So good we had to tell you twice! Interview with NoHo's Mark Satchwill

Over at EBSQ (Where Art Meets Blog) there's an excellent interview with artist Mark Satchwill. Mark talks about the transition from trad to digital and there are pictures! Check it out here.http://blog.ebsqart.com/2012/08/21/interview-with-mark-satchwill-going-digital/

Going Digital Interview with Mark Satchwill

The lovely and talented Amanda Makepeace has interviewed NoHo's Mark Satchwill about his move from creating art traditionally to digitally over on the EBSQ blog. 

http://blog.ebsqart.com/2012/08/21/interview-with-mark-satchwill-going-digital/

Frightmare Film Review

Sheila Keith/Dorothy Yates, Digital, 2012

NoHo's Mark Satchwill has a written a new  review of the classic Peter Walker shocker "Frightmare" over on the Classic Horror Campaign website where it's British Horror Month.


He also created this illustration of the wonderful Sheila Keith as she appears in the film playing cannibal Dorothy Yates.


Check it out here: http://www.classichorrorcampaign.com/2012/08/10/frightmare-1974/

NoHo Noir: Perceived Value

 PERCEIVED VALUE

Written by Katherine Tomlinson

Illustrated by Mark Satchwill

Gillis Montgomery didn’t like his wife working at the North Hollywood pawn shop. It was the biggest one they owned, but it was a trouble magnet, especially after a guy got shot trying to pass stolen goods while Orla was there alone. 

But Orla knew jewelry inside and out—“All those years of dress up,” she liked to say—and people were coming in every day hoping to exchange their valuables for enough money to pay their electric bill so they could keep the A/C on. Gillis could value most items with a cursory glance but he was clueless about bling.

Or so he claimed.

In truth, he hated dealing with jewelry. The misery was just too intimate when a woman came in to pawn her engagement ring, or a man brought in his father’s turquoise-inlaid cufflinks as collateral for a loan. The baubles were rarely worth much and the shame and despair of the people offering them up was like a wave of body odor—you couldn’t see it but the smell was so strong it could knock you off your feet.

Orla was better at dealing with the emotional stuff than he was.

Or so he liked to think.

When Martin Prentice walked through the door, Gillis heard Orla sigh.

Frighten Brighton Art and Interview

Noho Noir's Mark Satchwill has created a poster image for the Frighten Brighton Classic Horror Film Festival happening in the UK next month.
You can read an interview with Mark about his love of horror movies, the inspiration for the poster and why he supports the Classic Horror Campaign over on their website:

http://www.classichorrorcampaign.com/2012/07/18/exclusive-new-frighten-brighton-artwork-and-interview/

NoHo Noir: Smother Mother

                                         SMOTHER MOTHER

Written by Katherine Tomlinson

Illustrated by Mark Satchwill

Shannon could hear her son sobbing all the way from the parking lot. When she entered the office of the little motel they owned, she was upset to see her mother Maeve holding down the counter instead of Nori, the guest who usually covered for her when she had to run out on an errand.

She was torn between confronting her mother and tending to her son, who had hurled himself into her arms the moment he saw her. “What’s wrong Liam?” she asked as he burrowed his head into her leg.

“Nothing’s wrong,” her mother said. “He’s just a little cry-baby.”

“I am not a cry-baby,” Liam wailed.

Shannon stroked his back. “I know sweetie,” she said, giving her mother a lethal look. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

She took Liam's hand and led him into the little apartment behind the office. 

“You’re doing him no favors by coddling him like that,” Maeve said, loudly enough that she could be heard through the locked door.

It had taken Shannon 15 minutes to calm Liam down and get the story out of him. He kept apologizing for “making Grandma mad,” and every time he did, the red haze clouding Shannon’s vision got a little redder.

She remembered apologizing for making her mother mad, even when she’d had no idea what she’d done.

Liam had set Maeve off by asking her where Nori was when he saw his grandmother behind the front desk in the motel’s office. Maeve had flown into a rage, ranting that he was dissing her and that she wasn’t going to stand for it. 

NoHo Noir: The Heat is On!

