And you thought the NoHo Noir clown was creepy!

Check out this repro of a vintage (1927) advertising poster for Gilbey's Ports. The poster is one of several thousand being auctioned on eBay by posterprintshop. If you have a little time on your hands, check out the other posters on offer. Their stock is heavy with Art Deco images, magazine covers (Collier's, Judge, Metropolitan, Vogue), travel posters, and vintage sci fi art. Here's the link to their online store.

Death By Killing

Chris Rhatigan, whose excellent site Death by Killing is an essential starting point for anyone interested in good crime fiction, is posting "Five You Can't Miss" recommendations for short stories you might have missed over the course of the year. He kicked off the series with Christopher Grant of A Twist of Noir picks yesterday; today it's NoHo's own Katherine Tomlinson offering up suggestions. Check them out here.

And if you're looking for the perfect package of short crime fiction to give as a Christmas gift, pick up a copy (or two) of the excellent anthology Pulp Ink, which Chris co-edited with writer Nigel Bird. It's got more goodies than a plum pudding has plums. (Are there actually plums in plum pudding?) Anyway, inside you'll find stories by Matthew C. Funk, Richard Godwin, Hilary Davidson, Allan Guthrie, Patti Abbott, Sandra Seamans, Paul D. Brazill and Nigel and Chris as well.

No Ho Ho--A little Christmas Noir coming your way.

Cover design by Joanne Renaud

Check out "Nine Ladies Dancing," a sample story from Katherine Tomlinson's upcoming Christmas noir collection Twelve Nights of Christmas. The collection includes seven previously unpublished stories, wrapped in an attractively creepy cover designed by Joanne Renaud. Yes, the inspiration for these tales is the Christmas song "Twelve Days of Christmas," but don't expect any happy endings.
Follow us on the NoHo site to get a free copy! (That includes all who are already following; we love "early adopters.")

He says : How NoHo Noir Works

"Hi Mark.

I’ve landed a job writing weekly fiction for a site called patch.com..."

Madame Wang

And so it began with an e-mail from Katherine.  I'd done some work for her Dark Valentine project. Aside from illustrations for the magazine, I'd painted several pieces for the site's October Fiction Frenzy, which had needed an illustration for each new story every day for the month. I think I ended up doing about 8 or 9, usually at quite short notice. When the e-mail about NoHo came I was flattered and excited. That initial request came on the Thursday, asking for an illustration for that Sunday. Not a problem. Then on the Saturday, the day before the first story ran, I came home from a day out to find a mail asking if I could come up with a cover/logo, and suggesting the clown.  So I sat down and painted the original clown with a few hours to spare. Fun!

We gradually established a work pattern. Katherine would mail me at the beginning of the week with a synopsis of the next story and suggestions for the illustration. Most of the time I didn't read the actual stories until they were put up on the site! This worked though - often my illustration would influence the writing. Katherine gave me lots of freedom and trusted me when it came to character design, offering suggestions and then allowing me to flesh them out. We had great fun with characters like Sera the stalker, Clarence, Lyla,  Helen and the scary Madame Wang.

Fools Rush In

Initially I worked in watercolour but I started to feel it wasn't right. I made the move to markers which gave the illustrations a slightly more comic-book feel. I also changed from colour to monochrome for a more Noir-ish look. It was a great experience and a new challenge every week. Often the subject matter took me right out of my comfort zone and I'd have to draw things I would never have drawn otherwise - babies in burning cars ( I HATE drawing cars and have had to do several), Indian weddings with elephants, wedding cakes and funeral urns.


And, of course, Katherine and I developed a friendship with long chatty e-mails that began with work but covered all sorts of other topics (including a couple of my true life stories that were then worked into NoHo fiction!). It's amazing to think we've never actually met or even spoken directly. I can't thank her enough for inviting on the NoHo journey. It's such a pleasure to work with such a talented and generous lady. I *heart* Katherine Tomlinson.

Pulp Art--it's what's for Christmas

Of course it goes without saying that you'll be buying a NoHo Noir calendar featuring 12 great illustrations by Mark Satchwill to hang on your office wall. (No kittens or Harry Potter images for you...not that there's anything wrong with kittens or Harry Potter.) And surely you must know someone who needs a coffee or tea mug with the NoHo Noir clown logo on it?  (If the caffeine doesn't get their hearts started, maybe the frightening sight of the clown we fondly call "Skanky" will.)

Beyond that, though, you may have people on your Christmas list whose tastes are more pulp than noir. You (and they) are so in luck.  Mega-poster art site All Poster has a selection of vintage pulp magazine covers available in 11x17 for under $20. Want something even cheaper (and we mean that in every possible sense)? How about an 8 x 8 art print of Reform School Girl for only $5.99. (A blonde in a red dress smoking a cigarette and fixing her garters. Seriously, you can't go wrong with this one.)

