Keeping Us in Suspense

The half-dozen original members of Top Suspense--crime, mystery, horror, and western novelists who hope to promote their work (and that of others) in e-book formats--have today launched a round-robin short story in their group blog. As member Dave Zeltserman explains:

For the next 12 days we’ll be posting a story segment written by the original members of the Top Suspense Group (Max Allan Collins, Vicki Hendricks, Ed Gorman, Bill Crider, Harry Shannon and Dave Zeltserman). After 12 days the story will be finished (one way or the other), and we’ll be offering free books to the first five people who can match each segment to the author who wrote it!

The rules for us in writing this story: no planning, no coordination, no safety nets. Each day one of us wrote up to 250 words of a short story and passed it on to the next writer, with each writer eventually working on two segments. The only leeway was the last writer got to go past the 250-word limit to try to finish up the story, and the only editing done was for consistency errors.

Installment No. 1 can be found here.

READ MORE: “Announcing Top Suspense” (A Writer’s Life).