The Heat Is On

Written by Katherine Tomlinson

Illustrated by Mark Satchwill

Vera Polk was bored. It was such an unusual sensation for her that she almost didn’t recognize it at first and thought it was just another variety of depression. It had been a tough school year and now that it was summer, she should have felt the usual vacation uptick in her mood, but instead she’d been plagued with sleeplessness and a vague sense of ennui.

“Just be glad you’re not teaching summer school,” her friend Moira had said when they met for lunch at City Wok one weekend.

Moira’s husband had been unemployed for nearly two years. She was burnt out on the job of teaching English to disinterested teens, but there was no scenario in which she could afford not to teach during the summer. It was starting to get to her, though. Whenever she and Vera got together, all Moira wanted to do was vent.

“We’re doing a section on Romeo & Juliet,” she said. “I promised everyone I’d give them an A if they could prove they’d watched any of the movie versions.”

She forked in another morsel of the crispy, sweet-hot City Wok Chicken they’d both ordered.

“Poo came in with a screen shot from Romeo is Bleeding,” she added.

Vera raised her eyebrow.

“Joel Silver movie,” Moira explained. “Jet Li. Gangs.” Moira slugged down the rest of her diet Coke. “I gave him a C and he was happy with it.”

Vera shuddered. She taught geometry, trigonometry and calculus. There was no chance that the thuggish Poo was going to end up in one of her classes.

She grabbed the check when it came. “My treat,” she said, as she almost always did.

“I’ll get it next time,” Moira said, as she almost always did.

“It’s on Ms. Math Whiz,” Vera assured her.

Vera was bored with Ms. Math Whiz. She’d turned in a draft of her latest “math for idiots” book in May and was waiting for her editor to give her the final edits. She made a nice side living from the books—almost twice what she brought home from her teaching job—but writing them was getting to be a chore. She enjoyed getting email from enthusiastic geeks who wanted to talk about famous math puzzles and she looked forward to interacting with a couple of her Twitter followers who engaged in lively conversations about subjects ranging from the discovery of the “God Particle” to the science of Prometheus. Other than that, though, being Ms. Math Whiz was about as much fun as teaching remedial math in a vocational school.

She was sitting on her balcony, relaxing with a glass of wine and gazing at the empty parking lot behind her condo when she was suddenly struck with the notion of creating a container garden.

She knew it was too late in the season for tomatoes, but she could try some herbs—chives and sage and dill—and chili peppers. The idea made her happy.

She finished off her glass of wine and went into her home office to tweet a few things before bed. The follower who called him/herself @geekusinterruptus was raving about the new Spider Man movie and wondering if she’d seen it yet. She’d lied and said she had, that she thought it was the best one yet.

The last time Vera had attempted any sort of gardening project, she’d bought all her plants from Stevens Nursery in Studio City. She’d loved browsing there, especially on cool days when the tropical humidity of the greenhouse felt like a lush oasis in the middle of the generally arid LA suburbs.

Stevens had been razed years ago, though, to make room for the ugliest mega-condo/apartment complex in the area.

Vera had found a nursery in Burbank that had a resident cat and good prices. She’d filled a basket with little green and white plastic pots filled with three-inch shoots of aromatic green. She’d been captivated by a square-stemmed plant that smelled like a peppermint patty.

“That’s chocolate mint,” said a guy wearing a dark green polo shirt with the Plant One On Us logo. “It’s great mixed with strawberries, but it’s a little late to be planting it.”

He took the pot out of her hands and put it back on the shelf with the other baby plants. “You’ll want to wait until the fall for it, or maybe early next spring.”

Vera was somewhere between bemused and annoyed as he looked over the other choices in her cart.

“Rosemary and sage but no thyme?” he asked. “How will you ever season a roast chicken?”

“I make roast chicken with garlic and lemon,” she said, not sure why she was trading cooking tips with a total stranger.

“Simple and elegant,” the guy said, “like the cook.”

Vera blushed from the tips of her toes even as she deflected the compliment with a bit of a shrug. “It’s hard to mess up a roast chicken,” she said.

“Au contraire,” the guy said, with a pitch-perfect accent. “At the Culinary Institute of America they ask you to make two things to show off your expertise before graduating.”

“A roast chicken,” Vera guessed, “and what?”

“An omelette,” he replied. “The idea being that if you can create something beautifully simple, you can go on to cook something more complex.”

