Ending soon! Suicide Blonde is free until end of day.

My short collection of short stories, Suicide Blonde, is free today. I'm particularly fond of the title story which took me forever to research because I wanted all the little period details to be accurate. The artwork is by Mark Satchwill, who is my long-time collaborator and partner in crime. (He provided many illustrations back in the Dark Valentine days and also provided illos for my stories on NoHo Noir.)

V is for Veteran

Illustration by Mark Satchwill

Just when I'm getting crankypants about CNN pandering to the lowest common denominator, they blindside me with a story that just about broke my heart. You may have seen it--a brief report about a homeless Air Force veteran wo died in his van and has been unclaimed ever since. A former waitress is trying to raise the money to bury him somewhere other than in a pauper's grave. (It's unclear why the military isn't stepping in to provide Michael John Pardalis a resting place in a Veteran's cemetery, but the woman who is trying to raise money to bury her former customer does mention she needs to get a copy of a particular form. I remember that form. When my father died, we found it in a trunk full of apers pretty much by accident and if we hadn't had it, my father would not now be buried in Arlington Cemetery.)

At any rate, it's a moving story, which you can see here. And with the story there's once again a light on one of America's most shameful secrets--the way veterans are treated when they return from serving their country. My father werved in the war before the war before the one we're in now and the one before that as well. He came home from North Africa and went to law school and then re-enlisted in the Army's Judge Advocate Corps, building a career as an Army lawyer. He was already married when he saw overseas service in the Korean War and by the time the Viet Nam war was heating up, he had three children. He was offered a promotion if he accepted a transfer to Saigon but at that point, he and the Army parted ways and he (and we) settled down while he worked as a consultant for private citizens with claims against the government. Turns out (and I know you'll be shocked by this) that the government often makes promises to people that they don't keep. A lot of those broken promises are made to the men and women who serve in the military.

At the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Washington, there's an inscription that reads, "Here rests in honored glory an American soldier known but to God." There are a lot of soldiers out there and God knows all their names and so do a lot of people. And every one of those soldiers deserves to rest in honored glory and not in an unmarked grave where they'll be forgotten.

The illustration here is by Mark Satchwill, who created it as part of our NoHo Noir storyline inspired by the murders that were then taking place in Southern California. The victims were all homeless people, several of them veterans. The illustration has haunted me for years. I think it's the most powerful thing Mark has done.

Mark Satchwill has outdone himself

Illustration by Mark Satchwill

The new NoHo Noir story is up and I only hope I've done justice to Mark Satchwill's illustration. I think it's a stunning commentary.
He's in the middle of redoing his art site, but you can see more of his work here.  He's also participating in a "photo a day" and posting them on Facebook.
Here's a link to the story, "Perceived Value."

Kickstarter and me...

Map illustration by Mark Satchwill

Does it seem like everybody and her brother suddenly has a Kickstarter campaign?  I know several people who have wildly successful ones and a couple who have had no luck at all.  I'm about to embark on one myself, to fund the publication of Starcaster, my entry in a "shared world" series of novels. I'm working with four novelists, Joseph Lewis, MeiLin Miranda, Charlotte English, and Coral Moore, and the name of the series is "The Drifting Isle Chronicles."  My story takes place on a floating island called "Risenton." Mark Satchwill provided an old-timey map for me.
I want to raise some money to pay "production costs" and I'm now putting together the whole plan. Anyone out there who's done a Kickstarter campaign?  I'd welcome any and all suggestions.

Smother Mother--New NoHo Noir

The heat is on over at NoHo Noir. We haven't heard from Shannon Garrick and her son Liam since he testified against the gang shot-caller who killed the motel owner. Shannon's mother Maeve McConnaughey is still here and let's just say, she's overstayed her welcome. Check out the latest installment here. As always, illustrated by Mark Satchwill.

The Return of NoHo Noir

Illustration by Mark Satchwill

Esme Morales and her partner Edgar are back in this tale of zombies, skanky badge bunnies and more. Read it here.

Knock Knock. Who's There?

It's Mark Satchwill who has written and illustrated the first NoHo comic strip story "Knock Knock," "Knock, Knock" will be published tomorrow and will be available for download as a pdf. Stop by the NoHo site tomorrow to check it out. And please leave a comment.

