"X Marks the Spot"

This story marks an unusual milestone for me: I've now had at least one story published with a title beginning with every letter of the alphabet!

This one's the second time I set something in the town of WaKeeney, Kansas. The first one was "I Call Your Name," which appeared in my Happiness Is a Warm Gun: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of the Beatles anthology. No particular reason to set a second story there, except I needed a cornfield (of which Kansas has plenty!) and I liked the name of the town.

This was my 127th published story and my first sale to Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, appearing in issue #34, which came out in March of 2025.

(Embarrassing Admission Department: The solution to this story's mystery relies on a series of illustrations, the last and most important two of which are incorrectly printed in the magazine ... because I submitted them incorrectly. If the story ever gets reprinted anywhere, I'll hopefully be able to get them corrected. Meanwhile, as of this writing no one but me seems to have noticed....)

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