Neo-Noir StoryBundle Includes GREEN LIGHT DELIVERY

Webrid is not always the best in social situations, but the earnestly goofy protagonist of my trilogy of humorous space opera novels is currently forced to hang out with some pretty striking characters.

StoryBundle is offering a pay-what-you-want collection of neo-noir fiction, and I'm honored to have Green Light Delivery included. Check out this lineup:

And now a word from celebrated indie publisher and editor Kate Sullivan:

The Neo-Noir Bundle serves up, in one fell swoop and at rock-bottom price, a collection of ten riveting works that blur boundaries, mix up expectations, and blend together all the best that noir has to offer.

Cross boundaries and defy expectations while exploring the noir tenets. Unreliable narrator? Check. Cynical, world-weary protagonist who's as quick with wit as a weapon? Check. Complex plots rife with reminiscences, reversals and betrayals? Check, check, and check.

As the founder and once-mastermind of acclaimed small indie press Candlemark & Gleam (now helmed by fellow renaissance woman Athena Andreadis), I had the honor of helping release some of the best new works in the neo-noir resurgence; these days, I'm digging into the best vintage pulp and noir with The Fiction League podcast.

And now, I get to share that dark, brooding twist on speculative fiction with you in this spectacular bundle.

Firmly noir, the bundle nevertheless ranges widely across speculative fiction subgenres: space opera, high and urban fantasy, paranormal romance, horror, alternative history, dieselpunk. From corrupt elves to Twitter-obsessed superheroes, from werewolf cops to ghostly soul whisperers, it's all here!

You'll get shadowy settings, the electric hum of eroticism, bouts of spectacular violence, and lose-lose scenarios familiar to devotees of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, James Ellroy, and Patricia Highsmith; of Blade Runner, Strange Days, and the dark Batman reboots. Add a dash of snark, a jigger of suspense, and garnish with a twist of epic proportions for a neo-noir cocktail that'll leave you reeling…and thirsty for more.

Order this amazing collection at https://storybundle.com/noir

AJ Sikes on Noir in GODS OF CHICAGO

"Noir" is one of those terms that most of us understand vaguely, as a feeling we get when we read or see a darkly shadowed work showcasing the urban underbelly. But what is noir to an author who writes it? Please welcome AJ Sikes, who explains how he approached this genre in his new novel, Gods of Chicago. 

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Thank you, Anne, for hosting me today.

Gods of Chicago is a noir urban fantasy set in an alternate history 1929. Like all genres, noir has a set of tropes and characters who need to appear on the page for a particular story to fit readers’ expectations. In their introduction to The Best American Noir of the Century, James Ellroy and Otto Penzler famously (perhaps infamously) describe the genre in such a way that reading noir becomes tantamount to donning an executioner’s hood. There are no winners in noir fiction, they say. The late Roger Ebert had as much to say about filmic interpretations. My tough luck that I wanted to write a story that wouldn’t match any of these admittedly well-informed opinions.

It’s important to me that stories lead somewhere. Not necessarily to the fabled land of sequels and movie deals, but at least to a place that doesn’t leave ashes on the tongue. Noir storytelling involves scenes and events that are intentionally disturbing, but such instances don’t have to be the point of a story in order for it to be considered noir. A tale can be disturbing and still succeed at entertaining, possibly even evoking a sense of hope.

I wrote Gods of Chicago to tell a story that aims to entertain and disturb in equal measure. Bad things happen to good people. Innocence is treated with derision if it’s acknowledged at all. In that sense, the book does fit with Ebert’s description of film noir as “A [story] which at no time misleads you into thinking there is going to be a happy ending.” The storyscape is what you’d expect as well. Dark alleys, dim skies, back doors and hidden entrances, grimy city streets, and the lowest people on the social ladder kept well away from the upper crust. The people you meet have all seen enough to know there isn’t much reason to hope things will get better. But they still try. Whereas Ellroy, Penzler, and Ebert are convinced nobody but nobody thinks they’ll really win in noir, the characters in Gods of Chicago aren’t beaten yet, and they’re going to keep proving that to you long after the gun smoke clears.

