Out soon from Fox Spirit Books!
What makes a body turn to crime? Or a writer turn to the darkside? To filch a little Shakespeare, some are born weird, some become weird and others have it thrust up on them. Here’s a few more of the Weird Noir folks telling us how they came to write the twisted little tales they wrote. Would-be writers take note, but you may discover that the peril of your soul is too much to risk for mere publication.
Or not —
Writers are a strange bunch anyway.
JOYCE CHNG
Why did I write Yao Jin?
(Or “A dakini dame walked into my office…”)
A dakini dame did walk into my office, metaphorically. She sat down, blue fur rippling like some midnight blanket, and glared at me with her three amber eyes. Write this, she commanded me, write about my truth. So, I chewed on my cigar and asked about the fees. A decent detective still needed to eat and pay the bills, right?
She only smiled, showing her sharp teeth. You will have peace for the next few weeks, she promised. And that promise was my payment.
~*~
Ninety-percent of the above is true. A dakini dame did walk into my mind and refused to go away. What is a dakini you might ask? A sky dancer, if you want to be poetic. A wrathful protector, if you want to talk about Tibetan Buddhism or – more in depth, the Bardo (or the Tibetan Book of the Dead).
The dakini came in and made herself comfortable in the office. That happened after I checked what weird noir is and got a better idea (or picture). Then the images started arriving like sleep-drunken passengers on a transit flight… and refused to budge.
No, I didn’t set fire to the rain. I sat down and wrote the hell out of it. It was fun. It was weird. It was weird fun. I really enjoyed writing the dark world of the dakini and her friend. I planned for noir and it went south to the land of the weird. Toss in the fact that I like reading about dark worlds (Warhammer 40k, anyone?)… and the story became … well, you need to read it to find out, yes?
CHRISTOPHER L. IRVIN
PIs are overrated, or How I wrote “Charred Kraken with Plum Butter”
Private Investigators are overrated.
Well…not really. The trope populates much of classic and contemporary noir and the image of one is what drew me into Noir in the first place. So, in truth, the salty PI/Detective is one of my favorite characters.
Before happily stumbling into a call for Weird Noir via twitter (THANK YOU to whoever retweeted that link!), I had just finished reading What it Was by George Pelecanos (protagonist Derek Strange is a PI) and was in the midst of a paranormal noir anthology, Damnation and Dames (in which several stories begin with a blonde/red bombshell sashaying into a PI’s office.)
I instantly fell in love with the fantastic cover of Weird Noir by SL Johnson and editor K.A. Laity’s passion for the project. I had to submit. With the deadline looming, the only problem was I didn’t have a story that fit…oh, and my wife was due with our first child in just over a week!
The first draft of my submission for Weird Noir started just like the stories I’d been reading. A dark and shady character walks into Private Investigator Miles McGuthrie’s office and sits down. Miles drinks his scotch like water and takes it all in. Cue drama and weird mission! Ugh. It was nothing new. I don’t remember exactly where it was going, but it would not have been a fun tale to tell (or weird or different enough to set myself apart.) Thankfully my brain switched on and brought the axe down fast.
I challenged myself to let everything dump out on the page. I kept my protagonist, Miles McGuthrie, but everything else changed. Miles became the owner of McGuthrie’s Emporium and the setting moved from a real city to a much more weird and fantastical place. Thus, The Underbelly was born with sparkle fish, cricket jelly, moonslugs and of course, kraken.
The story was a blast to write and I see myself returning to explore more of The Underbelly…maybe more Miles and Frank!
What’s in the name you ask? Well, how would you like your kraken?
I’d prefer mine charred with plum butter.
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