One Day at a Time

Illustration by Mark Satchwill

It was already dark when Shannon Garrick left work. She hated the changeover from Daylight Savings Time. Even as a kid, the early dark had depressed her.

These days it felt like she was living in perpetual darkness, even on sunny days.

It would have helped if she’d had someone to talk to but she was terrified people would find out she and her son were homeless. It wasn’t just pride. It was fear. The other woman she worked with, who fancied herself something of an “office wife,” was jealous of her and wouldn’t hesitate to use the information to sabotage Shannon. Shannon handled money at the office, a lot of it in cash, and all it would take is a whisper of need for the suspicions to start.

And once the suspicions started, there would be inquiries. And it wouldn’t take too much digging to find out that Shannon was skimming money. Not much and not very often, but a five for food here and a ten for gas there and suddenly, she was in the hole for a couple of hundred dollars; money she had no hope of being able to pay back.

I hate my life, she thought, not for the first time.

I just want to go to sleep and not wake up, she thought, and it wasn’t the first time she’d thought that, either.

###

The third time Liam Garrick wandered into the manager’s office to stare into the vending machine by the front door; Barbara Dinwiddy started to lose patience. She was doing her end-of-the-month paperwork and he was distracting her.

She looked at the clock. It was after eight. It was too late for the boy to be out wandering by himself. Hookers used her parking lot to set up their dates and at least one drug dealer ran his business from a car parked on her property. He often came into the office to buy candy bars from the vending machine.

As bold as brass, she always thought.

“Liam isn’t it past your bedtime?” she asked.

“Um,” he said, which was no kind of an answer as far as Barbara was concerned.

“Where’s your mother?” she asked.

Liam’s eyes began to well with tears.

Oh hell, Barbara thought.

Christmas is Coming...The Wish List Starts Here

NoHo Noir is not a fan of crowds and usually leaves Black Friday to the people who don't mind braving pepper spray and general chaos in order to purchase really cheap electronics. We are, however, a fan of Cyber Monday, because we love the idea of shopping in our clown-printed jammies in the comfort of our own NoHo home.
We'll be publishing a full-fledged NoHo Noir Christmas Gift List later shortly, but this sale-priced coffee table book bout the art of Aaron Douglas caught our eye today.
Say the name "Aaron Douglas" to a lot of people and they'll think you're talking about the Canadian actor who starred in last year's cop drama The Bridge (and before that, the reboot of Battlestar Galactica). We like that Aaron Douglas well enough, but we're talking about the painter here. Douglas (1899-1979) has been called "the father of African-American art" and his work defined the "Harlem Renaissance" while also impacting the course of American modernism.  There are almost 200 illustrations in the book, drawn from Douglas' paintings, murals and illustrations. His signature style was a fever dream of Cubism and Art Deco and this book is a fantastic introduction to the man and his art, with some seriously scholarly cred. List priced at $60, it's now only $42 new on Amazon ($35 if you buy it used). Show this work to any comic book fan of your acquaintance and blow his/her mind!

Have a Lovecraftian Thanksgiving

Ross E. Lockhart, editor of The Book of Cthulhu, an anthology of tales inspired by H. P. Lovecraft, has come up with a great way to celebrate Thanksgiving. He's created a 24-hour #FeedCthulhuFeedtheHungry Twitter challenge. Read the details here. Donate to any organization that feeds the hungry and tweet about it and you could win a copy of the ebook. (If you're not one of the winners, you can buy the book here.

NoHo Noir Reads: The Hypnotist

NoHo's love for Nordic Noir goes way beyond Steig Larsson and Jo Nesbo (although we're huge fans of both writers). We recommend Amaldur Indridason's Jar City to anyone in hearing distance, and we're also fans of Karin Fossum's books, especially Black Seconds, which is one of the bleakest books in a generally bleak genre.
Lars Kepler's book The Hypnotist, available tomorrow is a character-driven crime story with a plot twining around three people--the title character, a police detective, and a 15-year-old boy accused of a horrible triple homicide. The book is fast-paced but filled with social commentary about Sweden's problems with immigration, the shortcomings of the country's justice system, and tabloid culture. It's just the kind of read to make a chilly November night a little bit colder. Read more about it here.

NoHo Noir: Bum's Rush

Illustration by Mark Satchwill

Bum's Rush

Written by Katherine Tomlinson

Illustrated by Mark Satchwill

Esme Morales felt like shit. She’d finally told her mother she was working Thanksgiving, without revealing the assignment was by choice, and the ensuing phone argument had consumed her entire lunch break. She’d scarfed a power bar and chugged some water, but now, three hours later, she was starving, with the beginnings of a brutal caffeine withdrawal headache.

