Houston Noir Page 22

  I won’t bury Jamie, she thought. I won’t bury Jamie.

  She cried this time too. This was so good. She was so grateful.

  Thank you, she thought. To God, probably.

  ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

  Tom Abrahams is an award-winning television journalist and a member of the International Thriller Writers. He is a hybrid author (traditionally and self-published) who writes postapocalyptic thrillers, action adventure, and political conspiracies. Abrahams lives in the Houston suburbs with his wife Courtney and their two children. Read more about his work and join his Preferred Readers Club at tomabrahamsbooks.com.

  Robert Boswell has published seven novels, three story collections, and two books of nonfiction. His play The Long Shrift was produced off-Broadway. He has earned NEA fellowships, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the PEN West Award, and the John Gassner Memorial Playwriting Award. His stories have appeared in the New Yorker, Harpers, the Atlantic, and Best American Short Stories. He holds the Cullen Endowed Chair in Creative Writing at the University of Houston.

  Sarah Cortez, councillor of the Texas Institute of Letters, has had poems, essays, book reviews, and short stories anthologized and published in Texas Monthly, Rattle, the Sun, Texas Review, Louisiana Literature, Arcadia, Midwest Quarterly, and Southwestern American Literature. She has won the PEN Texas Literary Award and the Southwest Book Award. Her most recent book is Vanishing Points: Poems and Photographs of Texas Roadside Memorials.

  Anton DiSclafani is the New York Times best-selling author of two novels, The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls and The After Party. Both were Amazon Books of the Month and Indie Next picks; her work is being translated into thirteen languages. She lives in Alabama with her husband and son and teaches creative writing at Auburn University.

  Stephanie Jaye Evans is a fifth-generation Texan. Her first book, Faithful Unto Death, was a Library Journal Debut of the Month, and a Houston Chronicle Ultimate Summer Book List pick. Kirkus Reviews writes of Safe from Harm, second in the series, “As charming and wry as Evans’s bright debut, filled with reasons to own dogs, love your children and your wife, and have faith.” She is currently working on a Southern gothic set in the Houston Heights.

  Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton is an internationally renowned performance poet, a three-time Slam Champ formerly ranked the #2 Best Female Poet in the World. She was named Houston’s poet laureate in 2017. Her work has been compiled on two albums and has been featured on BBC, NPR, Upworthy, Blavity.com, in Black Girl Magic, and was featured in the opening video of the Houston Rockets 2017 season. For more information visit LiveLifeDeep.com.

  Wanjiku Wa Ngugi is the author of The Fall of Saints and former director of the Helsinki African Film Festival. She has been a columnist for the Finnish development magazine Maailman Kuvalehti, and her essays and short stories have appeared in St. Petersburg Review, Wasafiri Magazine, Auburn Avenue, the Daily Nation, Pambazuka News, and Chimurenga, among others.

  Adrienne Perry grew up in Wyoming. She earned her MFA from Warren Wilson in 2013 and her PhD from the University of Houston in 2018. From 2014 to 2016, she served as the editor of Gulf Coast. She is a Hedgebrook alumna, a Kimbilio Fellow, and a member of the Rabble Collective. Perry’s work has appeared in Copper Nickel, Black Warrior Review, and elsewhere. She is at work on a novel and an essay collection.

  Pia Pico resides in Houston, Texas, where she teaches high school. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she spent the nineties touring the Australian outback and east coast with her punk band Killy. She earned her MFA in creative writing from New York University, and her writing was included in the anthology Gynomite: Fearless Feminist Porn.

  Reyes Ramirez is a Houstonian. In addition to earning an MFA in fiction, he won the 2017 Blue Mesa Review Nonfiction Contest and the 2014 riverSedge Poetry Prize, and has poems, stories, essays, and reviews in or forthcoming in: Southwestern American Literature, Gulf Coast Journal, Glass Poetry Press, Origins Journal, the Acentos Review, Cimarron Review, the anthology pariahs: writing from outside the margins, and elsewhere. You can read more of his work at reyesvramirez.com.