“You’re a cook?” she asked the guy.

Now it was his turn to shrug.

“I eat a lot of pasta,” he said. “I picked up a cookbook in self-defense.”

Vera casually glanced at the guy’s bare left hand while pretending to tidy the plants in her basket.

Divorced? Gay?

“Let me know if you need any help with anything,” the guy said and turned away.

Say something Vera.

“What about chilies?” she blurted, holding out a pot with a couple of the bright red peppers already ripening.

“Good choice for summer gardening,” he said. “Good way to spice things up.”

She smiled at him, charmed.

“I think I’m ready to check out,” she said.

“Right this way,” he said, and without asking, took the handle of her cart and rolled it over to the checkstand.

“Good luck,” he said to her as she walked away with her purchases. “Let me know if you have any problems.”

Vera blushed again as she put her change away. “I will,” she said, and was surprised that she actually meant it.

The owner of the shop looked at her brother as he watched Vera head for her car.

“She’ll be back,” he promised her.

She knew he was right. Business had almost doubled since he’d started working for her.

Seducing the middle-aged customers was like shooting fish in a barrel for him.

She almost felt guilty about it.

Almost.

As for Vera…she wasn’t bored any more.

NoHo Noir: There is no Contingency Plan

 

There is no Contingency Plan for the Zombie Apocalypse

Written by Katherine Tomlinson

Illustration by Mark Satchwill

It was 101 degrees outside but Esme had cracked the car’s window to avoid breathing in the stale alcohol fumes her partner was breathing out. The metabolized bourbon mixed with toxic levels of garlic from the pizza he’d eaten at lunch had formed an almost visible aura around him. The smell was so thick she wondered if it would explode if she flicked her lighter.

Some days she really missed smoking.

“We should all go out sometime,” Edgar said, for at least the fourth time since they’d clocked in. He was newly hooked up with a skanky badge bunny he’d met in a bar and was looking for validation for the relationship. Considering he’d thrown away four years of sobriety to be with his new love, Esme was not a big fan. She already knew more than she wanted to about “Lucinda” from the pictures on Edgar’s cell and the stories he chose to relate.

She didn’t even listen to the stories anymore, just nodded or grunted every once in awhile.

“You’re not listening Esme,” Edgar said.

“Sorry,” she said. “I’ve got a little bit of a headache.”

“Caffeine withdrawal,” Edgar suggested smugly. He drank Maker’s Mark like it was mother’s milk but didn’t like coffee. She had tried to be inconspicuous about her attempts to cut back on coffee in the wake of a scare with some breast cysts, but Edgar had noticed and driven her nuts with questions until she finally admitted what she was doing.

She was about to say something scathing about there not being sobriety chips for caffeine when the call came over the radio.

“Dispatch, say again,” Edgar said.

“You heard me Edgar,” the dispatcher said, in total violation of protocol. “You’d better get over there fast. The uni who called it in sounded pretty freaked out.”

Esme was already turning the car around.

“It was only a matter of time before they showed up in Los Angeles,” Edgar said.

“There is no ‘they,’ Edgar,” Esme said.

“You saw the memo, same as me,” he insisted.

“This is L.A.,” Esme said, “somebody’s shooting a movie.”

Edgar made a noise that sounded like “humph.”

Esme sighed. It was bad enough that everyone on the force had been working overtime on the homeless serial killer case. When the stories started coming in about cannibal attacks and zombies eating dogs, and the shift briefings started including warnings about designer drugs, everything got amped up another notch.

She knew Edgar was just clowning around to annoy her but some of the kids actually believed zombies were real.

But then, Esme guessed she couldn’t blame them when news stories were actually reporting that voters thought President Obama was better suited to leading the country in the face of an alien attack than Mitt Romney.

In the face of an alien attack, God help us, Esme thought.

“I wonder if it’s a fast zombie,” Edgar said.

NoHo Noir: Child of the Heart

CHILD OF THE HEART

Written by Katherine Tomlinson

Illustrated by Mark Satchwill

Some of her clients had complained when Tina told them the yoga studio was going to be closed over the holiday weekend. “But you never close,” Marianne McSweeney had said accusingly, as if Tina were running some kind of bait and switch operation.

“I’m closing this year,” Tina said, without giving her an explanation.