“Hope you haven’t eaten lately,” the young uniformed cop said as she and Edgar walked up to the crime scene.

Her partner perked up. Nothing like a little blood and guts to chase the boredom.

“What do we got?” Edgar asked, which always irritated her because he knew it irritated her when he dropped into CSI-speak but did it anyway. It was one of the friction points in their partnership.

She preferred to concentrate on Edgar’s little flaws so she wouldn’t focus on the real problem, which was that he was a lazy, fat-ass prick who did the least amount of work possible to collect a paycheck but couldn’t seem to stand back and let her do the job without him.

It made her crazy.

She squeezed her eyes shut to beat back the headache and tried to concentrate on what the uni was saying.

“…he hasn’t been here more than a couple of hours.”

Esme looked around the location in disbelief—across from a high school, right around the corner from a donut shop—the guy’s body should have been found within minutes.

“Too much to hope there are security cameras pointed in this direction?” Edgar asked.

“We’re checking now,” the uni said, then added, “sir.”

Kid, you are sucking up to the wrong detective, Esme thought. He won’t even remember your name the next time he sees you.

It bothered Esme that she thought of the young cop as a kid. She was only 34 but days like this, she felt a worn-out 50.

“Let’s see it,” she said, sounding bitchier than she meant to.

The young cop glanced at Edgar. He gave the kid a “What are you going to do?” shrug.

***

She says: How NoHo Noir works

When Mark and I first started working on NoHo Noir, I already knew and liked his work. He had contributed illustrations to Dark Valentine Magazine, which I published. He worked fast (which turned out to be a godsend when we had artists drop out right before press time), and his work always brought an extra dimension to the stories.
What I didn't realize when we began our collaboration was what an intensely satisfying creative experience it was going to be or that it would lead to such a warm friendship, which I cherish.
So what was our process?  I'd love to say that "in the beginning was the word," but that wasn't always true.
Many times,"in the beginning" was a vague idea.
Until we began the countdown to the final episodes in Volume I, bringing everyone's story to a conclusion, the stories were never planned out in advance. As a result, sometimes the subplots took rather radical turns, some of which didn't pan out.
Our stories ran Saturday and Sunday. On Monday, I'd email Mark, letting him know what the two new stories would be and let him know if I had any thoughts for an illustration.  (At first, I used to bombard him with links to reference material and pictures of people and all sorts of information I thought he might need. I'm sure he thought it was overkill, but he never said so.)
Within a few weeks, though, we were so in synch that even when I was fumbling to find an image that would encapsulate my story, he'd deliver something that said everything I wanted to say (and more). He created a lovely painting for my father/son story "Cosmos" that was set at the Griffith Park Observatory, my favorite building in Los Angeles. The painting really captured the closeness of the two characters, whose stories became the heart of the series.

He was also good about indulging me. His illustration for "Molecules," a story that introduced an elderly widower still mourning his wife, he modeled the character's cat after my own favorite feline, Orange Cat.
More than a few times, Mark completed his illustration before I completed my story and as a result, I was inspired to write a better story.
Sometimes his illustrations made me laugh out loud, like the one he painted for a story called "He Said/She Said," chronicling a couple's disastrous story pitch at a movie studio. I had told him I wanted the executive's office to be filled with classic movie posters and he chose Jaws. The result was a hilarious illustration that added a special dimension of silliness to what was one of my favorite stories.
Now that we're publishing a whole new cycle of stories, I'm a little more organized than I was with Volume I.  I know where the stories are going and how we're going to get there. Mark's already way ahead of me, though, having finished the illustrations for the first two stories before I've written word one.
He also designed this site and put together all the little details that make it awesome.
I (heart) Mark Satchwill.

NoHo Noir Calendars

The NoHo Noir Calendar is available from Redbubble. It's fronted by Noho's Creepy Clown and features 12 illustrations from the first volume of NoHo stories. It's printed on 200gsm satin art paper with a tough wire binding and hanger. It's A3 size (297 x 420mm/11.7 " x 16.5").

You can check it out here!

New York Noir story

Paula Navarro

The new volume of NoHo Noir begins on Sunday, but in the meantime, if you're in the mood for something a little dark and dirty, check out "The Black Card" on our sister site Kattomic Energy.
"The Black Card" is the second in a series of stories about the class war being fought in America (the first was "Unclaimed," which appeared on the Dark Valentine site).