  Icess Fernandez Rojas is an educator, writer, and former journalist who lives in Houston and is a longtime North Shore resident. Her work has been published in Rabble Lit, Minerva Rising Literary Journal, and the Feminine Collective’s anthology Notes from Humanity. Her nonfiction has appeared in Dear Hope, NBCNews.com, the Huffington Post, and the Guardian. She is a recipient of the Owl of Minerva Award and is a Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation alum.

  Sehba Sarwar’s essays and poems have appeared in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, Callaloo, South Asian Review, and elsewhere, while her short stories have appeared in anthologies published by Feminist Press and HarperCollins India. Her novel Black Wings was published by Alhamra Press in Pakistan. Born and raised in Karachi, Pakistan, Sarwar lived in Houston for several decades and is currently based in Southern California.

  Leslie Contreras Schwartz is a fourth-generation Houstonian of Mexican heritage. Her essays and poetry have recently appeared in Catapult, the Collagist, Tinderbox, and Luna Luna Magazine. Her book Fuego was published by Saint Julian Press and her second book of poems, Nightbloom & Cenote, was published by the same press in 2018.

  Larry Watts has published six novels and a book of short stories during his twenty-one-year career in law enforcement. His latest book, Dishonored and Forgotten, written with his wife Carolyn, is a historical novel about Houston’s first police narcotics scandal.

  Gwendolyn Zepeda has published three novels, one short story collection, two poetry collections, and five children’s books. She served as Houston’s first poet laureate from 2013 to 2015.

  BONUS MATERIAL

  Excerpt from USA Noir: Best of the Akashic Noir Series

  Also available in the Akashic Noir Series

  Akashic Noir Series Awards & Recognition

  INTRODUCTION

  WRITERS ON THE RUN

  From USA NOIR: Best of the Akashic Noir Series, edited by Johnny Temple

  In my early years as a book publisher, I got a call one Saturday from one of our authors asking me to drop by his place for “a smoke.” I politely declined as I had a full day planned. “But Johnny,” the author persisted, “I have some really good smoke.” My curiosity piqued, I swung by, but was a bit perplexed to be greeted with suspicion at the author’s door by an unhinged whore and her near-nude john. The author rumbled over and ushered me in, promptly sitting me down on a smelly couch and assuring the others I wasn’t a problem. Moments later, the john produced a crack pipe to resume the party I had evidently interrupted. This wasn’t quite the smoke I’d envisaged, so I gracefully excused myself after a few (sober) minutes. I scurried home pondering the author’s notion that it was somehow appropriate to invite his publisher to a crack party.

  It may not have been appropriate, but it sure was noir.

  From the start, the heart and soul of Akashic Books has been dark, provocative, well-crafted tales from the disenfranchised. I learned early on that writings from outside the mainstream almost necessarily coincide with a mood and spirit of noir, and are composed by authors whose life circumstances often place them in environs vulnerable to crime.

  My own interest in noir fiction grew from my early exposure to urban crime, which I absorbed from various perspectives. I was born and raised in Washington, DC, and have lived in Brooklyn since 1990. In the 1970s and ’80s, when violent, drug-fueled crime in DC was rampant, my mother hung out with cops she’d befriended through her work as a nearly unbeatable public defender. She also grew close to some of her clients, most notably legendary DC bank robber Lester “LT” Irby (a contributor to DC Noir), who has been one of my closest friends since I was fifteen, though he was incarcerated from the early 1970s until just recently. Complicating my family’s relationship with the criminal justice system, my dad sued the police stridently in his work as legal director of DC’s American Civil Liberties Union.

  Both of my parents worked o
vertime. By the time my sister Kathy was nine and I was seven, we were latchkey kids prone to roam, explore, and occasionally break laws. Though an arrest for shoplifting helped curb my delinquent tendencies, the interest in crime remained. After college I worked with adolescents and completed a master’s degree in social work; my focus was on teen delinquency.

  Throughout the 1990s, my relationship with the urban underbelly expanded as I spent a great deal of time in dank nightclubs populated by degenerates and outcasts. I played bass guitar in Girls Against Boys, a rock and roll group that toured extensively in the US and Europe. The long hours on the road not spent on stage gave way to book publishing, which began as a hobby in 1996 with my friends Bobby and Mark Sullivan.

