Bourbon and Lead (Raconteur Press Anthologies)

The dames were trouble. I knew that the moment I saw them. But they knew exactly the siren song that would get me to follow.

“Dime Detective Stories,” one of them said.

“And you can pitch it to the scribblers any way you want,” the other purred.

Yeah. I was doomed from the start.

And that’s more or less how this anthology happened. It was held special for me to edit, because my love of the hardboiled school of writing is well known to my friends. But since noir has been covered six ways from Sunday in various RacPress anthos, I chose both to open up the concept a bit, and to reference the kinds of crime and adventure writing I especially love, but which are disreputable and disdained by the same academy that acknowledges (long after his death) the value of Raymond Chandler.

The opening up was easy. I tried to make clear that I didn’t need the tarnished knight with a bottle of booze in his desk drawer in the ’40s, necessarily. I asked for more imagination as to setting, and listed westerns and cyberpunk as possible fruitful paths. I didn’t really get either of those, but you’ll find a couple of SF tales, and at least a little fantasy. O.K., bonkers fantasy, but I mean that in the best possible way. And one or two genre-benders that are tougher to classify fully. I ain’t complaining about any of it.