Conclusion from the review of Down & Out: The Magazine No. 1 in The Digest Enthusiast No. 7.

When I first heard about The Magazine—its publisher and editor—my expectations soared. The potential to achieve something truly outstanding was not only exciting, but seemed entirely possible. I wasn’t disappointed. The Magazine is off to a stellar start. Every story and feature is an absolute winner. I only wish I could give it six stars instead of the five available on amazon and Goodreads.

Excerpt from the interview with Rick Ollerman that appears in The Digest Enthusiast No. 7.

The Digest Enthusiast: Unless I just plain missed them, I don’t think you’ve written many short stories, but “Hit Me” in the first issue of Down & Out: The Magazine was terrific. What triggered the tale, and what was unique about writ- ing a short story versus a novel?

Rick Ollerman: Thank you for that. What triggered that particular story was the notion that it was simply not a good idea to hire a hit man to kill somebody, for any number of reasons. The first time they get into trouble themselves, they’re going to say, “Wanna trade? Let me go and I’ll give you someone who wanted to have someone else murdered.” Huge backfire on you.

I’d like to write more but it’s just an easier thing to do if I either have a weekend or long chunk of time free (that happens, right?), or if someone invites me to their anthologies (I’m still waiting). Last year I had a story appear in Windward: Best New England Crime Stories 2016 from Level Best Books as well as another in Jay Stringer’s Waiting to be Forgotten: Stories of Crime and Heartbreak, Inspired by The Replacements (Gutter Books).

Since I don’t outline a novel and I definitely don’t know how it ends before I start, the biggest difference in writing a short story is while I don’t necessarily have to know the ending before I start, I absolutely, positively must know the point of the story.

Once I know the point of the story, I need someone who can tell that story, if it’s going to be in the first person. This gives me the voice of the piece, and if I have that, and the point, I like to take a weekend or three days and just work on the story start to finish. That clearly shows an obvious difference between novels and short stories: one of the two has far fewer words.

I know when I write it out like that it seems simple, and it is. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. It’s far from that. The sharper, more refined the point and the voice are in your head, the more the story can help you write itself, but simple does not equate to easy. You have less space to develop characters, ideas, and plot, so that means you have fewer tools available for you to make your story what it is in your mind. Unlike a novel, you can hold the entire story in your head at once, but that means it has to be clear enough for you to do so, not something nebulous and ill-defined.

“Process is an interesting topic because it changes and evolves as your experience as a writer grows and evolves. Often I like to start with “what if ” questions when I start to think of a plot. When I began Truth Always Kills, it was something like, ‘The FBI tells us that stalking is the closest thing we have to a reliable predictor of murder. What if you know that, and what if your significant other is being stalked by someone in exactly those ways that often don’t end up well? What would you do? What can you do?’

“That led me to think of the kind of character that would have this kind of knowledge, and then made me think of what kind of person he’d have to be, to be capable of following through on any of the alternatives. And when you think about the most extreme of these, how would anybody make that happen without becoming a suspect themselves? Other people would be aware that the stalker has a victim, so if he just up and disappears, clearly the stalking victim and the people around her would warrant a look by the authorities, wouldn’t they?

“Then I took it further. I presented the character with choice after choice, each one giving him the opportunity to do what’s right morally or what’s right by the letter of the law. Each time he does what he feels he has to do, yet each time someone ends up suffering. This is an immense burden, but it serves as the crux of the character with which I built the plot around. I don’t want to say any more because I don’t like spoilers, but it should give an idea of one way I come up with what I think of as a character-driven sort of plot.”

Excerpted from the interview with Rick Ollerman that appears in The Digest Enthusiast No. 7.

“I’ve written in both the third person and the first person, and I’ve enjoyed both. I expected to retain a preference for third person and feel limited by the first, but that turned out not to be the case.

“Since I’ve had readers ask for a sequel to Truth Always Kills and the publisher ask for a sequel to Mad Dog Barked, I think there’s a way to do both in one book even though both of the predecessors were written in the first person. It will require some experimentation, and I truly hope I can do it well enough so that readers either will not notice or not lose patience and stay with it, but I think some terrific scenes can come out of the collision of the two books.”

Excerpted from the interview with Rick Ollerman that appears in The Digest Enthusiast No. 7.