How to Promote an Event, in Fine Cactus Fashion

 

I'll be in Tucson later this week for Left Coast Crime 2023, a convention for mystery fans and authors. It's always a wonderful time, and this year I get to start early. On Wednesday night, the local Sisters in Crime chapter is helping coordinate Noir. Noir is an event that happens in fine drinking establishments nationwide, where authors read brief excerpts from their books. It's a home-grown thing, with people organizing them in conjunction with other events or for no reason at all, other than to have a good time. 

Word about Wednesday's event has hit in all the right places. Organizer Patrick Whitehurst has provided multiple graphics for people to use on their social media, and gotten the event into the local alt weekly newspaper. 

Note how the graphics give good placement to the brewing company that's hosting the event. It's truly an example where everybody wins. So if you're going to Left Coast Crime this week, stop by and subject yourself to some great crime. 

Nostalgia? Only If It's Noir

 

I’m pleased to welcome back Niall Howell today, who first guested when his debut novel, the excellent Only Pretty Damned, came out. He’s back now with There Are Wolves Here Too and he’s here to talk about the time period (the ’90s!), and give us one of the best descriptions of noir I’ve ever read. Take it away, Niall—

When I was a kid, my friend’s dad kept this really tacky poster up in their basement. It was one of those plaque-mounted things you’d see in kitschy 50s-style diners: an ensemble scene of a young Elvis and a Marlon Brando playing billiards while Marilyn Monroe looks on from a nearby booth enjoying cocktail. A broody James Dean stands in the corner by himself, regarding the others over his shoulder with sleepy eyes. Airbrushed. Matte sheen. It looked like it was done by a paint-by-numbers sort of artist. I was probably around five or six the first time I saw the poster. Sometimes it would be moved to a different wall, but I can’t remember a time it wasn’t up at my friend’s place.

At the time, I didn’t know the scene depicted was totally fake. For a number of my childhood years, I actually thought that this sort of gathering was common in 1950s, that if I were to walk into a diner at that time I might actually see this group of people together, chalking their pool cues, drinking their drinks, brooding. I knew nothing then of the dishonest glimmer of nostalgia, of the ways that our culture loves to use creative license to cherry-pick the brightest characteristics of bygone eras—the icons, the fashion, the glamour—and cast anything that might have detracted from that coolness aside. Naturally, Joseph McCarthy is nowhere to be seen in this fantasy diner scene. He can’t be spotted peering in through the diner window looking for blacklist candidates. In the sliver of parking lot we can scope from inside, James Dean’s death car is nowhere to be seen either. Ditto for Mr. Presley’s and Ms. Monroe’s prescription bottles. And there’s no sign on the diner door indicating which “type” of patrons are allowed in and which aren’t. If the subjects of the poster are any indication, the 1950s must have been great.

For the longest time, most of my perception of past eras had this sort of deceptive glimmer to it. If it didn’t come from my friend’s house (his dad not only had a lot of this tacky 50s paraphernalia, but was also an Elvis freak; every room had a painting of the King in it, and—fun fact—at least one of those paintings was legitimately haunted), it came from my own home. My own dad was and is an obsessive record collector with a strong bias to all things 1960s, and my mom has always collected antiques, which meant my sisters and I spent a lot of time roaming mall-sized antique palaces during many family trips, much to the chagrin of the owners of said palaces, who posted signs about buying what your kid broke and threatening that unattended children would be sold to the circus. My being bombarded with the carefully curated beauty of past led my young self to believe the almighty back then was great. As far as I knew, by being born in 1985 I’d missed a decades-long stretch of glory days by about fifteen years. What luck.

I’ve had nostalgia on the brain a lot over the past few years. While writing my second novel There Are Wolves Here Too, a coming-of-age noir story set in 1997, I found myself, a child who did the bulk of my coming-of-age in the nineties, thinking about my own good old days. About how, when compared to earlier decades, they didn’t seem all that good. The nineties lacked the shine of the decades before it. There was no shortage of neon, mind you. But the shine? Pretty much non-existent. I have many great memories from that time, but there’s really nothing about the decade that makes me want to book a trip in my neighbourhood time machine. Recently, I’ve come to wonder where this perceived lack of shine came from. Did it have to do with the fact that I was alive during the era I was trying to capture on the page? Did the nineties actually suck? Were they any worse than any previous decade? Or do all decades need to spend a predetermined amount of years in the barrel before being extracted and enjoyed for cask-strength nostalgic goodness?