“I think you’re being selfish,” Marianne had said and Tina had nearly laughed. Marianne McSweeney was the most singularly self-absorbed person she’d ever met and she wasn’t even an actress.

“I’ll see you Tuesday,” Tina said to her.

“Whatever,” Marianne had said and left in a huff.

Tina hated people who said whatever.

The truth was, Tina never had closed before. This was the first year she’d had enough of a financial cushion to even think about taking a three-day weekend. She’d opened the studio the year the economy had taken a dump and by December of 2009 she was sure she was going to have to close it and go back to doing medical transcription. And she so didn’t want to do that.

The work wasn’t particularly hard and the pay was okay, but she’d been working for the doctor who’d overseen her transition. He’d been wonderful during the process but she felt that every time she saw him she was taking a step back in her personal journey and not a step forward. She’d felt like she was playing it safe, hiding from reality, not really being the strong and independent woman she was born to be.

Her mother had loaned her a thousand dollars to keep the bills paid and then Tina had landed a job as a personal yoga trainer to the soon-to-be ex-wife of a major movie star. The ex-wife had paid her an outrageous amount of money to come to her Brentwood house twice a week and the gig had paid the studio rent for a year. She’d been sorry when that client had moved to Sedona, claiming to be in search of inner peace but actually in pursuit of a handsome artist who’d caught her eye.

It had been a lean couple of years but since the early spring, things had started to change. All of her classes were suddenly full and she was booked solid with private clients as well. Tina wasn’t sure what was happening—gas prices were still high and food prices were still going up and it wasn’t as if yoga lessons were a necessity—but for whatever reason she suddenly wasn’t having to kite checks to keep the lights on and the doors open at the same time.

And she really needed some time to herself. Since her mother had died in September, she’d been too busy to grieve. But getting through the first Mother’s Day since her death had been brutal. Every time she turned on the television there’d been some commercial with mothers and daughters. Or mothers and sons.

NoHo Noir presents..."Knock, Knock"

NoHo Noir presents its first comic strip..."Knock, Knock".

Written and drawn by Mark (script edited by Katherine) it tells the story of an old lady, Norma, who receives an unexpected visitor...but all is not what it seems!

"Knock, Knock" can be viewed and downloaded by following the link below:
http://www.scribd.com/mark_satchwill/d/94568527-Knock-Knock

Horror Hotel Review

Mark has a new review and illustration of the 1960 atmospheric witchcraft chiller Horror Hotel posted on the Classic Horror Campaign website.

Horror Hotel Review

Classic Horror Film Reviews

NoHo's Mark Satchwill is writing film reviews (and accompanying them with illustrations) for the Classic Horror Campaign website. First up for review is the 1959 schlocker Horrors of the Black Museum.

Horrors of the Black Museum Review

About the Classic Horror Campaign

NoHo Noir: Out of Sight

Out of Sight

Written by Katherine Tomlinson

Illustrated by Mark Satchwill

Shannon was worried sick about Liam.

She’d been promised police protection for him but after a drive-by shooting on his school’s playground, the principal had asked her to teach Liam at home “until the dust settles.” She couldn’t really blame the principal, three kids and a teacher had been wounded and one of the kids had been paralyzed from the waist down.

So she’d made arrangements to home-school her son, borrowing tons of books from the library and searching the internet for lesson plans.

Liam had been a good student before the shooting but now getting him to focus on anything for more than five minutes was a struggle. He was anxious and hyper-vigilant and complained of stomach aches and headaches. He’d never needed a night light, even as a toddler, but now he refused to go to bed unless all the lights were on.

She and Liam had moved into Barbara’s apartment behind the motel’s office, which offered a little more security than the flimsy door of their old room, but not much.

Shannon had called a locksmith to install extra dead bolts on the door connecting their apartment to the main office, but had sent the locksmith home when she saw his Hispanic features and the tats that sleeved his arms.

She’d told him she was sorry, but that she’d had a cash flow problem and offered to pay him for his drive-time and gas.

He’d been surprisingly nice about it, which had made her feel guilty.

She’d quit her day job when Liam inherited the motel, the income from the rentals being $100 more a month than she’d brought in before. She kept up the medical transcription gig, though, because she could do it at home and look after Liam and the needs of the guests at the same time.

