“A Girl Like You” is on CRAFT
CRAFT Literary is fairly new, but it gets a reader’s attention right away. The writing is wonderful, and each new story comes with an author’s note on some interesting aspect of craft. Right away, I knew I wanted to send them something, and off went “A Girl Like You.”
When I write short, I love to experiment with form, turning it one way and then the other, and when I first conceived of the book I’ve been working on for the past two years, I imagined it as written in fragments, but the parts of a short story–taken from historical events, altered, added to, and refocused–are far less complex to juggle than the vast world of the novel. They are such different creatures, the story and the novel, and that is what my essay on craft is about.
Many people are familiar with the case of the Black Dahlia, and those with more than a passing interest will recognize the scene in the shoe store. They will recognize Richard as Matt Gordon. They may or may not recognize May as Beth. I have tried to give her nuance, complexity, and most importantly, to give her the autonomy of her own narrative.
