The First Two Pages: “Stars the Color of Hope” by Carol Gyzander

In April 2015, B.K. Stevens debuted the blog series “The First Two Pages,” hosting craft essays by short story writers and novelists analyzing the openings of their own work. The series continued until just after her death in August 2017, and the full archive of those essays can be found at Bonnie’s website. In November 2017, the blog series relocated to my website, and the archive of this second stage of the series can be found here.

Back in August I attended my first Deadly Ink Mystery Conference, thanks to the invitation of Debby Buchanan and Nikki Bonanni—such a fun time! I was asked to lead a workshop on pacing and plotting and to participate in a couple of panels, and along the way I met some fine writers whose work I hadn’t known before, writers including Christine Bush, Teel James Glenn,  Carol Gyzander, James McCrone, Chris Ryan, and Rich Zahradnik—in addition to many writers I’d met at other conferences over the years and was certainly pleased to see again.

Several of those new-to-me writers have agreed to contribute First Two Pages essays here, and I’m glad to host the first of them this week, Carol Gyzander, whom I was also thrilled to see again at Bouchercon as well.

Carol talks today about her Lovecraft-inspired story “Stars the Color of Hope,” published in Hideous Progeny: Classic Horror Goes Punk by Writerpunk Press, a writers’ collective Carol works closely with. This new collection, published back in May, is the group’s fifth anthology of cyberpunk stories inspired by the classics, and Carol herself has written cyberpunk versions of Shakespeare, Poe, and Twain—a wide range!

Carol is doing fascinating work, and you can get a glimpse of her writing here—both her fiction and her thoughtful commentary on that fiction.

Please use the arrows and controls at the bottom of the embedded PDF to navigate through the essay. You can also download the essay to read off-line.

Gyzander Stars the Color of Hope