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Volume I of NoHo Noir comes to an end.

Illustration by Mark Satchwill

A year ago, late on a Sunday night, I answered a Craig's List ad posted by Craig Clough, the newly hired editor of the North Hollywood/Toluca Lake micro-news site patch.com.
The site, owned by AOL, was one of several hundred hyper-local sites springing up across the country.  (I think there were 300 when we launched and in the last year more of them have appeared.  I live in Valley Village, which is right between North Hollywood and Studio City, which has its own patch.com site.)
Craig had a vision--to publish fiction that featured the area--and I was lucky enough to see the ad before anyone else did. (This was, I think, at one in the morning.)  He hired me on Monday and my first story was due Thursday. And I was off.
We started so fast that there wasn't really a chance to plan ahead and I was writing to deadline pretty much the whole year. I had so many characters that weeks would sometimes go by before I got back to them.  (And there were at least two times when I spelled a character's name wrong and a couple of "continuity" errors on backstory. There was also one storyline where I painted myself into a corner and resorted to a soap opera gimmick to extricate myself.
Generally speaking, though, I'm pretty proud of what Mark Satchwill and I did on Volume I. We're hoping to publish the stories as a novel sometime soon, with the illustrations. Working with Craig is delightful and collaborating with Mark has been a dream. Going forward, he's going to experiment with a more comic book style, and I can't wait to see how that turns out.
The new stories will have a more focused cast of characters--at least initially--and as I mentioned in an earlier post, they'll be more crime centric. (The column is not called "NoHo Nice.")  I want to get more deeply into social issues because frankly, the City of the Angels is falling apart.  The center is not holding. One of the most-read stories on the North Hollywood patch site right now is about a man who used to own a flower shop and is now homeless. (Read the story here.)
But there will be love and there will be hope and there will be some fun too.
Hope to see you there. Would love to know what you think about the new direction and the new characters.
The illustration here is from Sunday's story, which won't be posted until later. But here's the link to the site. By breakfast time "Elephant Walk" should be available.

Shameless Self-Promotion with a recipe

The holidays are over. If you're thinking of something a little healthier than your recent dietof eggnog and cookies, start with this soup. It's easy to make and extremely healthy. Substitute vegetable broth if you want.

JADE SOUP

4 cans low sodium chicken broth
1 large carrot, peeled and cut into thin "coins"
3 green onions, diced
2 Tbsp. reduced sodium soy sauce
2 tsp ginger (or 1-inch piece of ginger root, peeled and grated)
20 smallish spinach leaves
Small square firm tofu
1 Tbsp. dark sesame oil
Dash crushed red pepper flakes

Optional:

1 small leek, white part only
enoki mushrooms
shiitake mushrooms
snow pea pods

Open cans of broth and put in soup pot. If you can’t find low-sodium broth, just use two cans of broth and dilute with two soup cans of water. Add ginger and soy sauce.

Add carrot coins and green onions.

When soup is boiling, add spinach leaves, which will wilt.

Cut up tofu into little chunks and add.

Stir in sesame oil and red pepper flakes at this point.

Enjoy. This is a richly perfumed soup that keeps well (it can even be frozen)


Now, on to the self promotion.

Here it is Sunday and that means another NoHo Noir episode. My editor, Craig Clough, did a nice update article on the series featuring quotes from me and also from Mark Satchwill, the artist. Check it out.

Check out "The Hook-Up."



In this episode you'll meet two people who will be pivotal in the stories to come...Lyla is an accountant who does pretty much everyone in the series' taxes and turns out to have connections to everyone. (And as we all know, when you want to know what's going on, you follow the money.) Keep reading!

And while you're at it, admire the fabulous detail in the illustration. Fingerless lace gloves? Check. Billy Idol photo on the wall? Check. Wilting flower petals? You got it.