An interview with Michael Bracken

Author of "Store-Crossed Lovers"

Hello, Callers! Thank you for being here.

Last week we published “Store-Crossed Lovers,” Michael Bracken’s story of love and betrayal (and betrayal, and betrayal…) Today Bracken joins us to discuss his long career as an author, his writing process, and Isaac Asimov’s trick for getting unstuck.

As ever, spoilers ahead. If you haven’t read Bracken’s story yet, what are you waiting for?

COLD CALLER MAGAZINE: Tell me a little about your background. When did you start writing fiction? Have you always been interested in crime and mystery fiction in particular, or did that come later?

MICHAEL BRACKEN: I’ve always been a reader, and I was in the eighth grade when I knew I wanted to do. I wrote a story titled “The 1812 Battle at Two Rocks,” showed it to my mother, and told her I wanted to be a writer. She bought me a typewriter, and I started pounding the keys when other boys my age were tossing footballs and shooting free throws. I wrote for my junior high and high school literary magazines, an underground newspaper, and several science fiction fanzines.

Initially, I wrote science fiction and fantasy—my best friend and I planned to be the next Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein—so that’s where I concentrated my efforts. I wrote my first professionally published story—a fantasy about a young boy who is granted one wish (“The Magic Stone,” Young World, November 1978)—when I was seventeen, though it was not published until I was twenty-one, and my career built from there.

Early on, feedback from the editor of a men’s magazine caused me to explore genres other than SF/F. I wrote my first mystery, and he bought it. He bought my second mystery, and my third sold to Mike Shaye Mystery Magazine. I was three for three with crime fiction and, at that point, my SF/F short stories were mostly collecting rejections. The few that did get published appeared in amateur and semi-professional publications. I soon realized that maybe SF/F wasn’t my strong suit.

Since then I’ve written in nearly every genre, but for the past several years most of my stories have fit one or another of the crime fiction sub-genres. This has led to three Derringer Awards, Edgar Award and Shamus Award nominations, and appearances in The Best American Mystery Stories and The Best Mystery Stories of the Year.

What was the origin of “Store-Crossed Lovers?” Do you tend to start with a premise, a character, a great line of dialogue?

“Store-Crossed Lovers” began when I misheard someone who probably said, “Star-crossed lovers.” I have written several stories about a fictional West Texas, with towns and characters who cross-pollinate the stories (for example, the protagonist of one story may be a minor character in another), and I wondered how I might use a grocery store as a key element. I had already used the meat processing plant in Chicken Junction in a story, and I wondered how the unbanked and possibly illegal employees of the plant cashed their paychecks. Then I asked myself, what if someone robbed the grocery store when it’s flush with cash on the plant’s payday?

Though this story began with the title, I tend to start with an opening scene. I imagine something I think will hook a reader’s attention and work from there, establishing the stakes, building on the premise, adding complications or twists if appropriate, and resolving the conflict established in the opening scene.

A lot of what makes this story so much fun are the constant twists and betrayals. How much of that was planned before writing? Do you know where a story like this will wind up before you start drafting?

I did not know how “Store-Crossed Lovers” would end when I started writing. I knew how the initial crime would be committed, I knew what the first twist would be, and I knew that the story felt incomplete when I reached that point. I picked at the story for six years, returning to it every so often to add a sentence or a paragraph or some notes about possible directions to take it until all the pieces finally fell together and I felt satisfied with the outcome.

Many of my stories are written in this seemingly haphazard manner. When I have what I believe is a strong opening or a strong concept, I write everything I can—lines of dialog, completed scenes, notes about possible plot twists, whatever—until I run out of steam. Then the story sits while I work on other projects. Sooner or later, I’ll come back to it.

On the other hand, this process doesn’t work when I’m writing to a deadline. If I’m invited to contribute to an anthology or I see an open-call anthology to which I wish to submit, I need the process to be structured. So, I shift gears and try to narrow my focus to just that particular story until it’s ready to submit.

Who are your biggest influences as a writer?

My earliest influences were the classic science fiction writers I mentioned earlier—Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, and their ilk. When I started writing crime fiction, I read Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and similar writers. So, the classic writers clearly influenced me. I’m not certain which modern writers currently influence me. Because I do a great deal of editing, most of what I read these days is unpublished work.

In addition to being a writer, you’ve also done a lot of work as an editor of crime and mystery fiction anthologies. What do you enjoy about these projects? Has your work as an editor had an impact on your own writing?

I enjoy seeing what writers do with the concepts I envision, and I enjoy it when I discover a new (or new to me) writer I can help shepherd into publication.

Reading so many unpublished manuscripts has made me cognizant of many of the ways things can go wrong, from plot problems to grammar problems to formatting problems. And I see trends. For example, lately many writers are abusing the word “just.” I see the word so overused that now I try to eliminate “just” from my work.

As an editor, what advice would you have for writers who would like to publish their work in anthologies?

Read, understand, and follow the directions.

It seems simple, but many writers don’t follow directions. They submit stories that are too long or too short, are the wrong genre, are formatted incorrectly, or otherwise don’t fit the guidelines.

Then, if a story is accepted, be professional. Work with the editor on revisions (if any), follow directions, and meet deadlines. Writers who prove able to write on topic and on deadline and who prove to be professional at each stage of the process are far more likely to be invited to submit to invitation-only projects. Almost all of the writers I invite are writers I first worked with on open-call projects.

What’s your writing process like? How do you manage to be so productive?

As I mentioned earlier, my process involves having many projects in progress at the same time. That way, I can shift my focus to a different project any time I feel bogged down.

This is actually something I learned from Isaac Asimov. Many years ago, I saw a photograph of his writing space: a U-shaped desk with three typewriters on it. He would work on one project until he bogged down, then turn his chair so he faced one of the other typewriters and work on that project.

I do essentially that by having a folder on my computer containing stories in progress. If I get bogged down, I close that file and open another. This way, I never have writer’s block. There’s always something I can work on, and, over time, stories get finished and get submitted.

What new projects are you most excited about?

They aren’t new projects, but two anthologies I co-edited—Murder, Neat (co-edited with Barb Goffman) and Scattered, Smothered, Covered, and Chunked (co-edited with Stacy Woodson)—were nominated for the 2025 Anthony Award for Best Anthology.

I had two anthologies come out at the end of last year, both from Down & Out Books: Skinning the Poke: Stories of Pickpockets and Pockets Picked and Mickey Finn: 21st Century Noir, vol 6.

I also had stories out in the September/October 2025 issues of both Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.

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Michael Bracken is an award-winning writer of fiction, non-fiction, and advertising copy. An Edgar Award nominee and Shamus Award nominee, he has received multiple awards for copywriting, three Derringer Awards for short fiction, and the Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer Award for lifetime achievement in short mystery fiction. In 2024, he was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters for his contributions to Texas literature. The author of several books and almost 1,300 short stories, he has edited or co-edited thirty-three crime fiction anthologies, including three nominated for Anthony Awards, and provides editorial services to book and periodical publishers. Learn more at crimefictionwriter.com.