  The first book we published was The Fuck-Up, by Arthur Nersesian—a dark, provocative, well-crafted tale from the disenfranchised. A few years later Heart of the Old Country by Tim McLoughlin became one of our early commercial successes. The book was widely praised both for its classic noir voice and its homage to the people of South Brooklyn. While Brooklyn is chock-full of published authors these days, Tim is one of the few who was actually born and bred here. In his five decades, Tim has never left the borough for more than five weeks at a stretch and he knows the place, through and through, better than anyone I’ve met.

  In 2003, inspired by Brooklyn’s unique and glorious mix of cultures, Tim and I set out to explore New York City’s largest borough in book form, in a way that would ring true to local residents. Tim loves his home borough despite its flagrant flaws, and was easily seduced by the concept of working with Akashic to try and portray its full human breadth.

  He first proposed a series of books, each one set in a different neighborhood, whether it be Bay Ridge, Williamsburg, Park Slope, Fort Greene, Bed-Stuy, or Canarsie. It was an exciting idea, but it’s hard enough to publish a single book, let alone commit to a full series. After we considered various other possibilities, Tim came upon the idea of a fiction anthology organized by neighborhood, each one represented by a different author. We were looking for stylistic diversity, so we focused on “noir,” and defined it in the broadest sense: we wanted stories of tragic, soulful struggle against all odds, characters slipping, no redemption in sight.

  Conventional wisdom dictates that literary anthologies don’t sell well, but this idea was too good to resist—it seemed the perfect form for exploring the whole borough, and we got to work soliciting stories. We batted around book titles, including Under the Hood, before settling on Brooklyn Noir. The volume came together beautifully and was a surprise hit for Akashic, quickly selling through multiple printings and winning awards. (See pages 548–550 for a full list of prizes garnered by stories originally published in the Noir Series.)

  Having seen nearly every American city, large and small, through the windows of a van or tour bus, I have developed a deep fondness for their idiosyncrasies. So for me it was easy logic to take the model of Brooklyn Noir—sketching out dark urban corners through neighborhood-based short fiction—and extend it to other cities. Soon came Chicago Noir, San Francisco Noir, and London Noir (our first of many overseas locations). Selecting the right editor to curate each book has been the most important decision we make before assembling it. It’s a welcome challenge because writers are often enamored of their hometowns, and many are seduced by the urban landscape’s rough edges. The generous support of literary superheroes like George Pelecanos, Laura Lippman, Dennis Lehane, and Joyce Carol Oates, all of whom have edited series volumes, has been critical.

  There are now fifty-nine books in the Noir Series. Forty of them are from American locales. As of this writing, a total of 787 authors have contributed 917 stories to the series and helped Akashic to stay afloat during perilous economic times. By publishing six to eight new volumes in the Noir Series every year, we have provided a steady venue for short stories, which have in recent times struggled with diminishing popularity. Akashic’s commitment to the short story has been rewarded by the many authors—of both great stature and great obscurity—who have allowed us to publish their work in the series for a nominal fee.

  I am particularly indebted to all sixty-seven editors who have cumulatively upheld a high editorial standard across the series. The series would never have gotten this far without rigorous quality control. There also couldn’t be a Noir Series without my devoted and tireless (if occasionally irreverent) staff led by Johanna Ingalls, Ibrahim Ahmad, and Aaron Petrovich.

  * * *

  This volume serves up a top-shelf selection of stories from the series set in the United States. USA Noir only scratches the surface, however, and every single volume has more gems on offer.

  When I set out to compile USA Noir, I was delighted by the immediate positive responses from nearly every author I contacted. The only author on my initial invitation list who isn’t included here is one I couldn’t track down: the publisher explained to me that the writer was “literally on the run.” While I’m disappointed that we can’t include the story, the circumstance is true to the Noir Series spirit.

  And part of me—the noir part—is expecting a phone call from the writer, inviting me over for a smoke.

  Johnny Temple

  Brooklyn, NY

  July 2013

  ___________________

  More about USA Noir

  The best USA-based stories in the Akashic Noir Series, compiled into one volume and edited by Johnny Temple!

