Alcohol and Cigarettes: Pulp Noir Short Stories (Unabridged‪)‬

Can’t you feel the warm velvety wings of a butterfly opening in your chest as the bourbon slides down your throat? Or maybe you feel the rasp developing in your voice from all those cigarettes. Ever been burnt by a dame, not knowing which end was up when it was all over?

The rich history of pulp stories are pure Americana. Written like a script from film noir movie, you are to be transported to a time in the '30s, '40s, or '50s, where the liquor flowed freely and there was always a Crosley radio playing in some room off in the distance, just barely audible.

The stories don’t always end on a high note, or even end at all. The magic of a pulp noir short story is that the listener is supposed to wonder what comes next. After the last word, the story for the characters moves on long after the final sentence. Unless the character is lying facedown in a pool of blood or off to the clink. The listener is to guess as to what happens next and what came before. Pulp noir is more about a small slice of life, a moment in time, and usually a dark one.

So conjure up in your consciousness femme fatales, handguns, seedy bars, bad luck, thieves, scoundrels, a book of matches, a pack of Pall Malls, low lighting, and definitely everything in glorious black and white.