Elizabeth Hosang

Published by the Toronto Sisters in Crime, The Whole She-Bang 2 is a collection of 24 short crime fiction stories ranging from noir to cozy, funny to thrilling and everywhere in between. A  sequel to The Whole She-Bang (November 2012), five authors have appeared in both issues.

The “Interview with an Author” She-Bang series continues with Elizabeth Hosang,  a Computer Engineer with an interest in poisons, art fraud and convincing her mini schnauzer that squirrels in the yard are not an emergency. A fan of a well-told story in any genre, Elizabeth especially enjoys mystery, urban fantasy and science fiction. Her first short story was published in The Whole She-Bang. Not content with being a one-hit-wonder, she continues to hone her craft, and unlike when writing code, enjoys the freedom to use adjectives, adverbs and pronouns.

Tell me a bit about your writing process.

I mostly write on weekends when it is easier to find large blocks of time. I try to write once a week, although sometimes I only produce bits of scenes that don’t belong with anything else. I write my story ideas and outlines in pen, but once I get into serious writing I work on the computer. It’s faster, and with my laptop I can write anywhere. I like the laptop better than my old desktop computer. It had a loud fan, and whenever I paused to think for too long it felt like the humming noise was the computer waiting impatiently for me to continue.

Do you read submission guidelines and then write a story, have a story you’d been working on and “tweak it,” or are you lucky enough to have a whole stockpile of stories ready to go?

For both anthologies I had stories I had already written, but they required work. The first one, “BIG BROTHER,” I had to shorten to meet the word limit. The story for the Whole She-Bang 2 was originally shorter than it is now, but I fleshed out some of the details. In both cases I think the final story was much better than its earlier version. I like the fact that no matter how bad the first draft, I can make it better later.

What was your reaction when you received the email notice of acceptance, the first, and the second time?

My short story in the first Whole She-Bang collection was my first sale ever, so there was much dancing around the kitchen! All my friends and relatives heard about it in short order. By the time I got the acceptance for the second anthology I had published two other short stories, so I did less jumping around, but I was still really happy about being accepted.

Janet Costello is the editor for both books. What was your experience with the editing process?

For both collections the editing went pretty smoothly. The first story required more changes on my part, including changing the title. Since it was my first ever sale, I had to get used to having someone change my words, but the end result was a much better story.

Thank you, Elizabeth. I look forward to reading you.

You can find Elizabeth Hosang on Goodreads.