Gender Analyzer--via K. A. Laity

So the debate about whether women can write crime fiction has flared up again with interesting posts from Sandra Seamans, Heath Lowrance, and Cat Valente. In response to Heath's post, "Chicks Can't Write Crime Fiction"(which is NOT his position at all),  K.A. Laity, who writes crime, horror and romance, shared a link to the site Gender Analyzer, which uses AI to determine if a woman or man wrote the home page of a site. I ran this blog through it and GA suggests, with 77 percent certainty, that a woman wrote it.  They're also 88 percent sure that a man writes NoHo Noir. (And I guess, to be fair, they'd be right about 50 percent of the time since I share posting duties with Mark Satchwill.)  Running material through the analyzer is addictive and, may I add, a most excellent way of procrastinating.
If you're still on the fence about whether women can bring the hard-boiled, you need to do some reading. Heath's post and the comments will give you a reading list.

Tales of the Misbegotten: Coming Out

Coming Out
Written by Katherine Tomlinson
Illustrated by Mark Satchwill

Gerard knew that John Torville hated him with a passion that was both professional and personal but he was still surprised by the lengths the other attorney was willing to go in order to ruin his life and dismantle his practice.

“John Torville wants to out me,” Gerard told Lee as they ate a late dinner on the patio of their Brentwood home.

“Maybe that would be a relief,” Lee replied neutrally.

Gerard’s insistence on living a double life was an issue between them.

Gerard hated being in the closet. Lee didn’t really understand why he didn’t just own his reality.

They’d had an argument on the subject as recently as the week before when Gerard first mentioned John Torville and his evil machinations.

Tales of the Misbegotten: Discipline Problem

Illustration by Mark Satchwill

Camilla Serra looked at the little boy sitting on the other side of her desk and sighed. She knew Benjy Prefontaine wasn’t a bad kid but she couldn’t allow his behavior to continue to disrupt her classroom. It wasn’t his fault that he didn’t fit in, but he should never have been mainstreamed with the normal kids.

Pretending he was just like everyone else was a joke.

Most of the faculty at John Glenn Elementary School felt the same way about the special needs kids but were too afraid of legal backlash to admit it. She’d complained to the principal after the first incident but Wylie Johnson had a soft spot for the special kids and told her she needed to find a way to deal with Benjy.

And now Haley Romano had a broken arm and a bloody nose because she’d tripped and fallen while he was chasing her around the yard at recess.

Her parents were talking about suing the school.

Camilla sighed again.

Benjy was staring at her with his big hazel eyes full of unshed tears.

He really didn’t understand what he’d done wrong and she could tell from her brief phone conversation with the boy’s mother that she didn’t get it either.

“So a little girl fell down and got a skinned knee and now you want to expel my kid?” she’d asked with disbelief.

“It’s not that simple Ms. Prefontaine,” Camilla had said. “He was chasing her around, being a Tyrannosaurus Rex and she was frightened.”

There was silence on the other end of the phone.

Illustration by Mark Satchwill

My friend Alex and I have a couple of projects we're pitching around town and one of them involves an extinction event hitting Los Angeles. Mark Satchwill, my partner in crime at NoHo Noir has provided us a terrific apocalyptic image of downtown being swallowed by darkness.  Forget the project--I want the t-shirt and it WILL be available. I just love this image. It looks like it ought to be on the cover of a graphic novel. Or a collection of short stories.
L.A. is such a perfect town for telling end of the world stories--Miracle Mile, Day of the Locust--almost as perfect as it is a setting for crime fiction.

Tales of the Misbegotten: Customer Service

As I inch toward completion of my novel Misbegotten, I keep fleshing out the paranormal version of Los Angeles where the story takes place. My main character, paracrimes reporter Kira Simkins, does not appear in this story, but she shares the same basic outlook as the protagonist. Neither is especially fond of the vampires who now run their city.

CUSTOMER SERVICE

Even before the recession hit, I was struggling. My part of L.A. there’s a dry cleaners on every corner, all of them bigger than me, all of them offering coupons and discounts and while-u-wait service. You need a gimmick to compete and even with a gimmick, you have to keep the price down. It was my daughter who came up with the idea of targeting the needs of the paranormal newcomers who arrived in droves after the city went bankrupt.