 Not that guest services was a big part of the motel experience. There was no maid ser vice—guests were responsible for dumping their own trash.

They got clean towels and sheets once a week, but if they washed the linens themselves, they got a little bit taken off their rent.

Like Barbara, she turned a blind eye to the illegal hot plates and slow cookers plugged into the wall sockets in the tiny bathrooms. But like Barbara, she kept an eye on the people she knew were slobs, posting little notices about not leaving food out lest roaches move in.

She also kept an eye on Nori, a teenage girl she suspected of being a runaway who often entertained male visitors for a couple of hours at a time. But Nori kept a low-pro and the only real problem she’d ever caused was once when her pot dealer came around looking to barter his goods for her services.

The guy in the unit next to Nori, Kevin Eastman, was a recovering addict who had no problem confronting the “businessman” in the parking lot. Shannon hadn’t seen the pot dealer again. She had thanked Kevin and he had ducked her gratitude, saying only that he didn’t think the kids who lived at the motel should have to worry about druggie scum hanging around.

He asked her often how Liam was doing. He was a vet of the Gulf War and recognized PTSD when he saw it.

He’d told Shannon how sorry he was the boy had been caught in the middle of things and he’d praised him for being so brave.

He seemed to think it was a good thing that Barbara had left the motel to Liam. “Maybe something good can come out of something bad,” he’d said.

“I’ll pray for you both,” he’d added.

The other guests, some of whom had been at the motel longer than she and Liam, were jealous as hell about her son’s inheritance, and suggested that maybe Barbara had been a lesbian and Shannon had serviced her in return for favors.

They didn’t care if Shannon heard the gossip.

“Don’t listen to them,” Kevin Eastman had said.

Shannon didn’t care that much about what they said about her but she didn’t like Liam exposed to their nasty tongues.

If she could have come up with a legal reason to evict the haters, she would have.

Especially since the nasty remarks about prostituting herself hit too close to home.

She’d once traded sexual favors for car repairs and while the guy had been decent about it, she had been so consumed with self-loathing that she’d never been able to go back to the gas station, even though it was the one closest to the motel.

Liam didn’t really talk about Barbara much but she knew he missed her. The bitter old woman had been the closest thing he’d ever had to a grandmother and he’d soaked up her attention like a thirsty paper towel.

Shannon did not want her son to testify against the shooter, who’d been identified as a shot-caller for a gang called the Burbank Trece Rifa. When the cops first used the phrase “shot caller,” she thought they were saying “shock collar” and she’d been puzzled.

When the DA defined the term for her, she was still confused. The way she understood it, the “shot callers” were the ones who gave the orders, not the guys who actually got blood on their hands. She’d asked him about that and his answer had been chilling.

“He missed the juice,” the DA had said. “And this one was personal.” The kid he’d killed had been his nephew, Shannon had learned. The shooter had suspected him of working with the cops.

“Was he?” Shannon had asked.

The DA had shrugged. “Yeah. Someone dropped the ball there,” he’d admitted.

It had not been an answer calculated to instill confidence.

“My son is not testifying,” she’d said.

“If Liam doesn’t testify, we got no case,” he’d replied. “Your son can help us put away a real bad guy.”

“They said they would kill him,” Shannon said.

“They’re trying to intimidate you,” the DA said.

“They’re succeeding,” Shannon said.

The DA had sighed then.

“Nothing is going to happen to Liam,” he’d said.

Two hours later a couple of big guys in suits had shown up at the motel. “The DA sent us,” the first one said. “I’m Marshal Sullivan and this is Marshal Altieri.”

“We’re here to protect Liam,” Altieri said and then added as an afterthought, “and you.”

Shannon had introduced them to Liam as “friends,” and he seemed to accept their presence without much surprise.

The two men traded off shifts for the next two weeks, Sullivan sitting in the motel lobby during the day and Altieri spending the nights lounging on the couch in Barbara’s apartment, watching dvds with Liam until he went to bed and then working on his laptop as mother and son slept.

Shannon found it surprisingly easy to sleep with a stranger in her space. She’d forgotten how nice it was to have a man in the house.

On the morning Liam was to make his first appearance in court, Shannon dressed him up like a little man in a suit she’d found at a thrift shop.

