Lone Star Noir Edited by Bobby Byrd & Johnny Byrd

Akashic Books, whom we spotlighted yesterday, will publish another book in their noir series, this one focusing on Texas. Lone Star Noir will be edited by El Paso's Bobby Byrd & Johnny Byrd will be published in November 2010.

Featuring brand-new stories by: James Crumley, Joe Lansdale, Claudia Smith, Ito Romo, Luis Alberto Urrea, David Corbett, George Weir, Sarah Cortez, Jesse Sublette, Dean James, Tim Tingle, Milton Burton, Lisa Sandlin, Bill Crider, and Bobby Byrd.

Launched with the summer '04 award-winning best seller Brooklyn Noir, Akashic Books continues 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.

FROM THE INTRODUCTION TO LONE STAR NOIR:

"YOU CAN DRIVE AROUND TEXAS FOR A LONG TIME and never meet J.R. Ewing (Dallas) or Woodrow McCall (Lonesome Dove). The real Texas hides out in towns and cities like you'll find in these stories in Lone Star Noir, and in that very Texas reality, among the everyday good folks of Texas, you'll find the understanding of guns and dope and blood money and greed and hatred and delusion that makes these fourteen stories come alive on the page.

Sure, you might catch a glimpse of J.R. and old Woodrow Call, like a shadow at the edge of your sight, feel their heat at your back, catch a whiff of the dead flowers which are their Texas dreams.

This is basic food stuff for a Texas writer telling a story, but the story must always stay true to its place and the people who live there. That's the strength of these stories in Lone Star Noir--the particular place they come from, the language that the characters speak. Yes, they are piece of the larger puzzle which is Texas, but they are more true to the piece of ground they reveal. Texas, in all its many places, bleeds noir fiction . . ."

Forthcoming November 2010

It came to my head that some of you don't know what noir is. Noir is a French word that mean black. Now, I'm not the expert, but much of mystery fiction that has that narrator in the background like in the film noir. 

Now something can be film noir and not be a mystery or detective story, Double Indemnity, the example. If you remember the Mike Hammer TV series or even on the humorous side, Police Squad and the Naked Gun. This genre often has a femme fatale. Garrison Keillor gives a weekly script about his Deteictive Guy Noir on A Prairie Home Companion. Listen here.

Anyways, I can't be your English teacher, so read and listen for yourselves.

Tomorrow, Are Chapbooks losing there chaparitoness?

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