The Pulp and Mystery Shelf: My Introduction to Genre and Mystery Fiction

By Shannon Muir

Genre and Mystery writer Shannon Muir, who also administrates the blog THE PULP AND MYSTERY SHELF, gives her personal insights on the field and how she came to be a part of it, and then the first year of launching a blog focused on it. She breaks down how she got the idea to do the blog, through the major steps in its initial launch and her larger thoughts on the blog's positioning in the mystery and crime book landscape. Additionally, the collection includes a mystery short story set in Hollywood where a new writer in town suddenly finds herself a suspect in a murder, called "First Deadly Hollywood Break".

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shannon Muir
• Release date: Apr 27, 2017
• ISBN: 9781311917911

Shannon Muir

SHANNON MUIR's short stories include suspense and mystery elements such as those found in her first full-length story from Pro Se Press, CHARLES BOECKMAN PRESENTS DOC AND SALLY IN "THE DEATH OF BUDDY TURNER". Additionally, she's written short stories for Pro Se Press such as “Tragic Like a Torch Song” in THE DAME DID IT from Pro Se Press, "Pretty as a Picture" in the anthology NEWSHOUNDS, “Tropical Terror” in CRIME DOWN ISLAND and “Hidden History” in EXPLORER PULP. She’s also written the Single Shot New Pulp tale “Ghost of the Airwaves,” a short story offered in electronic format only from Pro Se Press.From her personal self-published projects, her best known titles in this area include the rural crime series THE WILLOWBROOK SAGA.In other genres, Shannon's published short stories include “Meeting the Monster” in the Emby Press anthology SUPERHERO MONSTER HUNTER: THE GOOD FIGHT and "Cover Story" in ARIA KALSAN: MYSTERIES OF THE FUTURE.Shannon holds a BA in Radio-TV and English from Eastern Washington University in Cheney, Washington, which she considers to be her hometown. She also holds an MA in Communications from California State University, Fullerton, along with additional education in screenwriting, project management, library technician studies, and most recently a certificate earned with distinction in General Business with Emphasis in Marketing from UCLA Extension. Currently, she is working on a Masters of Library and Information Science at San Jose State University.She is married to FLYING GLORY AND THE HOUNDS OF GLORY collaborator and fellow author Kevin Paul Shaw Broden. They live in California in the United States.She is a member of Sisters in Crime (national, Guppies, and Los Angeles, where she also served on the Los Angeles board for a two terms beginning in 2018), as well as the Toastmasters4Writers Chapter of Toastmasters International (where she serves as chapter Secretary), Women in Animation, and a Professional member of ASIFA-Hollywood.

Book preview

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COPYRIGHT

THE PULP AND MYSTERY SHELF: My Introduction to Genre and Mystery Fiction

By Shannon Muir

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2017 Shannon Muir.

First Smashwords publication April 2017.

This ebook is for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be given away or resold to others. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy from Smashwords or a vendor partner. If you want to share this work with others, please purchase a copy for each person. Thank you for respecting the hard work of artists and creators.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

COPYRIGHT

TABLE OF CONTENTS

AUTHOR’S NOTE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

FIRST DEADLY HOLLYWOOD BREAK

ALSO BY THE AUTHOR – MYANNA MOORE: HAUNTED BY THE TRUTH

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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AUTHOR’S NOTE

A deep thank you to all of you who supported THE PULP AND MYSTERY SHELF blog for its first year, and I hope you continue to support and follow it as it evolves. I’m hoping that sales of this book will partially offset the cost of hosting it, while also providing you something of value. This book’s contents are twofold: to explain both the journey of how the blog began and evolved over the first year, as well as my personal journey as a mystery and genre writer and how it paralleled the evolution of the blog. I do this because each influenced the other and they are so intertwined, it is impossible to tell the story of one without detailing the other.

The story at the end, First Deadly Hollywood Break, is a roughly 5,000-word short story about a writer coming to Los Angeles and a mystery she encounters. If you want to find out more about the story and how it came to be, those answers will be revealed within the book. I did try selling it to one other venue after the events that led to why it was written, but in the end, it seemed more appropriate to include here as it directly ties to the story of the blog.

Again, I thank you for your support of THE PULP AND MYSTERY SHELF blog. It means a lot to me to interact with readers and writers from the mystery, crime, and genre communities. Best wishes always.

Shannon Muir

Glendale, California

April 2017

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CHAPTER ONE

My initial move into writing genre fiction really can be classified as a story that blends mystery and science fiction. Set in a potential near-future, a news reporter goes undercover as an initiate of a secret society to uncover the role they play in politics. That story, Cover Story, was done as part of a directed world vision for a book called ARIA KALSAN: MYSTERIES OF THE FUTURE, overseen by Jon Wilhelm. I didn’t realize until recently what I wrote at the heart was an investigative reporter mystery story. At the time, I thought this a one-off venture, not something I would do again.

I didn’t even catch on when the next short story I sold many years later would be in a similar shared world concept situation, except this time at a