Compliments of a Friend by Susan Isaacs

Author:Susan Isaacs [Isaacs, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Mystery & Detective, Women Sleuths, Short Stories (Single Author)
ISBN: 9781480454972
Google: BYaNAQAAQBAJ
Amazon: B00G2V621C
Barnesnoble: B00G2V621C
Goodreads: 18714185
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2013-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Afterword

ONCE UPON A TIME I WAS FORCED TO WRITE A SHORT STORY AND …

All right, “forced to write” is an overstatement if your idea of coercion is the muzzle end of a pistol an inch from one of your sinuses. In fact, the mood in that restaurant couldn’t have been more amiable. There we were, way back in the 1990s, my writers’ group, the Adams Round Table, at our monthly first-Tuesday get-together. As usual, we sat around the table, downing tough-guy whiskey or Chardonnay or teetotaler’s club soda. The first two minutes were taken up with publishing news. Then a healthy half-hour was spent on the most urgent writers’ gossip. After that, with plates of pasta or the joint’s weekly special—invariably a flat, flaccid white thing the menu persisted in calling Dover sole specially flown in (we assumed from the Bronx)—each of us took turns speaking about our writing lives.

We covered all the territory. The real downside of first person is the reader knows the narrator’s not going to die, but I tried the omniscient third and, boy, did it suck the big one. Then the next member would relate how Warner Brothers said they were definitely going to option Dead, Dead, Dead, but they never called back and I’m not sure if they’re playing hard to get or, you know, maybe … Could they have lost interest? They really seemed to love it.

As the newest member of the group, I reveled in the congeniality, the shoptalk, the mutual trust. All these terrific mystery and suspense writers: gifted and articulate, some cheery, some morose, and one or two who appeared to have overdone it at some controlled-substance happy hour. But they were all talking the talk I was aching to hear. We spoke in confidence. Not that we were sharing dark secrets, but it was comforting knowing whatever you said about your agent or some other writer would not pop up on Page Six of the New York Post. Being a novelist meant a professional life of isolation, sitting alone in a room telling yourself a story. This monthly dose of collegiality always invigorated me.

The next person who spoke said, “[Our editor] called. The publisher wants another anthology from us. Something like Murder Among Friends.”

“Anthology?” I asked.

“Yeah. Every few years, we put together an anthology of short stories, all with a similar theme.” I must have looked either dubious or stricken, because he or she added, “It doesn’t have to be a long short story.”

“It’s always fun,” someone else added. “You know, the variety: seeing what everybody writes, plus we make a couple of bucks.”

I confessed: “I’ve never written a short story.”

Okay, there weren’t exactly gasps, but nearly all the other members looked a bit surprised. Not only do many novelists start with a short story form, but among mystery and thriller and horror writers, getting into the genre magazines, the pulps, was step one on the career path.

I, on the other hand, had been an editor at Seventeen magazine and also a freelance political speechwriter.

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