I was eight years old when I wrote my first hardboiled crime story.

It was about a police detective investigating the disappearance of a pregnant woman. At the end of the story he discovers she was murdered by her lover, who pushed her in front of a subway train. The impact had so thoroughly obliterated her body, the detective only deduces what happened by running his fingers across the lip of the platform and discovering the greasy crimson film of old blood.

This is what I thought happened to people when they fell in front of a subway train when I was eight years old. I know better now. In grislier detail than you would probably care to hear about.

I wish I still had the notebook with that story, and whatever horrified comments my teacher made in red marker across the margins. I wonder what sort of grade I got for it.

If any little boy wrote a story like that today, they’d have him jacked up on Ritalin and in for psychiatric evaluation so fast…

But it was the ‘70s, so they let it slide.

Now here I am today, over forty years later, still writing hardboiled crime stories. And I look at some of them and think, “This is not the product of a healthy mind.”

I’m about to publish twenty more shorts in the same vein. Some have me slightly concerned that authorities may be summoned to bring me in as a potential danger to myself or others.

If you would be so kind…

Do me a favour and back my Patreon page for a token dollar and give the ten preview stories I’m posting there throughout October a read. Let me know if you think the men in white are likely to show up at my door with a straightjacket and a syringe full of sedatives.

Petty Crimes and Vindictive Criminals is scheduled for release in November. My previous collection of twisted noir tales, Raw and Other Stories, is available on Amazon for Kindle, Kindle Unlimited, and in paperback.

Heed my cries for help before they lock me away in a padded room where I’ll have to write my next book on the walls of my cell with my own bodily fluids.