Illustration by Mark Satchwill

She put up big signs that said “Stain removal a specialty” and “Discreet and Professional Service.”

We bought ads on Voogle, the vampire-centric search engine, and offered downloadable coupons and two-for-one deals and deep discounts to bring the customers in. We stayed open late.

Business picked up.

We never had to deal with the vampires direct, of course, they always sent their renfields. Most of them were pleasant enough, and usually a bit embarrassed to be dealing with their employers’ dirty laundry.

I made it easy for them by being matter-of-fact, but there were times when even I was taken aback by how badly stained the clothes were.

Naff--my new favorite word

Mark Satchwill, my arty other half at NoHo Noir, introduced me to this word, British slang (I learned from Urban Dictionary) for "lame." 
Naff. It's my new favorite word. I don't understand why it never caught on here in the US, where sillier words have become common currency.
I've been thinking about words a lot lately, specifically slang, because late last year I tried something I'd never done before--writing a story set in swinging 60s London.
I would have felt more comfortable if it were set in 1860s London because there's more of a margin for error and it's not like someone is going to pop in and say, "That's not what we said!" (Well, there are sharp-eyed people who know the 1860s inside and out who would probably let me know if I got it wrong, but you know what I mean.)
It's really  hard to be persuasive writing about another time and another culture, and I have a horror of making a misstep especially since I tend to get snarky about writers who don't do their research and get things wrong.  (You know the kind of thing I mean--novelists who describe the fields of white marble crosses in Arlington Cemetery not realizing they're describing Flanders Fields and not the garden of stone that is the nation's most-storied national cemetery where all the tombstones are tombstone-shaped.) And language is the trickiest thing.
I have several friends from France whose English is superb--nuanced and slangy and grammatically perfect. The only thing that marks them as non-native speakers, besides their accents, is that instead of saying "last night," they say "yesterday night."
Which reminds me (yes, I know this is a NAFF segue) of a story I once read, probably in EQMM. Set in WWII it was about a German spy who was caught because when he spoke (in English) about the moon, he referred to its gender as male.  That's the kind of thing I mean.
Naff.

NoHo Noir is Back!!!

Yes, the long wait is over. NoHo Noir is now live with the first of the new stories, "Bum's Rush." Check it out and note Mark Satchwill's illustration, done Manga style. 
Pictured at left is Christopher Robin Nolan (Rob), a 17-year-old student at North Hollywood High. He and his friend Marcus (nicknamed "Poo") have found a homeless man beaten to death on their way home from school.
Det. Esme Morales is not impressed by their story but then, she's not impressed by much--and that includes her partner, the uniformed cop who was first on the scene, and her ex-boyfriend (but more about him later).
Check out the story here.

The Clown is Coming Back--the return of NoHo Noir

The first of a new cycle of stories will go up tomorrow on the new NoHo Noir site. Mark and I are tremendously excited about continuing the project. The first story, "Boys will be boys," has a more manga illustration style Mark's trying out. We're still fiddling with the website, adding bits and pieces, but my favorite thing about it is that Mark did portraits of us to run in the "About Katherine" and "About Mark" sections. I always wanted to be a comic book character.  Mark did a more "evil queen" version that I liked too. 

A New Home for NoHo Noir!!

Yes, the evil clown is back!  Beginning Sunday, November 20, Mark Satchwill and I will be bringing you Volume II of NoHo Noir. And we'lll be bringing the noir as never before. New characters. New plots. Sex, violence, and dirty words without the asterisks.
The story starts off with a bang as a homeless man is found beaten to death just steps away from the campus of North Hollywood High. The detective investigating the case has her suspicions about who the killer might be but she needs hard evidence. Still, investigating the case gives her a good excuse to leave her family's Thanksgiving dinner early. North Hollywood, California--they don't call it "NoHo nice."
Please check out our new site here to follow us, and  follow us @nohonoir while you're at it. 

