Help NoirCon Return in 2022

Through our GoFundMe campaign, we seek to raise $5000 to cover costs for a virtual platform for our 2022 conference. Any funds raised beyond that will go towards future NoirCon events. Donations of any size will guarantee access to the 2022 NoirCon (limited to the first 400 contributors).

“Tenderloin” by Steve Carr

FICTION: “I still wear my dog tags. They remind me of who I am, or was…. No one can see the damage but me.”

Nuts and Bolts to the Eight Steps: Paul Tomlinson on Writing the Crime Thriller

INTERVIEW: “Thrillers are more complicated because there’s a lot more variation – many more sub-genres…. All the plots have much in common, but they all have distinct features that readers or film viewers demand – the genre conventions or tropes. Many writers don’t realise how important these are….”

“Kitty at the Window” by Barry Gifford

NOVEL EXCERPT: “You like her, huh?”….“Just looking,” he said. “Do you know her?”

“She Walks” by Matthew Sorrento

POETRY: “She’ll keep things swift, dialed up…as they want it….”

“Geek” by Matthew Sorrento

POETRY: “The pit of fire in me was right there with death….”

“The Girlfriend Problem” by Matthew Sorrento

POETRY: “And I would kill for him, still would, ever since we met….”

“The Coming Storm” by D. V. Bennett

Pulling up carefully on the latch handle, Jack Winslow stepped out of his Chevy Impala onto the lonely tree-lined street. The intense rain and wind would cover most sounds, but he was careful not to allow the low-register thump of his car door to cut through the din. Repossessing a motorcycle in the middle of […]

“Border Feud” by Lance Mason

That summer in Oxnard was hot, humid in the mornings, with dew on the grass, and it smelled of the lima bean harvest and the sugarbeet mill out on Wooley Road. Now it was night, just on nine o’clock under a low, lemon moon, and Chuy Muro, in his ’39 Chevy coupe, was pulling across […]

“The Kick The Bucket Tour” by Jo Perry

The light turned red while the driver regaled her passengers with details of Ramon Novarro’s torture-murder. That’s why the Kick The Bucket Tour’s roofless matte-black van lurched so late from Laurel Canyon, where Novarro lived, into the tangle of westbound traffic on Sunset and forced a motorcycle cop to swerve into the next lane. Oops, […]