When I revisited my memories of the decade during my writing, I found myself recalling cringy fashion—baggy everything, frosted tips, pants that had pockets inside of other pockets—plenty of vapid music (not all of it, but commercial radio and music TV stations were populated by boybands, cheesy pop-rock, and electro-pop), and the commodification of everything. You could put a price tag on pretty much anything, call it a collectible, and the masses would come in droves. For proof of this, look no further than Pog and Beanie Babies, both of which had stores dedicated to them at the mall by my childhood home.

The more I think about it, though, the more I wonder if it was the undesirable and cringe-inducing qualities of the era that made me want to write about it. My wheelhouse is noir. I won’t protest anyone saying I write crime novels or thrillers, but if I get any say as to what my writing is, I’ll tell you before anything else it’s noir. Here’s a genre that focuses on exploring the worst of human emotion. Greed, jealousy, desperation. It’s a genre without any true good guys, stories of people who are just different gradients of grey. It’s bleak and often miserable, and any redemption comes at a steep price. It’s a genre that’s often set in locales that have a superficial glamour to them. Often we find in noir a protagonist who is either forced or compelled to get beneath the shiny facade and operate in what is tiredly referred to as the seedy underbelly. Usually we come to learn that this underbelly is the real foundation of said locale. 

You probably see where I’m going with this. Noir has an underlying desire to corrupt its characters and its setting. It’s the corruption or tainting of a beautiful space. I wanted to write about this. But in the case of my story, the beauty wasn’t a city with a promise like Chandler’s Los Angeles, rather the thing facing corruption was my protagonist’s blissful naivety, that pure kind that you can only have as a child.

My story’s protagonist is a thirteen-year-old boy named Robin who is one of the last people to see his classmate’s sister before she goes missing. The young girl’s disappearance sends a ripple through his small city of Haddington Springs, Alberta, causing long buried secrets to seep to the surface. Young Robin, moving from childhood into adolescence, is forced to confront dark truths about his world and himself. It's hard to pinpoint where ideas come from, but I think the seed of it came from the desire to write a story where something that seemed pure faced the threat of corruption. From there, the natural progression seemed to be setting the story in the era I grew up in.

Sure, a lot of the decade makes me roll my eyes for so many reasons, but the more I think about it, the more I realize most of these reasons are superficial. I was a kid then, so my understanding of the world was a superficial one. And despite my viewing of the decade as being by-and-large vapid where it counts, there are things I miss. I’d love to live in a world without smart phones, and I can’t tell you how much I miss renting a stack of VHS tapes from a video store on a Friday night with my friends. So yeah, it was a good time. Which is exactly what sets my noir sense off. Corrupt! Corrupt!

I was recently asked if I planned on setting future novels in the past. The short answer is yes. Between There Are Wolves Here Too and my first novel, Only Pretty Damned, which is set in a circus during the early 50s, I’ve come to realize how much I enjoy looking back. I think proximity offers a certain perspective that I can’t apply to the present day. And it’s easier to spot the false shine from a distance.

 

Niall Howell was born and raised in Calgary, where he still resides. His short fiction has been published in The Feathertale Review and FreeFall and he holds a Bachelor of Arts in English from Mount Royal University, and a Bachelor of Education from the University of Calgary. He enjoys playing bass, and obsessively collects records and comics.

You can buy There Are Wolves Here Too on IndieBound or Amazon.
 

The Hard Place

By Paul J. Garth

Here's my introduction: 

My first piece of fiction came out in the spring of 2014. 

Eight years ago, almost. Holy shit, time flies, doesn't it?

When I was first starting out, publishing my first stories in Shotgun Honey, making my list of markets I wanted to submit to, writing with the fervor only recently converted acolytes can attain, Do Some Damage was required reading. More than the algorithm juiced communities of Facebook or Twitter, here I found new authors I wouldn't have heard of otherwise. Heard of new magazines that featured the kinds of stories I was drawn to. Learned so much about what publishing is, the pitfalls, and how to avoid them. Learned to be a better writer.

And now, eight years later, here I am, sharing my first post. The first post of what will be a semi-regular Wednesday space for me. 