R.I.P Andy Rooney--the last of a dying breed

I always thought Andy Rooney looked sort of alike a muppet. It was the eyebrows, I think. And I always kind of got a kick out of his cranky-pants rants, even when I disagreed with him. I hadn't seen many of his broadcasts lately but I always knew he was there, like the irascible uncle at the family reunion who knows all the best stories if only he can be coaxed into focusing on them and not on the shortcomings of the rest of the relatives.
And now Andy Rooney is dead at 92.
I used to be a reporter and  I came of age at a time when "reporter" meant people who reported the news for print and broadcast, not people who chronicle celebrity gossip, keep track of movie box office figures, and indulge in public speculation about the sex lives of strangers while creating a cult of personality around their own "brand."
Yes, I know. I sound cranky-pants too. But I've been thinking about this a lot lately, especially in terms of Arianna Huffington's stance on freelance writers. 
I have, as they say, "skin in the game."
HuffPost grew into the media power house it became through freelancers, a number of them reporters. Last year, Huffington sold HuffPost to aol for a cool $315 million and was given oversight of aol, including their micro-news sites, collectively known as patch.com. Almost immediately after the sale, Huffington moved to eliminate the few paid writers on HuffPost and began relying on the contributions of freelancers who were free. A month ago, she turned her attention to the patch sites.
Her logic seems to be:
All reporters are writers.
All bloggers are writers.
Therefore, all bloggers are reporters.
But you know what? All bloggers are not reporters and some bloggers aren't even writers. (And seriously, every blogging template out there has a spell-check function. Would it be too much to ask that bloggers use it?)
What does this have to do with me? In October, Mark Satchwill and I were told that freelancers would no longer be paid for their work on patch.com. That meant we wouldn't be paid for our NoHo Noir stories and illos on the North Hollywood/Toluca Lake site.  (And believe me when I tell you we weren't being paid much.)
We were invited to continue the stories for free but although we love our editor, we have chosen to break out on our own with the material.
\We'll be setting up a NoHo Noir blog soon to host the new stories and we'll also (pending approval from America Online's lawyers who have been sitting on the matter for four months) be bundling the first volume into an illustrated novel.
And what does this have to do with Andy Rooney? 
Nothing much except that it feels like his death marks the end of an era when reporters were valued for their work and paid for it and respected; when stories were researched and objective and fact-checked and edited for spelling and clarity. And most of all, the end of a time when "news" meant what was going on in the nation and the world at large and not which Kardashian spent how much on her wedding.

Turn the Page

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.

NoHo Noir gets a facelift

Photo by Thomas Hawk

"NoHo Noir," the illustrated serial novel that Mark Satchwill and I created, will be a year old next week. We're closing out volume one with two more stories, then introducing a whole new cast of characters for volume two. Mark has created a new (and I think creepier) version of our logo which will debut with our first story. We also hope to use it on the cover of the collected stories when AOL gives us the go-ahead to go forth and publish.
The clown logo for the series is a version of the real-life Circus Liquor clown sign, a North Hollywood landmark for years.  The real clown (see photo on the left) is pretty creepy. It looms over the street right across from a bus stop.  Mark put the logo together overnight because we were hired the same week the first story posted.
We found a lot of people loved the clown (shudder), so Mark put the logo up in his online shop. Yes, you can get NoHo Noir swag here. I am very fond of his original logo. (See right)
Now, though, as we move into the second year of stories, Mark has come up with a more surreal version, a Bozo-gone-bad image that suits the darker tone the new stories will take. There will be a more crime-centric vibe for the new stories, and the volume will start off with the murder of a homeless man that may or may not have been at the hands of a couple of junior high kids.  (That's right, NoHo is not fooling around this year.)
The new logo is below.  What do you think?

Not Your Usual NoHo Noir

It's not easy being an Armenian gangster's daughter.

If you've been following the series so far, you will remember that Nick is an undercover FBI agent investigating Rouzan's father. He knows that she's not involved in the life like her brother is, but he's using her to get close to her father and ... it's working.

Nick's an ambitious guy. He'll do whatever it takes to get ahead. But never let it be said he doesn't enjoy his work. Nick was introduced in the episode entitled "Full Service." Here's his picture courtesy of Mark Satchwill.

You can see why Rouzan fell for him. Enjoy this Saturday's and come back tomorrow for more noir!