  “All the heavy hitters . . . came out for USA Noir . . . an important anthology of stories shrewdly culled by Johnny Temple.” —New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice

  “Readers will be hard put to find a better collection of short stories in any genre.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “A must read for mystery fans, not just devotees of Akashic’s ‘Noir’ series, this anthology serves as both an introduction for newcomers and a greatest-hits package for regular readers of the series . . . There isn’t a weak story in the collection . . . Strongly recommended for readers who enjoy mysteries published by Hard Case Crime, as well as for fans of police procedurals.” —Library Journal (starred review)

  “The 37 stories in this collection represent the best of the U.S.-based anthologies, and the list of contributors include virtually anyone who’s made the best-seller list with a work of crime fiction in the last decade . . . a must-have anthology.” —Booklist (starred review)

  “It’s hard to imagine how the present anthology could be topped for sheer marquee appeal . . . Perhaps the single most impressive feature of the collection is its range of voices, from Joyce Carol Oates’ faux innocent young family to Megan Abbott’s impressionable high school kids to the chorus of peremptory voices S.J. Rozan plants in a haunted thief’s head. Eat your heart out, Walt Whitman: These are the folks who hear America singing, and moaning and screaming.” —Kirkus Reviews

  “A less enlightened Temple cover collection of crime and mystery stories could easily reduce itself to stereotypical cartoons about white detectives with a whiskey bottle and a gun in the drawer but Akashic’s series takes itself very seriously in its mission to represent all aspects of a city’s dark side.” —Kirkus Reviews, Feature Story/Interview with Johnny Temple

  “For those who prefer their crime closer to home, there is USA Noir, a veritable greatest hits of Akashic’s long-running, acclaimed noir anthology series, rounding up solid gold blackness of the bleakest and darkest kind . . . Like Chuck Berry sang, ‘Anything you want, we got right here in the USA.’” —Mystery Scene Magazine

  Launched with the summer ’04 award-winning best seller Brooklyn Noir, Akashic Books has published over sixty volumes in its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies. Each book is comprised of all-new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book.

  Featuring Noir Series stories from: Dennis Lehane, Don Winslow, Michael Connelly, George Pelecanos, Susan Straight, Jonathan Safran Foer, Laura Lippman, Pete Hamill, Joyce Carol Oates, L
ee Child, T. Jefferson Parker, Lawrence Block, Terrance Hayes, Jerome Charyn, Jeffery Deaver, Maggie Estep, Bayo Ojikutu, Tim McLoughlin, Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, Reed Farrel Coleman, Megan Abbott, Elyssa East, James W. Hall, J. Malcolm Garcia, Julie Smith, Joseph Bruchac, Pir Rothenberg, Luis Alberto Urrea, Domenic Stansberry, John O’Brien, S.J. Rozan, Asali Solomon, William Kent Krueger, Tim Broderick, Bharti Kirchner, Karen Karbo, and Lisa Sandlin.

  JOHNNY TEMPLE is the publisher and editor in chief of Akashic Books, an award-winning Brooklyn-based independent company dedicated to publishing urban literary fiction and political nonfiction. Temple won the 2013 Ellery Queen Award; the American Association of Publishers’ 2005 Miriam Bass Award for Creativity in Independent Publishing; and the 2010 Jay and Deen Kogan Award for Excellence in Noir Literature. Temple plays bass guitar in the band Girls Against Boys, which has toured extensively across the globe and released numerous albums on independent and major record companies. He has contributed articles and political essays to various publications, including the Nation, Publishers Weekly, AlterNet, Poets & Writers, and BookForum. He is also the chair of the Brooklyn Literary Council, which works with Brooklyn’s borough president to plan the annual Brooklyn Book Festival in September.

  USA Noir is available in paperback from our website and in bookstores everywhere. The e-book edition is available wherever e-books are sold.

  ABOUT THE AKASHIC NOIR SERIES

  The Akashic Books Noir series was launched in 2004 with the award-winning anthology, Brooklyn Noir. Each book is comprised of all new stories, each taking place within a distinct location within the city of the book. Stories in the series have won multiple Edgar, Shamus, and Hammett awards and the volumes have been translated into 10 languages. Every book is available on our website, as eBooks from your favorite vendor, and in print at online and brick & mortar bookstores everywhere. For more information on the series, including an up-to-date list of available titles, please visit www.akashicbooks.com/noirseries.htm.