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/
“We’re born naked, and the rest is drag.”
― RuPaul, Lettin it All Hang Out: An Autobiography
Drag is a broad concept; noir is a fairly narrow one. Drag can be a way of playing with gender or it can be a matter of survival. In the noir world, it can be almost anything: camouflage, deceit, truth — or a skin to be shed at will.
Otto Penzler has always been really strict in his idea of noir:
Look, noir is about losers. The characters in these existential, nihilistic tales are doomed. They may not die, but they probably should, as the life that awaits them is certain to be so ugly, so lost and lonely, that they’d be better off just curling up and getting it over with. And, let’s face it, they deserve it.
Pretty much everyone in a noir story (or film) is driven by greed, lust, jealousy or alienation, a path that inevitably sucks them into a downward spiral from which they cannot escape. They couldn’t find the exit from their personal highway to hell if flashing neon lights pointed to a town named Hope. It is their own lack of morality that blindly drives them to ruin.
I don’t necessarily agree with everything he says, but I think noir ends up being a fairly bleak place — one where any bit of glamour or adopted power can be worth the gamble of discovery. It may even be worth flaunting it.
As RuPaul advises,”When the going gets tough, the tough reinvent.”
That’s what we want for DRAG NOIR: this is a call for stories where glamour meets grit, where everyone’s wearing a disguise (whether they know it or not) and knowing the players takes a lot more than simply reading the score cards. Maybe everyone’s got something to hide, but they’ve got something to reveal, too. Scratch the surface and explore what secrets lie beneath — it’s bound to cost someone…a lot.
An anthology is not a democracy; it’s a benevolent dictatorship. All editors have their tastes or quirks: if you want a clue to my sensibilities, check out my extensive bibliography and of course, read Weird Noir and Noir Carnival.
Stories should be:
We will ask for world-wide print & ebook rights for a year and pay £10 via Paypal plus a copy of the paperback. The fabulous Stephanie Johnson has been persuaded to create another fabulous cover image! We plan to launch the book in July 2014.
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.
I’m finally losing it. I’ve spent so long searching for clues
that I’m starting to make things up in my head. Why did it
have to happen? I think for the millionth time, tears pricking
at the corner of my eyes. I hurry back to my cold apartment,
where I dig into my coat pocket to find the keys. My fingers
rub against a scrap of paper and I pull it out. The paper
is thick and brown, the letters gilded: Invite to the Feast of
Fools. There’s no address. It’ll be some stupid street act, I
think, stuffing the paper back into my pocket and drawing
out the keys.
I sleep badly, disturbed by strange sounds. Someone outside
must be having a party. The noises seem to seep into the
room. They slide about the walls, scuttling into my ears and
around my brain.
I wake feeling fuzzy and dry-mouthed – the hint of a
hangover – and with a nagging thought: what if there was
something more to that grey figure? What if she was trying
to tell me something… about Stella? Come on, Tom, I scold
myself. She was just some crazy peddler.
From ‘Carne Levate’ by Emma Teichman
This is also up at awesome editor Kate Laity’s site
We are also planning on bringing Weird Noir cover artist S.L.Johnson back on for this project.
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A call for stories from Fox Spirit Books, publishers of Weird Noir and many more superb volumes.
Dark’s Carnival has already left town, but it’s left a fetid seed behind. There’s a transgressive magic that spooks the carnies and unsettles the freaks. Beyond the barkers and the punters, behind the lights and tents where the macabre and the lost find refuge, there’s a deformity that has nothing to do with skin and bones. Where tragic players strut on a creaking stage, everybody’s going through changes. Jongleurs and musicians huddle in the back. It seems as if every one’s running, but is it toward something—or away?
Carnival: whether you picture it as a traveling fair in the back roads of America or the hedonistic nights of the pre-Lenten festival where masks hide faces while the skin glories in its revelation, it’s about spectacle, artificiality and the things we hide behind the greasepaint or the tent flap. Lead us on a journey into that heart of blackened darkness and show us what’s behind the glitz.
Touchstones (to give you a sense of the breadth of the net cast):
John Webster’s “skull beneath the skin” • Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love • Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus • Gargantua & Pantagruel • Pinocchio (the novel! Not the Disney atrocity) • Papa Lazarou • Doctor Lau • Ray Bradbury’sSomething Wicked This Way Comes • Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal • Leonor Fini
Surprise me, delight me, make me afraid of the shadows of a warm summer night, rip my guts out and stuff them back in again. Just don’t bore me. All editors have their tastes or quirks: if you want a clue to my sensibilities, check out my extensive bibliography and of course, read Weird Noir.
Stories should be:
We will ask for world-wide print & ebook rights for a year and pay $10 via Paypal as an advance against the royalties to be split with the publisher. We plan to launch the book at EDGE-Lit in Derby in July 2013.
Yesterday Fox Spirit sealed the deal on publishing an anthology of Weird Noir edited by K.A. Laity, to come out later this year.
Here is K.A. Laity on the concept
“The ambience is pure noir but the characters aren’t just your average molls and mugs—the vamps might just be vamps. It’s Patricia Highsmith meets Shirley Jackson or Dashiell Hammett filtered through H. P. Lovecraft. Mad, bad and truly dangerous to know, but irresistible all the same.”
This will be an exciting addition to the 2012 publishing schedule and a wonderfully entertaing read. More to come on this soon.
