If you follow this show at all you know I am a big fan of the short story, and particularly the crime fiction and noir genres. Stacy Woodson's work has appeared in numerous high quality short story magazines, including Black Cat Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen, Mystery Weekly and many others. She has also had her work in a lot of other great single anthologies with awesome titles like the Tattered Blue Line, Jukes and Tonks and Groovy Gumshoes. She is a two-time Derringer winner in the short mystery category (four nominations in all) and has been nominated for several other awards as well. She is also an editor, a writing teacher and, on occasion an actor who has appeared on shows like The Walking Dead and Homeland.

My guest today has one of the most varied resumes of anyone I have ever had on this show. He is: an Author / Filmmaker / Actor / Composer / Educator / Public Speaker / Consultant / Reviewer / Writer-in-Residence /CEO/ and a columnist with Writer’s Digest. And, most important for our purposes today, Clay Stafford is the founder of the Killer Nashville International Writers Conference, which this year will be held August 22-25th, in Music City of course. Clay is also the Publisher & Editor-in-Chief of Killer Nashville Magazine, and somewhere in there he has managed to sell a whole lot of books.

My guest today is the award-winning author of a dozen books, including three different multi-book series and two standalones. She is also a veteran journalist who has reported from more than a dozen countries over her long career, and is now she’s back in the newsroom serving as an interim editor at the Seattle Times. And somehow between books and the news, she finds time to produce a Substack newsletter – I am now tired even saying those words. So please welcome the very talented Gwen Florio to the Open Mic: Writers in Their Own Words.