Yes, everyone in the book is making a play and has a stake in the game, but that’s true of any character in any genre - perhaps no more so than in real life, where we all face obstacles to success and achievement on a daily basis. Fiction magnifies our little struggles for us, and that’s part of the joy of reading (and writing) for me. It’s enlivening to see characters faced with peril and doom only to overcome and triumph, to some extent, at the end. With Gods of Chicago, I aimed to capture the fatalism and futility that Ellroy and Penzler point up as hallmarks of the genre, but I also set out to dispel the myth that ‘all is lost’ in noir fiction. The skies and streets may be black with portent, but somewhere out there is a hint of light flickering, maybe even showing the way out.

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Gods of Chicago is available now as a Kindle ebook and Paperback.

Learn more about AJ Sikes on his website. Follow him on Twitter: @SikesAaron

It's BLUE DIAMOND DELIVERY Launch Day!

Yayyyy! It's my Book Birthday!

Welcome to the world, Blue Diamond Delivery, Book 2 of the Webrid Chronicles!


Cake, anyone? (No, I didn't make this adorable alien cake, but I am making the Blue Diamond Cupcakes for my live launch party on Saturday, June 29. If you're in NYC and would like to come, please RSVP on the Facebook Event Page.)




Here's what you'll find in BLUE DIAMOND DELIVERY:

Webrid is a carter. He’s also the savior of the world. Is it so much to ask that he get a break, and get to enjoy the simple things in life―like booze and babes―without being asked to drop everything and save the day? Again?

All Webrid has to do is make one simple delivery to prevent the planets of the Raralt Circle from cracking to pieces. How hard could that be? Unfortunately, to complete this “simple” job he has to drag his reluctant carcass to a mining planet with intense gravity, to the horrifically fashion-obsessed planet Prellga, and across the Redfire Desert on his home planet of Bexilla. All he really wants to do is sit at home on his couch.

Join Webrid, Stravin, and Zatell as they stagger into another nail-biting, spit-taking adventure to save the world, whether they feel like it or not. 

You can buy BLUE DIAMOND DELIVERY in print or digital form directly from the publisher, Candlemark & Gleam.

You can buy it on Amazon.

You can buy it at Barnes & Noble.

What's that? You've never read Book 1 of the Webrid Chronicles? Click here to learn about Green Light Delivery.

I've got a blog tour going on, during which you can meet the characters and learn about how I made the weird world of the Raralt Planetary Circle. Click here to see the complete Blue Diamond Delivery Blog Tour schedule.

Thanks for coming to my online launch party!

Karina Fabian: From Dashiell to Dragons

My guest today is Karina Fabian, whose new novel, Greater Treasures, is a fantasy that takes its inspiration from a noir classic. She discusses how she fit these two genres together in her DragonEye world.

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Stories are like Sonnets

By Karina Fabian

One of my favorite metaphors comes from Madeleine L’Engle’s Wrinkle in Time Trilogy.  She describes life as a sonnet: we are all given a strict structure and rules, yet have complete freedom within those rules to create ourselves into unique individuals. 

Fiction writing is like that:  There are rules to follow on grammar and story structure, yet we have incredible freedom of imagination.  No matter how strict the rules, no two people will create the same thing.  My story, Greater Treasures, is a good example of this.  I wrote this story while watching The MalteseFalcon, so while I watched the movie, I took careful note of the plot progression and iconic scenes, like the confrontation between Sam Spade and the police chief.  So I had the structure and basic character set: detective, partner, police chief, damsel in distress with a dark secret, even the competing treasure hunter and his henchman.  Then, I exercised my creativity by placing this structure into my DragonEye universe and let my characters in that world play out their parts.

The result is a very different story from the one written by Dashiell Hammet.  The stakes are higher:  the life of Vern’s best friend (Sister Grace) vs. the fate of an entire world (one that has not treated Vern very well).  

The femme fatal, of course, would not be able to use her feminine wiles on Vern, who’s a dragon.  She needed a different pull.  In addition, Vern is a little more savvy than Sam Spade (Sorry, Sam); plus, he’s seen The Maltese Falcon.  If you’ve seen or read The Maltese Falcon, then you might recognize some of the events and catch a couple of in-jokes; however, there’s no mistaking Greater Treasures for the noir classic—if it becomes a classic itself, it will do so on its own terms.

There’s a saying that there are only 10 original ideas (or 4 or 42 or…)  The number does not really matter, because it’s not the idea or the structure that define the story.  It’s what you do within that structure that makes it yours.

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Learn more about Karina Fabian on her website.

You can purchase Greater Treasures on Amazon.