The latest issue of Down & Out: The Magazine features my story “Sunday Morning, Saturday Night”—and fair warning, it’s a dark little piece.
The story was inspired, in part, by the song “Sunday Morning” from the Velvet Underground’s debut album and influenced, in another part, by my admiration for the tonal shifts in Jim Thompson’s work: the folksy conversational style here, the undercurrent of menace and violence there, all those shifts and twists. I finished an early draft of the story for last October’s Noir at the Bar in Washington, DC.—and thanks again to Ed Aymar for inviting me to take part in that event and to the crowd there for the positive feedback on that early draft, an exercise in style as much as storytelling.
Thanks too to Rick Ollerman for a swift and efficient edit. His keen eye and ear for the rhythms of sentences and the overall rhythm of the story helped to polish out my submitted manuscript into something much smoother, much stronger. And what a joy to have him compare “Sunday Morning, Saturday Night” to the work of Richard Matheson—couldn’t ask to be in better company there!
I’m proud to be part of the magazine, and hope folks will appreciate the story itself.