Things have changed in those eight years since I published my first short story and was reading DSD daily. To start, I've written a hell of a lot more stories. And a couple of novellas. And a few novels (One, you might actually see someday). The stories come slower these days, but they're better I think. 

Second, I've also somehow become an editor as well. At two places. One is the very first place I ever placed a story, the legendary Shotgun Honey. The other is (and I'll admit my bias here, but fuck it, I think it's true or I wouldn't say it) what I think is the best Noir magazine going: Rock and a Hard Place. 

At RHP, with every issue, we confront and then try to answer one of the most persistent questions in this space: What is Noir? 

For my first post, I thought I'd share the foreword to our most recent issue, written by the insanely talented Libby Cudmore. 

If good writing is capturing the Truth of a fleeting feeling, Libby not only captures the feeling of noir, but also answers why it is important. Now, maybe, more than ever. I hope you dig it, and, if you haven't already, check out Rock and a Hard Place. I truly think we're doing something special over there. Read Libby's foreword, below, and see if you agree:

   FOREWORD: 

A mentor of mine once told me that noir is “bad things happening to bad people.” He would know, he was a piece of shit who flushed his life and writing career down the toilet for a couple bottles of drugstore rum and the implied promise of grad-student pussy. It’s an easy sentiment to reach for. A cheap one even, mired in the mortal fallacy that if you stay behind the line that they’ve drawn – the cops, your boss, God – you have nothing to worry about. 

But what can I say? These are noir times we’re living in, through no fault of our own. And there’s a comfort, almost, in reaching for noir when life gets grim. Sort of like reading advice columns or relationship advice on Reddit. It puts your life in perspective. At least I’m not locked in a car trunk, as Leo Rosser finds himself in Jason Allison’s “The Trunk.” I’ve never found a dead body in a shitty motel bathroom, the way the characters in Rob D Smith’s “As Long As You Look Faraway” did. Maybe I can handle another goddamn Zoom meeting. Because we’re all good people, right? Okay so maybe we lie every so often. Maybe we go where we shouldn’t go. Maybe we do that little thing that our brain tells us not to do, because it’s wrong, morally or legally. But who’s keeping score, right? Everyone else gets away with it. No reason I shouldn’t too.

But if these days have proven anything, it’s that we’re all a little bad luck away from being the main characters in our own personal noir. You can be doing the right thing – protesting police brutality and violence against people of color – and some smug little shit will walk away clean after putting a bullet in your back. You get laid off. You get sick. You make a bad choice that seems like the only one to make in the moment, because you don’t have the gift of foresight. Anxious times. Last-ditch measures.
 

Noir isn’t about bad things happening to bad people. It’s about shitty things happening to desperate people.
 
And we’re all desperate sometimes.

God, that's just great, isn't it? 

Thanks to Libby for letting me run this. Thanks to the DSD crew for giving me my own little corner. Thanks to you for reading. 

Rock and a Hard Place Issue Seven is on sale now. You can get at the usual spots, but to make things easier for you, I've linked to the paperback version here. The Kindle is available at the same place, and for cheap, but that cover (designed by my brilliant wife!) looks especially menacing on your bookshelf. If noir is about bad decisions, I can promise, picking up that issue and displaying it proudly is about as safe a bet as you can make.

Lessons in Noir from The Exorcist.

October is a big month for me. In news that will surprise no one - we do Halloween bigger than Christmas in the Pickup household. My love for horror’s only boundary is my complete inability to write it, but I love to read it, watch it, discuss it, absorb it. I talked briefly about learning from other genres when I wanted to gush over how much I loved Paul Tremblay’s Cabin at the End of the World, but I couldn’t get into the details I loved or why they mattered without giving spoilers for a book you definitely want to read (no, need to read).

October being what it is, this the unholiest of months, I get my yearly viewings of favorite horror movies in. I’ve written here about my love for The Exorcist (the film) and most people have heard me talk about my love for the novel. I only allow myself a single viewing a year because I never want to lose the excitement it brings me. As a fan, it’s fantastic. As a lover of practical effects in film, it’s a Bible (oh, irony), and as a writer, it has so much to give.

Friedkin and Blatty imagined it pro-Catholic, and apparently, so did the Church, as they allowed the use of Georgetown and their own priests for the film. I don’t know many Catholics that watch this film or read the book it was based on as sacrament - everyone I know loves it or hates it for what it is - a horror film.