Just Because You're Paranoid

doesn't mean they're not out to get you. NoHo Noir loves a good conspiracy theory., and so do the publishers of Told You So, a collection of stories about conspiracies real and imagined. The collection includes 21 stories from writers like A.J. French, Sean D. Gardner, Wanda Morrow-Clevenger, Ken Staley, and Tim Reed.

NoHo Noir tries, but we can't be everywhere in Los Angeles at once. Fortunately, we have minions throughout the city and the county and beyond who feed us information so we never have to leave our lair. We've just discovered Food She Thought, a snappy site run by a woman who quotes Frederic Raphael ("Great restaurants are, of course, nothing but mouth-brothels") and invites us along on her culinary adventures. Today's post features a photo ofa cocktail livened up with a chunk of beef jerky, and that's all we neeed to get hooked. Food She Thought is a Zagat's Featured Blog. Even if you don't live in L.A., if you love food, you'll find the photos here drool worthy.

NoHo Noir catches up on our reading

It was a busy summer for NoHo Noir and not much reading got done in between the writing and the illustrating. Now that we're headed into the holidays and the pace has slowed down a bit (at least for the Los Angeles half of NHN), we're getting around to catching up on our reading.
Black Heart Magazine's first themed issue (Noir) came out in July, edited by guest editor Jimmy Callaway. Available for $2.99 here. We've checked out the sample and can't wait to read more.
We also need to catch up with our friends over at Monsterverse, who have just released their first graphic novel, Flesh and Blood  to rave reviews. USA Today said:  "It's scary stuff, the pace is breakneck, the writing smart and the result is something you've never seen before in comic books - a vampire tale told with genuine suspense, intelligence and cinema-like edits.
We look forward to the rest of the saga, but for now, Flesh and Blood: Book One, should keep you up late wishing for the Hammer-film-that-never-was long after Halloween."Monsterverse also publishes Bela Lugosi's Tales From the Grave, a classic horror comic anthology.

Noir Nation's Cort McMeel & Eddie Vega Interviewed

NoHo Noir is just one little corner of the vast country that is online noir.  One of the more colorful neighborhoods is Noir Nation, a site that celebrates international crime fiction.
Here Noir Nation's founding editor Cort McMeel talks to Dennis Tafoya about launching his online crime magazine, the transition from lit fic to crime fiction, how he met Noir Nation founder Eddie Vega (climbing Ben Bulben in Sligo, Ireland near the grave of W.B. Yeats), and the upcoming launch of Bare Knuckles Press.

Meanwhile, Paul D. Brazill has interviewed Eddie Vega over at his blog, "You Would Say that, Wouldn't You?" The conversation ranges from the inspiration of Sree Srenivasan ("the Johnny Appleseed of new media") to checking out domain names.

New Noir Fiction

Looking for something to read while you wait for the first installment of NoHo Noir? Pick your poison. G. Wells Taylor's The Fifth Horseman, the last of his Apocalypse Trilogy, is now available, with the first novel in the series free on amazon.com and also on Wells' site. Blending a classic western story with an end-of-the-world theme, The Fifth Horseman can be enjoyed as a stand-alone.
Silver Tears, the latest installment in Paul Brazill's Roman Dalton shared-world series Drunk on the Moon, is now available. John Donald Carlucci's tale of a serial killer targeting the werewolf detective offers a new spin on the monster mythology.
Christa Faust's new novel Choke Hold is out. Ex-porn star Angel Dare is back (in the sequel to Money Shot).  Rolling Stone calls Choke Hold, "an instant pulp classic."
If you're looking for noir in small bites, check out Laughing at the Death Grin from Pulp Metal Press.The anthology features 13 dark tales from Paul D. Brazill, Heath Lowrance, Chris Rhatigan, Richard Godwin, Frank Duffy and more...
Patti Abbott's Monkey Justice collection is out from Snubnose Press. NoHo Noir's own Mark Satchwill illustrated the title story when it ran in Dark Valentine Magazine.
Let us know when you're finished reading everything--we've got more suggestions than a corpse has maggots.

Welcome to the Neighborhood!

This is the new home of NoHo Noir, an illustrated serial novel created by artist Mark Satchwill and writer Katherine Tomlinson. Beginning Sunday, November 20, we will run at least one story a week, following the adventures of a diverse cast of characters who live and work and play within the borders of North Hollywood, California. (Called NoHo by its residents.)
If you liked Volume I (archived here), we think you'll like Volume II.
We've got all new characters, all new plots and we don't have to put asterisks in our swear words any more! Among the characters we'll be featuring over the next weeks and months will be Christopher Robin Nolan (left), the 16-year-old son of a single mother who has given up trying to understand him. Stay tuned. And in the meantime, don't forget to follow @nohonoir on Twitter!