“He’s a handsome kid,” Sullivan had told her as he bundled them into a black SUV.

“And brave too,” he’d added.

He’d touched her arm lightly then. “You’ve raised a little hero,” he said. “You should be very proud.”

Shannon had nodded, not trusting herself to say anything.

At the courthouse, the marshals had by-passed the screening but she had set off the alarms somehow.

“We’ll meet you upstairs,” Altieri said and he and Sullivan had walked off with Liam between them, looking very small.

The minute they turned the corner out of sight, Shannon started to panic.

She cleared the security scanner and ran down the hallway without retrieving her purse, hoping to catch the men before they got onto an elevator.

She was hyperventilating before she reached the bank of elevators and there was an alarmed bailiff trailing her.

“My son,” she gasped out, “they took him!”

The bailiff’s anxious look turned to one of alarm.

“Who took him?” she asked.

“The marshals,” Shannon said, punching the UP button on the nearest elevator.

“You need to calm down, ma’am,” the bailiff said, signaling one of the nearby cops for help.

The bailiff reached for Shannon and she drew back.

The cop closed in.

Shannon took a deep breath, trying to calm herself.

Before she could exhale, a tall blonde woman wearing a skin tight skirt suit in a shocking shade of orange glided up next to her and took her arm.

Shannon was so shocked to see her mother that she didn’t even resist.

“I’m so sorry,” Maeve said to the bailiff and the cop, “my daughter has been under a great deal of stress lately.”

The cop and the bailiff hesitated.

“It’ll be all right,” she said and gave them both the big smile that had won her the title of “Miss Henrico County” back in 1979.

The Bailiff had given Maeve a hard look—women always distrusted her southern charm—but the cop backed off right away, glad not to have been drawn into what was obviously a volatile situation.

“Your little boy?” she’d asked.

“He’s fine,” Maeve had said firmly. “His mother is a bit of a drama queen.”

She’d turned to Shannon then and given her a smile meant for show, a smile full of motherly fondness with a touch of despair.

“Let’s go Shannon,” she said.

She kept her grip on Shannon’s arm, her manicured fingernails biting through the thin fabric of Shannon’s blouse.

No, no, no, no, Shannon howled in her mind and then, when others in the hallway looked up, realized she’d screamed aloud.

“Stop making a scene,” her mother hissed.

The elevator opened onto the floor housing the criminal court and Shannon nearly sobbed with relief when she saw Liam sitting on one of the benches, bookended by the two marshals.

Liam saw her and waved happily, then stopped in confusion as he saw the woman in the shockingly orange suit.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“I’m your grandmother,” Maeve said.

“I don’t have a grandmother,” he said and glanced at Shannon for corroboration.

“Oh you poor boy,” she said as she swooped down like a vulture to engulf him in a hug.

“Take your hands off him,” Shannon said, knowing even as the words left her mouth that she sounded crazy.

Sullivan raised his eyebrows. Maeve pouted in his direction, playing out a part.

 “Grandma’s here now and she’s going to take good care of you.”

She looked back over her shoulder at Shannon and her eyes had a triumphant gleam.

Shannon’s heart sank and she could barely hear her mother’s next words over the pounding blood in her temples.

“We’re going to have such fun while I’m here.”

NoHo Noir: Take the Bunny and Run

Illustration by Mark Satchwill

TAKE THE BUNNY AND RUN

By Katherine Tomlinson

Illustrated by Mark Satchwill

Rob Nolan didn’t like any of his teachers but he hated Adam Chu the most. He’d had the biology teacher freshman year and although he was now in P-Chem and would never take a class from him again, Rob was stuck in his home room. It seemed like Chu was always watching him with those slanted eyes, watching and waiting.
They’d clashed early in the semester when Rob had confronted the teacher about the constant surveillance.
“You like what you see Adam?” Rob had taunted, running a hand down his skinny chest seductively.
“I’m a biologist,” Chu had replied without heat, “I’m interested in mutated life forms.”
Some of the kids had laughed at that until Rob had looked at them.
That’s all it usually took. One look. And if that wasn’t enough, he could always sic Poo on them.
Poo liked hurting people.
Rob had thought about reporting the teacher to the principal—Wayne Richtman was a raging racist and homophobe and that made Chu a double target—but he had decided he wanted to deal with the teacher himself.
He’d put quite a bit of thought into what he might do and a lot of preparation as well. Rob had read about a guy who’d been blown up by terrorists who’d planted explosives under a floor years before their victim ever set foot in the room. He admired that kind of advance planning.
So he’d been keeping his head down, biding his time, lulling the biology teacher into a sense of complacency.

