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Introduction |
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City at Night There are many, many good hardboiled or noir stories set in small towns, or out in the country, where lives and deaths are played out in the sunlight. But for this issue of Hardluck, that's not what I wanted to see. What I asked for in the guidelines was for stories which showed the dark heart of the city which kept on beating while the rest of the world slept. The people for whom day-time is when everyone else is aleep: the night-shift workers and prostitutes and cabbies and hotel staff and grifters and paramedics and dealers. The nightly dramas that played out in that world, which the day-time people never see, unless they are commuting to work one day, and the blood is still being hosed off the steps to the subway station. So I asked for stories on the theme of the city at night.
I've chosen six stories for this issue that I felt reflected different aspects of that theme.
'Freezing Moon' by Roy K. Felps shows that when parents tell their children that there aren't monsters lurking in the dark, they're lying, even if the monsters are all human.
In 'Caudillo' Michael Coletti tells the story of a man's death, and a woman's life, in prose in which not a word is wasted.
Trey R Barker's 'Lost In The Water' gives a neat twist on the theme, showing a night-time city transformed and brought bang up to date - in a story as black as the lightless streets.
'Champagne Cocktails' by David Harry Moss is set in a city which perhaps more than any other lives for its nights - but beneath the hard-boiled narrative there is a touching and well-handled emotional core.
'All the Way Home' by John Stickney is narrated by a cynical protagonist who becomes involved in one of the more well-established night-time industries - and who ends up finding more than he imagined he would.
'Blue Night, Blue City' by Bertil Falk lifts the lid on the quietly desperate lives of some of the inhabitants of night-time Stockholm. I'd liked to have seen more submissions from outside the US and UK. The quality of crime fiction at novel length coming out of the non-English speaking world shows the diversity and quality of fiction out there which is only now becoming available in translation. Much of it has a genuinely different voice and atmosphere, and I would very much like to see more of the same in short fiction.
Editing this issue of Hardluck is the first experience I've had of editing anything, and I want to thank those whose stories appear here - and everyone who submitted for this issue - you made it a difficult job for me to choose the final six. I was impressed by the overall quality of all of the submissions, and the professional approach with which they were prepared and submitted. There were a number of very good stories that didn't quite fit the theme of this issue, but which I expect to see published elsewhere very soon. Thanks all who submitted, and most of all to Dave Zeltserman for the opportunity.
I hope you enjoy the issue. Let me know what you think.
-- Iain Rowan
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