They keep going, pull over half a block up, and get out. They start walking back toward the van when his partner — guy named Fitzy — spots someone in a yard with something in his arms. They both take off running after him. That’s when it happened.”

“What?”

“Dad,” Mike said.

“My dad goes around back, to the left, OK? Fitzy cuts right. My dad’s checking out the rear door, which is partly open, when he hears Fitzy yelling. He runs around and sees Fitzy on the ground, unconscious, and some guy hightailing it. He starts chasing and the guy turns and shoots my dad, three times.” Jab, jab, jab, went the piece of pizza in his hand. “He goes down, but still manages to get two shots off.”

“He get the guy?”

“Oh yeah,” Campbell said. “Now they’re both down, both bleeding out. My dad calls out to Fitzy, he wakes up long enough to call it in, and that’s the beginning of the end.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean my dad survived, but his days as a cop were over.”

“What about Fitzy? And what about the guy who shot your dad?”

“Fitzy was fine — he was back at work the next day. The guy who shot my dad? That’s the problem. He disappeared.”

“Disappeared? Like, ran off? After being shot?”

Campbell shook his head. “After they arrested him. But be­fore he could be prosecuted.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Dad. We’ve got like fifteen minutes.”

“Hang on,” I said.

“But this is the thing,” Campbell continued. “I just found out he’s still alive.”

“The guy who shot your dad?”

He said yes emphatically, pizza-flecked spittle flying from his mouth.

“After all these years?”

“You heard me.”

“Where?”

“That’s the problem. I don’t know.”

Our server appeared and inquired how everything was. I nodded blankly. Mike asked for the check.

I said, “You know he’s alive but you don’t know where?”

“That’s right. Which is why I need you to find him.” He re­trieved a lumpy wallet and pulled out what looked like several twenties. “I’m not a charity case. I can pay.”

“Dad!” Mike said.

“Just hang on,” I said, eyeing the money. “We’ve got time.”

Except that we really didn’t. And sure enough, we missed the previews. As usual.

“An Empty Grave” by Andrew Welsh-Huggins ©2021. This material is reprinted by permission of Ohio University Press, www.ohioswallow.com.

BCW Board Member Connie Berry’s Book Release: The Art of Betrayal

Connie Berry’s third book in the successful Kate Hamilton mystery series, The Art of Betrayal, launched on June 8, 2021. Eileen Curley Hammond caught up with her recently, while Connie was busy at work on book four.

ECH: It’s been an unsettling time for everyone over the past year, and things are finally beginning to open. I know you’ve spent a lot of time in Wisconsin; was that of benefit to your writing?

Connie Berry
Connie Berry

CB: Our cottage in Wisconsin has always been my favorite and most profitable place to write, mainly because there are fewer distractions and responsibilities. Maybe fewer ways to procrastinate? That was where my first book, A Dream of Death, was mainly written. And then there’s my desk — surrounded by windows looking out at the lake and the woods — a great way to focus and dream. One big benefit during the pandemic was the fact that where we are —  Vilas County — the cases were always very low because the population is low. In the Northwoods, social distancing is a way of life!

ECH: In The Art of Betrayal, Kate Hamilton is an antiques dealer and has traveled to England to help run her friend Ivor Tweedy’s shop as he recovers from a hip operation and has the opportunity to attend the May Fair pageant. What attracted you to write about this particular fete?

CB: May Fairs are an ancient tradition in England, celebrating the arrival of spring since Roman times. When Oliver Cromwell ruled, dancing and festivities were prohibited. But in 1660 they were restored by King Charles II, including May poles and Morris dancing. Village May Fairs today include rides, games, contests, and of course lots to eat and drink.

Since one of the subplots in The Art of Betrayal involves a legendary “green maiden,” discovered under a hedge by a sheep farmer in the eleventh century, I thought it would be fun to have that pageant played out at the Long Barston May Fair. And what if a very modern body turned up in the middle of the eleventh century?

ECH: The book centers on a murder and the theft of a Chinese pottery jar. How do you choose the antiques in your books?

CB: Choosing the objects Kate will deal with is one of the pleasures of writing the series for me. I grew up in the high-end antiques trade, so very old and fine antiques and antiquities were part of my normal world as a child and teenager. In our house, objects would come and go — a life-size bust of Marie Antionette spent almost a year in our living room, for example. Later we had a two-foot-high carved ivory tankard from eighteenth-century Germany in a glass humidifier. I considered all this perfectly normal, of course. Later I found out my friends (and my future husband) thought we were a little odd.

Húnpíng jars are very interesting and extremely rare. We know they were connected with funerals, but archaeologists aren’t quite sure how. None found ever held human remains. Some are quite plain; others are incredibly detailed. Scholars believe they were personally commissioned as no two alike have ever been found. They were popular during the Han dynasty, which ruled China for four hundred years, from approximately 200 BC to 200 AD. After that, funeral customs changed and they went out of fashion.

ECH: Kate’s an American and the books take place (so far) in England and Scotland. Are there any plans to bring her home with Tom for a portion/all of a book?

