Stories, Essays and a Dollop of Poetry

For this anthology, the editors asked 100 published mystery writers: "Did a mystery set you on your path to being a writer? Is there a classic mystery that remains important to you today?" The answers are in this collection. My answer was... "Harriet the Spy" by Louise Fitzhugh.

The anthology is available in print:
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
 

Fifteen successful Midwestern authors contributed essays on the basics of writing mystery novels to this book. Writing Murder shares their insights on fiction elements: setting, characters, point of view, dialogue, plot, and research. In addition, they offer insight on the genre, how to build suspense, point of view, the circle of openings/endings, and marketing your manuscript. My essay was on pacing in fiction.

The anthology is available in print:
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
 

And as an ebook:
Amazon
 

Every now and then, a poem possesses me. Even more rarely, something as-yet-to-be-identified possesses me to share the poem with others. I'm tickled that my first published poem, "Crosses," appeared in one of the literary journals published in my hometown of Dayton, Ohio. The journal is "Flights," published by the Department of English at Sinclair Community College and you can read my poem on page 119  (and the entire journal, for that matter) on the Flights website. 

A few week's after my mother's passing, I wrote a draft of this poem on my iPhone notes feature... and promptly forgot about it. A few years later, I was inspired by the morning poetry instructor, and revised my draft poem into "Kits," which you can read by clicking here: http://slipperyelm.findlay.edu/authors/2014-2/sharon-short/kits/ The poem was published in Slippery Elm Literary Journal.

One spring, as I drove back and forth to the university that serves as the location of the workshop I direct, I always watched for a barn on the side of the country road. The barn served as a landmark to let me know I had about ten more minutes of driving. One day, I noticed the barn being torn down. Piece by piece, it came down over the course of a month, until all that was left was a pile of scrap and a hand-lettered sign: "Free Wood." One sees that pretty often on rural roads, but for some reason, this caught my imagination. You can read the result--a short piece of fiction also titled "Free Wood"--here: http://www.chagrinriverreview.com/sharon-short.html