NoHo Noir: Both Sides Now

Illustration by Mark Satchwill

Both Sides Now

By Katherine Tomlinson

Illustration by Mark Satchwill

It was the kind of California day Ron Zubic liked best, warm and windy after two days of rain, a soft sun falling on his face like a kiss..

Zubic’s best friend, a native Californian, complained about the sunshine all the time. “It depresses me,” he’d say. When Zubic had laughed at him, Terry had shown him a printout of a news story on CNN about summer-onset Seasonal Affective Disorder.

Zubic had not been convinced.

“It says here it only affects one percent of the population,” he’d pointed out.

“What, you don’t think I’m special?” Terry had countered, but then he’d laughed, bitter humor being his default option for dealing with unpleasant topics.

It was no joke, though, how he started getting depressed and agitated the hotter it got. By June Terry would be damn near suicidal and there would be nothing Zubic or any of the guys could do.

Gene Burkhart had tried to get him into some kind of treatment but the VA system just wasn’t set up to handle anything but the basic alcohol- and drug-related problems. Not that those programs helped anyone either.

Kids were coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan so fucked up nobody was going to be able to fix them. And a lot of them kept getting sent back or kept going back out of some sort of screwed-up sense of honor. And that was fine with the Army until someone went nuts and started shooting women and children.

And then nobody wanted to know.

It had been the same way a generation ago.

NoHo Noir: Family Secrets

 Family Secrets

by Katherine Tomlinson

Illustration by Mark Satchwill

Illustrated by Mark Satchwill

The police had calmed down when they discovered the gun Alex had brandished was a prop gun. Of course, once they realized it was a prop, they wanted to know where he’d gotten it and that had gotten sticky. He didn’t want to say and they told his lawyer they weren’t going to release him until he did. He might have held out but his wife was close to hysterical by the time she arrived at the station and there didn’t seem to be much point in clamming up.

He’d told the unsmiling detective he’d “borrowed” the gun from the web series he was working on; adding that he’d planned on returning it the following Monday before anyone noticed it was gone. “That’s not going to happen,” the detective had said snarkily.

“What the hell were you thinking?” he’d added.

Well, that was the problem. Alex hadn’t been thinking. He hadn’t had a coherent thought since his son had died.

Not died. Been killed.

The police had kept the gun and that was a problem because it had been established as the weapon the series hero was using and it was the only gun they had.

The producer had wanted to fire Alex but they only had two more episodes to shoot and replacing him would have been a PITA. Alex was playing the hero’s father and he was heavily featured in the storyline.

The mood on the set had not been supportive. Alex’s comments at the job fair had been widely quoted and even with asterisks inserted in place of strategic vowels, any reader could get the picture.

Jeroyd the sound guy had heard about the “nigger” line.

Alicia, the hot girl who played the hero’s fiancée, had heard about the “cunt” remark.

Alex didn’t even try to explain because he knew there was no way he could. He didn’t think of himself as either a racist or a misogynist, but those words had come from somewhere, hadn’t they?

And never mind that he never used words like that. He had used them and there had been witnesses and now there was no unsaying them.

EBSQ Facebook Artist Of The Week

NoHo Noir's illustrator Mark Satchwill is this weeks Facebook Artist  over on EBSQ. There's a short interview with Mark and some images of his recent digital paintings, plus NoHo get's a plug too!

EBSQ Facebook Artist of the Week: Mark Satchwill

NoHo Noir: A Diamond as Big as the Ritz

A Diamond as Big as the Ritz

Written by Katherine Tomlinson

Illustrted by Mark Satchwill

Orla Montgomery was in the shop alone when the guy came in with a small plastic bag full of crap he set down on the counter in front of her.

The bag was from Ranch 99, which told her he wasn’t from the neighborhood. The nearest Ranch 99 store was on Sepulveda up near the Costco.

