Awards Season

Awards season has well and truly started and we hope you will forgive us a moment of vanity as we ask for your support.

Our own Joan De La Haye (Shadows, Requiem in E Sharp, Oasis, Burning) is up for an award in the South African Indies for ‘Burning’. We couldn’t be prouder and if you had a moment to support that would be very wonderful of you. Voting is open now.

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Also at the moment the British Fantasy Society are taking suggestions for their shortlist. We were surprised and delighted to be shortlisted for Best Anthology and Best Small Press last year and if you like what we are doing we would be really pleased* to have your nomination this year.

* massive understatement.

You can check out when our books were published here.

***Bouchercon Voters: Eligible crime releases include
ANTHOLOGY: Drag Noir ed. K. A. Laity
COLLECTION: Extricate/Throw the Bones by Graham Wynd
NOVEL: White Rabbit by K. A. Laity
SHORT STORIES:

Any/all of the DRAG NOIR stories
“Headless in Bury.” Missing Monarchs: Fox Pockets Anthology
“Smallbany.” Short story. Free promotional story for Drag Noir from Fox Spirit Books

Crime in the Fox Den

Although Fox Spirit is probably more associated with Fantasy, SF and Horror, we do love a bit of crime. No cozy mysteries here though, the emphasis is on dark.

Requiem in E Sharp by Joan De La Haye

A troubled detective

A tormented serial murderer

Sundays in Pretoria are dangerous for selected women.

A murderer plagued by his childhood, has found a distinctive modus operandi to salve his pathological need to escape the domination of the person who was supposed to cherish him.

Requiem Cover

For fans of serial killer crime and procedural. We know fairly early who dunnit, the real question is who will make it to the end of the book and how will the killer be caught. Set in South Africa Joan uses the corruption in the system and the setting to spin a grim tale of a ruthless murderer.

Extricate & Other Stories by Graham Wynd

EXTRICATE is a violent tale of sexual obsession, unfolding on the dark streets of a nowhere town. Peter falls for Judy the instant he lights her cigarette, but she’s his best mate’s girl — and he’s already married. He decides to begin removing obstacles — starting with his wife. How far will he be willing to go? How far does lifelong friendship go when he finally meets the woman of his peculiar dreams?

Extricate Throw the Bones Dual Cover

 

Extricate is available on its own as an ebook and coming soon with a second novella and some additional short stories.

This is a collection of noir crime kicking off with a sexy tale of lust, murder and betrayal.

White Rabbit by K.A.Laity

White Rabbit is a noir crime novel with a supernatural twist for fans of crime with a little extra twist.

Sometimes the shadows that haunt us 
           are what lead us back to the light
Disgraced former police detective James Draygo has sunk as low as his habit allows, working as a fake psychic despite his very real talents. When a media mogul’s trashy trophy wife gets gunned down at his tapping table he has to decide whether he can straighten up long enough to save his own skin. He may not have a choice with Essex’s loudest ghost bawling in his ear about cults, conspiracies and cut-rate drugs. Oblivion sounds better all the time…
White Rabbit

What is Noir?

extricate ebook 72ppiBy Graham Wynd

What is noir? You can Google the term and come up with a bunch of answers, but as librarians will ask you, are you sure you have the right one? I always say I’m a ‘duck test’ sort of person — an out-dated Americanism for recognising ‘communists’ viz. if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck (though Senator McCarthy might have been wise to have looked into more stringent methods).

Most people who like the genre of noir will point to the films with their bleak cityscapes, inky shadows and sudden gun shots. Ida Lupino and Humphrey Bogart frown with worry, Lauren Bacall and Gloria Grahame show their gams, while Farley Granger looks lost. In novels, Patricia Highsmith’s slippery Tom Rippley worms his way into people’s lives while keeping his intentions hidden, or Dashiell Hammet sends the Continental Op to a seedy location and the blood spills red down the walls.

When I think of ‘noir’ I tend to think of women who don’t see the options and men who make bad choices. The very gendered split of that thought is what led me to thinking about Drag Noir and how people might play with that divide. In the noir world, people invest in the gender divisions because it brings them some certainty in an uncertain and dangerous world.

Buddhists say desire is the beginning of suffering: noir is all about the suffering. And the desire — whether it’s for money or sex or something less certain. Fred MacMurray lusting for Barbara Stanwyck: we know the Double Indemnity story so well. But what about Lily Dillon in Jim Thompson’s The Grifters? Especially as embodied by Anjelica Huston in Frears’ film, she’s hungry and restless as a shark, but nothing really fills it for long. Sometimes there’s a hunger that can’t be fed.

Some folks spend their whole lives trying to keep it
They carry it with them every step that they take

Till one day they just cut it loose
Cut it loose or let it drag ’em down…

Yeah, that’s noir.

Extricate is out now: buy it Amazon.

A writer of bleakly noirish tales with a bit of grim humour, Graham Wynd can be found in Dundee but would prefer you didn’t come looking. An English professor by day, Wynd grinds out darkly noir prose between trips to the local pub.

Out Now! Extricate by Graham Wynd

The dark sexy noir thriller Extricate by Graham Wynd is out now on Amazon and coming soon on Wizards Tower and Spacewitch

A story of sex, murder and betrayal, Extricate is being released as ebook only as will form part of a collection of Wynd’s stories coming soon from Fox Spirit.

https://www.foxspirit.co.uk/books/crime/extricate/

extricate ebook 72ppi

Cover Reveal: Extricate by Graham Wynd

extricate ebook 72ppi

Va-va-va-voom! Here’s the fabulous cover art for the forthcoming noir novella by Graham Wynd, Extricate. Isn’t that Sarah Anne Langton something? I hear the author has been inspired to get right to work on a new novella just to get another gorgeous cover! I’m not saying you can tell everything about a publisher by the great cover artists they pull, but you can sure tell a lot!

‘EXTRICATE is a twisty- turny noir tale of dishonor amongst thieves that is skewered with hot lust and cold blooded murder.’

~ Paul D. Brazill, author of Guns Of Brixton and Gumshoe

‘Crime meets erotica in a fevered novella. Graham Wynd has written a fluid and tight story with vivid characters in situations that are inextricably charged with a sexuality from which you will find it hard to extricate yourself.’

~ Richard Godwin, author of One Lost Summer, Apostle Rising and Mr Glamour

Extricate will be out early in 2014.