Re: RARA-AVIS: William Arden's Almost Edgar

From: Dennis Lynds ( dennislynds@cox.net)
Date: 22 May 2005


>
> I'm not sure but I think "Success" was originally
> published in ARGOSY. It was preserved between hard
> covers in one of those ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS
> anthologies, but I can't recall which one. That was
> where I found it.

Argosy is right. The Hitchcock anthology was STORIES TO STAY AWAKE BY. (I never had another Edgar nomination of any kind until another short story in 2002!!! And I see in THE THIRD DEGREE that editors and publishers at the MWA Banquet Symposium told aspiring writers that what they want are authors who have a unique voice and chart a new course!!!! Yeah, sure.)

> Dennis, comparatively few spy stories are written at
> the short story level. Maugham's collection ASHENDEN
> - THE BRITISH AGENT, and Fleming's two Bond
> collections, FOR YOUR EYES ONLY and OCTOPUSSY, are the
> only short story collections featuring a single
> character I can think of. You're one of the few
> writers who's done spy fiction at both lengths. Is
> there some reason spy writers eschew the short story
> medium?

I even did a Dan Fortune that is essentially a spy story. Why spy novelists don't write more short stories I have no idea---except that most of them write massive tomes and some just writers can't write short. Admittedly, it isn't easy to find short espioange ideas. In fact almost all my spy stories are variations on one topic---that of spies who who do what they must for their nations or causes even when they they know they will probably die, or even when they know they HAVE TO die to make their mission work. (Except my most recent "A Delicate Mission" which I did with Gayle for one of the Flesh and Blood anthologies.) Remember, the essence of a short story is that it has one theme and one only. Spy stories by their very nature tend to be Byzantine and need length.

Dennis>
>
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