Trina Corey is the pen name of Trina Warren, an elementary-school teacher who lives in California. Her five mystery stories have all been published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, beginning with the Department of First Stories. They have received nominations for the Edgar, Macavity, Barry, and Derringer Awards.
• “Flight” began, as many mysteries do, with a what if? What if a serial killer who had always targeted elders ended up living with his target demographic? In the long process of answering that question, characters came and went, or stayed and changed. Jenny, the new nursing assistant, was originally going to be the main character. (She and her fiancé, Brian, are the wife and husband in “There Are Roads in the Water,” a story I wrote set many years later.) Mina is a composite of several women I knew whose principal shared characteristic was kindness. But it was Rachel, the heroine, who most surprised me. She was originally slated to be one of the victims. Over the six years that it took to write this story, Rachel didn’t so much change as I just got to know her better, and she changed the story. That a voiceless, seemingly helpless woman came to be the narrator and savior of others is a case of a character who would not be denied.
A former journalist, folksinger, and attorney, Jeffery Deaver is an international number-one best-selling author. His novels have appeared on bestseller lists around the world, including the New York Times, the London Times, Italy’s Corriere della Sera, the Sydney Morning Herald, and the Los Angeles Times. His books are sold in 150 countries and have been translated into 25 languages. The author of thirty-nine novels, three collections of short stories, and a nonfiction law book as well as a lyricist of a country-western album, Deaver has received or been shortlisted for dozens of awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention, the Raymond Chandler Lifetime Achievement Award in Italy, and The Strand Magazine’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Deaver has been nominated for seven Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America.
• When Larry Block contacted me about the idea of writing a story inspired by the American artist Edward Hopper for an anthology entitled In Sunlight or in Shadow, I jumped at the chance. I was familiar with Hopper from my visits to Chicago’s Art Institute when I was young and had long admired his subdued and yet mysterious work. As for the painting upon which to base a story, contributors could select anything but Nighthawks (the iconic late-night diner). I picked Hotel by a Railroad, 1952. I had several stories in mind based on the couple in the image, but, curiously, it was the date of the painting that sent me to my word processor. I thought — as one would — the Cold War! And I was off and running.
Brendan DuBois of New Hampshire is the award-winning author of 20 novels and more than 150 short stories. His latest Lewis Cole mystery, Hard Aground, will be published in early 2018. He’s currently working on a series of projects with the New York Times best-selling novelist James Patterson. His short fiction has appeared in Playboy, Analog, Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and numerous anthologies, including The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century, published in 2000, and the The Best American Noir of the Century, published in 2010. His short stories have also appeared in Gardner Dozois’s The Year’s Best Science Fiction anthologies. His stories have twice won him the Shamus Award from the Private Eye Writers of America and have earned him three Edgar Allan Poe Award nominations from the Mystery Writers of America. He is also a Jeopardy! game show champion as well as a co-winner on the trivia game show The Chase. Visit his website at www.BrendanDuBois.com.
• As a lifelong resident of the small state of New Hampshire, I’ve seen the tension and conflict between local townspeople and visitors from out of state, most often called people “from away.” No matter how much you read about how the culture of the United States is the same from one coast to the other, the truth is that we are very different indeed. Sometimes these differences are something to be celebrated, as when a New Hampshire guy like me can travel and enjoy Kansas City barbecue, or go to New Orleans and try Cajun cooking. But at other times, as in my story, the differences can lead to tension, conflict, and — eventually — death.
In my story, an avoidable accident on a lake in New Hampshire that ends in a woman’s death causes her husband to go on a long and exhaustive search for her killers and to find justice, ending up in the urban sprawl of Massachusetts. It’s the classic tale of city dwellers vs. country.
But in writing this story, I also wanted to play with the cliché of the suffering husband seeking revenge for his loved one, and I did so by making the wife a very unlikable character, in the slow process of divorcing her small-town husband. But after she is killed, it’s her small-town and apparently simple husband who makes things right. She was still his wife. It’s his duty. And he intends to complete his duty.
When he’s finally captured by the husband, the urban man responsible for the woman’s death can’t believe it. Why would this simple country man do so much and risk everything to get justice for an unlikable woman who’s about to divorce him?
The answer shows the gulf between the two worlds, and the two ways of life, as the two “men from away” have their final, violent confrontation.
Loren D. Estleman, the author of more than 80 books and 200 short stories, has won 20 national writing awards and has been nominated for the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award and the American Book Award. He served as president of the Western Writers of America, and in 2012 that organization presented him with the Owen Wister Award for Lifetime Achievement in the western field. The Private Eye Writers of America honored him with its lifetime achievement award in 2013. (How many lives can a writer have?) He lives in Michigan with his wife, author Deborah Morgan.
• I always had a hunch my ten-foot shelf of books on Jack the Ripper would pay off someday, but no one was more surprised than I when, once the opportunity came to write about him, I chose to leave behind 1888 London and move the action to World War II Detroit. Maybe it was inevitable, as I spent most of my youth listening to my parents sharing their experiences of the era and watching 1940s noir thrillers on early TV. Despite the time jump, “GI Jack” gave me the chance to use my late close friend Dale Walker’s pet theory about the Ripper’s identity, which makes as much sense as any.
Peter Ferry’s stories have appeared in McSweeney’s, Fiction, OR Magazine, Chicago Quarterly Review, StoryQuarterly, and Fifth Wednesday Journal. Ferry is the winner of an Illinois Arts Council Award for Short Fiction and a contributor to the travel pages of the Chicago Tribune and to WorldHum. He has written two novels, Travel Writing, which was published in 2008, and Old Heart, which was published in June 2015 and won the Chicago Writers Association Novel of the Year award. He lives in Evanston, Illinois, and Van Buren County, Michigan, with his wife, Carolyn.