Out soon from Fox Spirit Books!
How do you get from the idea to the story? Here’s a few more of the Weird Noir crew to tell you how they made their uncanny dreams come true:
Creating “Sins of the Brother” by Karina Fabian
“It’s been done, Kitten.”
I sighed. Talking to my well-read husband could be like sleeping on a bed of tacks—everywhere you turn, there’s a sharp point. For half an hour, I’d brought up story ideas only to have them shot down.
“Fine, but I need a unique angle for a dragon story. I want to be in this anthology.”
He shrugged, his deep brown eyes echoing my frustration. That’s when the kids called us down to watch Whose Line Is It, Anyway. It’s a comedy improve show, where the actors perform sketches. Much of the humor flew over the kids’ heads like a Concord, but we loved it anyway, especially when they did the noir skits.
That’s when it hit me: I could do noir…with a dragon.
Meet Vern: an undersized dragon working off a geas from St. George to regain his dragon greatness. Vern lives on the wrong side of the Interdimensional Gap and works as a professional problem solver for people on the right side of Good but the shady side of Law. Vern first appeared in “DragonEye, PI” in Firestorm of Dragons, and has been in two published novels and numerous stories since. He’s uptight, cynical, and sometimes, very funny.
But not in the case of “Sins of the Brother.” Patterned after the 1954 movie, World For Ransom, Vern has to solve a kidnapping while protecting the kidnapper. Rather than a femme fatal, Vern’s doing it for a friend who sacrificed his life to protect Vern in the past. The romantic tension is replaced by the tension between Corsican twins, and the political backdrop of two worlds—one of magic, one of technology–forced to get along.
I hope you enjoy the story, and if you like it, you’ll check out Vern’s website at http://dragoneyepi.net. There, you’ll find a list of his books and stories, plus his newsletter and blog.
I started writing ‘East of Écarté’ as a background piece for Floyd Maquina, my narrator from Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat, intended to address a comment he made in the pages of TSMG: “Turns out they were Seeker Branch reps and were recruiting me because of my experience as a private investigator (I don’t know why — I was a hack — but that’s a long story for another day and another book).”
But when I decided to steer the unfinished yarn into ‘weird noir’ territory to suit K.A. Laity’s upcoming anthology, it stood to reason I needed to ditch Floyd — who’s rooted in a real if surreal, dystopic/dystrophic world — and induct my other detective character Roy Scherer, of Scherer and Miller, Investigators of the Paranormal and Supermundane.
Aside from the fact he dabbles with the supernatural, Roy is most things Floyd is not. Floyd is more I: self-doubting, addicted to movies, a lush. Roy is the rumble-and-tumble type, cocky and cynical.
Here Roy is younger and fresher than in the other stories I’ve written about him and his partner Suzie. He hasn’t reached the pinnacle of sarcasm and cynicism but he’s started the trek.
Mocha Stockholm is a wink at my daughter Cocoa, six years old when I put together this story (she just turned seven). While I write, she’s often entertaining herself dancing ballet beside me in our tiny Tokyo apartment that’s 33 square metres. She accompanies DVDs of performances by Aurélie Dupont, Gillian Murphy and Dorothée Gilbert. Like Mocha, Cocoa adores ballet and creates her own choreography on the fly, with touches of comedy, so of course I glance her way and it’s had its influence.
The character of the male dancer here, Bruno Lermentov, is heavily based on Bruno the “Slobokian Acrobatic Bear” from Robert McKimson’s Bugs Bunny cartoon Big Top Bunny (1951) — a favourite for me and Cocoa — while the artistic director of the ballet company, Murray Helpman, is a loose nod to the great Sir Robert Helpmann, the Australian ballet dancer who choreographed The Red Shoes (1948) and played the evil Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968).
Finally, there are some subverted quotes and character names buried in here from a wealth of ballet-oriented movies, everything from Dario Argento’s Suspiria to Center Stage. Why not?
How I Wrote Gus Weatherbourne
By Michael S. Chong
After I saw the submission request for Weird Noir, I was hanging out with my friend Mike the Bike, who owns a bicycle shop, and he mentioned a friend named “Gus Weatherbourne” but I probably didn’t hear him correctly. Right away that name struck me as a great one and I started to think of the person with that moniker.
Next time, I had some free time at my old job, I started writing about the man with this name. I wrote a short draft of a few paragraphs and liked the character. About a week or so later, I lost that job and spent a subsequent stormy day finishing the story. While the thunder crashed outside, Gus with his left clawed hand and his right hand of lightning helped me let the small stuff just roll off…
Leave a comment
No comments yet.
A Knife And A Quill- old 
Leave a Reply