Redressing the Balance or Why I Wrote Gay Noir
I have
always been attracted to the 1940’s and 50’s. I’m not sure why that is. Perhaps
it’s the way people dressed. Men in sharp suits and fedora hats, women in tight
dresses and crazy hats. Or maybe it is because the world was still unspoiled;
no traffic jams, no plastic waste. The world was bigger then, and more
glamorous.
I love
watching old films and reading books of that era. Noir books, in particular. They bring me into a sexy world of tough,
fast-talking detectives and seductive, double-crossing dames. An exciting world
of smugglers, gangsters and spies. I particularly like how dark and twisted the
stories are. There are no straight, honest heroes in noir fiction. The
characters are cynical, morally skewed and flawed, which makes a refreshing
change to the predictability of character and plot arcs of other genres.
Another
thing I like about this genre is that, at a time when gay characters were largely absent from
fiction, noir was the only genre which acknowledged their existence. Of course,
the gay characters in it were usually the villains. They were portrayed as
cowardly, or untrustworthy or narcissistic. But what if I redressed the
balance? What if we had an exciting, fast-paced thriller, set in the glamorous
40’s and 50’s, filled with intrigue and suspense, where the hero just happened
to be gay? Instead of a femme fatale,
there’d be an homme fatal, perhaps. Or a tough, wise-cracking P.I . in a slick
suit with an eye for handsome men, rather than glamorous showgirls.
It was this notion which led me to write
Gay Noir. Inspired by the pulp fiction novels of the 1940's and
50's, the novellas in this anthology emulate the dark, thrilling,
sensational and taboo breaking stories of the post war era and gives them a
gay twist.
Buy ebook here
Buy paperback here
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