But it’s more than that, too. Spoilers follow (but if you haven’t seen it in the last 45 years, are you really going to rush out to see it now?).

In both the book and the film, the relationship between the two priests, Fr. Merrin and Fr. Karras, serves as an emotional lynchpin in the story. Yes, Reagan’s mother Chris deals with intense and heartbreaking emotions through the story, but they are projected onto a character that, for the majority of the story, isn’t actually there. The reader/viewer has to accept at least the possibility that Reagan is possessed by a powerful demon for the story to make any sense at all. Chris plays the role of a mother trying to find help for her daughter, but we experience a mother who has lost her daughter and wants to get her back. Because the reader/viewer and the character are experiencing different things, we merely observe her emotional distress. But Merrin and Karras are friends. In the book more than the film, we see them enjoy each other’s company. We understand that their bond is deep and they have love for one another. 

When they go in together to fight this demon - despite their fears and doubts, the reader/viewer understands the gravity. In the scene above, we are witnessing a finality. The grief Karras feels is nothing like the grief Chris felt. Chris was terrified, holding pain for her daughter - but there was a way out. When Karras demands that the demon take him, it is his moment of giving up. His best friend is dead, and he realizes this battle can’t be won with faith or power, so he surrenders. Granted, his surrender makes the win possible.

Reagan is free of the demon, that means the good guys won.

Or does it? And that’s what I love about the relationship between the two priests. They feed each other’s doubts, they feed each other’s power. When one dies, the other chooses to follow immediately. They manage to complete their job - the girl is exorcised. But to win, both the men, and all their knowledge must die.

As a writer I can’t help but admire the emotional wreackage left by that “happy ending.” Karras has just flown into a rage and started beating what he knows is (at least) the body of a young girl. He has demanded possession by a demon, and committed suicide. All within seconds. The reader/viewer cannot breathe a sigh of relief and be happy for Reagan and Chris. We can only take that relief with a spoonful of all the horror and grief Karras and Merrin have left us with.

Tell me that’s not noir as fuck.

Playlist: Crime Fiction Through Music (2)

Last fall I did a mini-playlist of songs that tell crime stories (here) and I thought it would be fun to do again. If you like a good crime story there's no reason you won't like it in the form of a movie, a book, or a song, right?

1. Bobby Fuller Four - I Fought The Law

I went with Bobby over The Clash because I'm a cheater and am including The Clash after this. This song's got it all - it's a love story, a prison story, a heist story, and a western (because what modern bank robbers use "a six gun"?). I've never met a person who didn't know this song, which means it's probably no revelation. But hey! I found you the 1966 version with video!

2. The Clash - Guns of Brixton

Bankrobber would have been a better choice. A deeper track, more direct in it's references to crime, I know. I linked it back there so you can watch the video if you're into the idea. But I've had Guns of Brixton on heavy rotation lately. It almost sounds like a protest song, and a lot of the lyrics seem relevant to American issues at the moment - but a closer look at the lyrics make it clear this is about organized crime. Doors are kicked down, people are shot in the street, the threat of death row hangs over head - this song has got it all. 

3. Brody Dalle - Don't Mess With Me

It's a badass punk chick singing about standing up to a bunch of guys with guns pointed at her, do you need more? I've been jamming to this one a lot since the theme of being surrounded by people with guns pointed at you, and feeling like you're going to be okay because someone else is with you is a big one in my work-in-progress. And because Brody Dalle will never not be ice cold cool.

4. Big D and the Kid's Table - My Girlfriend's on Drugs

Look, I know - you're not here for ska. Too bad. The Boston ska scene doesn't get enough credit and a whole hell of a lot of it is about drugs and crime. The title of the song is "My Girlfriend's On Drugs" so I feel like you know what it's about. This is more silly than anything, but that's one thing 90s ska really handled well - serious subject matter presented in a highly danceable, super kinetic, candy coated package. Not everything has to be so fucking heavy all the time. 

5. The Taxpayers - Some Kind of Disaster Relief

I know, two ska songs on one list. You guys are going to send me hatemail, aren't you? The point of these lists is to appreciate crime fiction where you don't expect to find it, and this Taxpayer's song answers that. It's a hell of a lot heavier than the Big D song above, tackling drug addiction, skipping town, kids with guns, and extreme poverty. There's a series of crime novels hiding between the drum beats.