“Hey,” he said, with an accent that was pure Arkansas, so she knew he wasn’t a California native.

He smiled at her too widely, exposing the stumps of his front teeth, which told her he was a tweaker.

“Good morning,” she said, smiling at him. “What can I do for you today, sir?”

She could tell he liked being called “sir.”

As she moved closer to the counter, her right foot nudged the switch that caused the security camera to zoom in on the customer’s face.

“I’ve got some jewelry here,” he said and dumped the contents of the plastic bag onto the counter in a tangle of glints and glimmers.

He pronounced it “jewel-a-ry.”

Orla stirred the heap of gold with her finger, separating it into its component parts.

“What do you think?” the customer asked anxiously.

“It’s beautiful,” Orla said, knowing there was no way in hell the guy could have come by the loot honestly.

She separated a heavy gold chain from the rest and held it up like a snake handler displaying a serpent, running it from hand to hand to admire the heavy Art Deco-style links. “Lovely,” she murmured as her customer shifted his weight from side to side and tried not to look impatient.

She put the necklace down and picked up a simple bracelet, recognizing it as one of Jean Schlumberger’s classic designs for Tiffany. She slipped it on her own thin wrist and admired it.

“So, how much can you give me?” the customer asked.

“Oh,” Orla said, “I think we can make you a price.”

She spread the pieces out so she could take a good look. All of them were vintage, dating from the late 40s through the 50s.

NoHo Noir: Caller I.D.

"Caller I.D."

Written by Katherine Tomlinson

Illustrated by Mark Satchwill

Illustration by Mark Satchwill

Shannon Garrick had a love-hate relationship with her cell phone. When she’d been evicted from her last apartment, she’d left behind an unpaid electric bill, a delinquent gas bill and a cell phone bill that had rolled over three times before her provider finally cut her off.

Since then, her only form of communication with the outside world had been a cheap “pay as you go” phone she’d bought from CVS.  

The phone’s reception was crap but at least she had a number she could give the Human Resources people when she applied for jobs and a contact number if Liam’s school needed to get in touch with her. She refilled the phone’s minutes with pre-paid cards, always 30 minutes at a time. The cards with more minutes were actually a better bargain but they cost more and she never seemed to have the extra cash on hand.

Having a “burner phone” was a relief in many ways because it meant she didn’t constantly have to talk to creditors.

It was exhausting talking to creditors. She hated having to explain her situation over and over and over to people who probably weren’t making much more than minimum wage themselves. They always suggested that if she was in such dire straits she should declare bankruptcy, but that cost money too.

And deep down, Shannon felt that if she declared bankruptcy, she’d be admitting that she’d hit rock bottom. And if she admitted that, she was afraid she would lose heart altogether. She didn’t want to think about what would happen if she surrendered to despair. She didn’t want her mother raising Liam.

It was bad enough that her mother now knew where she and Liam lived. The news of the hotel shooting had gone national and pictures of a wide-eyed Liam surrounded by cops had flashed all over the Internet as pundits waxed philosophical about gang-related violence and the problem of “motel children.”

Her mother had immediately contacted Dr. Drew to offer an interview and use his show as a platform for reaching out to Shannon and the grandson she’d never met.

Book Review: Psychosomatic by Anthony Neil Smith

Illustration by Mark Satchwill

Meet Lydia. She lost her arms and legs in a car crash. She likes to be in control. She is divorced but her ex-husband brings girls to her house and does the nasty with them in front of her. So she decides to teach him a lesson and hires a guy to beat him up.
Meet Alan. He's a bit of a loser and he owes money to a couple of villains called Terry and Lancaster. Lydia's ex-husband is onto her plan and hires Alan to film the fight, which is being staged for Lydia's benefit. When the ex-husband dies in the fight, Alan has to get the money from Lydia. They become lovers and business partners, but when they cross paths again with Terry and an increasingly deranged Lancaster, a battle to the death ensues...
Anthony Neil Smith's debut novel is a dark and twisted ride through the lives (and deaths) of a bunch of people you hope never meet. It's fast paced, violent, funny, sometimes disturbing and written with enough style for you to forgive the occasional slightly far-fetched plot twist.
I'll be reading more of his work.



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