CB: I had considered that — and if the series continues, Kate and Tom may visit Ohio sometime. But Kate loves the little corner of Suffolk I’ve created, and the people who inhabit the village of Long Barston have become very dear to her. These characters — Lady Barbara Finchley-fforde, Vivian Bunn, Ivor Tweedy, and others — are my main cast of characters, along with the pub owners and shop keepers on the High Street.

Since all four of my grandparents immigrated from Europe, Kate is returning the favor.

On a practical note, my publisher asked that the series be set in the UK. My books will attract readers who love that setting. The fourth book in the series, The Shadow of Memory, is set in Long Barston as well (to be released June 2022). The fifth, as yet unwritten, will take Kate to the lovely and mysterious county of Devon where Tom has business and where his Uncle Nigel occupies a country house known as Fouroaks.

ECH: Where can we find you as you promote your new book, and where can we buy it?

CB: You can find out more about me and my books at my website: www.connieberry.com. There you can sign up for my monthly newsletter, The Plot Thickens, where I share the latest news, my coming events, occasional short fiction, and sometimes recipes.

The Art of Betrayal is sold everywhere — the big booksellers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble, of course. But I always encourage readers to buy books from their local bookstore. In Columbus, we are blessed with The Book Loft in German Village; Gramercy Books in Bexley; Prologue in the Short North; and Cover To Cover in Upper Arlington.

ECH: Would you be willing to share an excerpt with us?

CB: I’d love to. Since you asked about the May Fair, here’s part of scene that take place on Long Barston’s village green. Kate and Tom are watching the pageant:

The Art of Betrayal/Connie Berry

Some families had brought lawn chairs. Others spread blankets on the green, where sweaty, exhausted children could sleep off their sugar highs. Tom and I reclaimed our park bench and settled in. As the twilight deepened, a hand-bell choir from St. Æthelric’s entertained us with tunes from Camelot.

The Green Maiden pageant began at nine sharp. Several portable light stands illuminated the stage.

              Tom put his arm around my shoulder. I leaned back against his chest.

“Look,” I said as the first actors took the stage. “There’s Vivian and Lady Barbara.”

They were dressed in rough, earth-colored woolen tunics. With her round face and stout figure, Vivian looked the part. Lady Barbara, even with a tattered shawl tied around her thin shoulders, couldn’t have looked less like a peasant if she’d been wearing a tiara. Vivian gave me a surreptitious wave as they milled with the other peasants in front of a painted canvas backdrop depicting a line of timbered houses and a stone bridge. A banner read Year of Our Lord 1044. Three musicians in medieval clothing were playing Greensleeves.

              In the first act, a young man wearing knee britches and a leather jerkin dashed onto the stage, waving his arms and looking generally gobsmacked. As the peasants gathered around to see what all the fuss was about, a second man in similar clothes appeared, leading a girl wearing a faux-leather shift by the arm. Her skin was the color of moss. Seeing the green maiden, the peasants fell to their knees and crossed themselves.

              I leaned over. “Where’s the dialogue?”

              “It’s pantomime,” Tom whispered.

A bit of flirting between the green maiden and a peasant youth ended in a wedding when the singularly miscast clergyman—Stephen Peacock from the Finchley Arms—made the sign of the cross over them.

In the next scene, a thatched canopy was carried onstage—a cottage, I supposed. The green maiden, dressed now in a long tunic and wimple, sat with her husband at a rough wooden table. His hand grasped an oversized tankard, but he appeared to have passed out. The green maiden, producing a vial from within her tunic, cackled at the audience and poured a measure of red liquid into the tankard. Waking up, her husband swilled his ale and belched. The crowd roared with laughter. The husband stood, clutched his stomach, and staggered off stage. Immediately, a mob of angry villagers carrying clubs and ropes surrounded the cottage. Inside, the green maiden cowered. Oh, dear. Four men unfurled a length of blue cloth and waved it gradually above their heads. Rising water? When the sheet dropped, the green maiden lay dead. Four men carried her offstage.

Everyone clapped.

“Is that it?” I asked. “Is it over?”

“Not quite,” Tom said. “First we get a nice speech by the lord of the manor, then the curtain call.”

The medieval lord—Mr. Cox, the local butcher—swaggered on stage in green velvet doublet and breeches, far from historically accurate, but oh, well. He gave a nice speech about accepting those who are different from ourselves. Finally, the entire cast filed out.

The crowd applauded wildly. The cast members were taking their final bows when a disturbance arose, stage left. Someone appeared out of the shadows.

The audience screamed and sprang to their feet, partially blocking our view.

A woman staggered toward the players, clutching her belly. Parents grabbed their children and their blankets and ran for their cars.

“What it is, Tom? I can’t see.”

He took my arm, and we pushed our way toward the stage. People were shouting.

              She’s been hurt. Somebody call for help.

              Look at the blood.

Several cast members tried to help the injured woman, but she pushed them away. She appeared to be focused on the actress playing the green maiden. Reaching out with both hands, she took hold of the actress’s tunic, nearly pulling the young woman to the ground.

The crowd parted. The front of the woman’s white blouse was soaked with blood.

Eileen, thank you for asking about The Art of Betrayal. I loved talking with you!