Discount Noir. Hot and cheap, the way crime should be.

One of the many fun things that came out of my Wardrobe by Sam project–besides many recent shopping trips to replace all those cut-rate fall & winter clothes–was an invitation to submit a piece of fiction to a new crime anthology, Discount Noir.

During all the days and hours that I spent in Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club looking for wearables, I never saw an actual crime being committed. (There was that suspicious couple in the shoe department. I still wonder what they were up to.) But my imagination runs well beyond the occasional parking lot fender-bender and parking place-aggression dust-up: Petty thievery, grand larceny, drug deals, perhaps illicit sex in a back room or parking lot, the occasional murder-for-hire inquiry, maybe embezzlement, domestic abuse, or, dare I say, murder–or at least manslaughter. In real life, there are tragedies everywhere–but the prosaic discount store usually only gets really dangerous on Black Friday.

It seems I’m not alone in my wild wonderings. Writers Patti Abbott and Steve Weddle gathered together dozens of like-minded fiction folk to explore the seamy side of our love/hate relationship with the megamarts of the world. Discount Noir is a feast of dirty deeds limited to a thousand words or less. I’m thrilled to have my short story, Tenderloin, alongside the work of so many terrific writers, including my good friends J.T. Ellison, Kyle Minor, Sophie Littlefield, and Toni McGee Causey.

If you have a computer or e-reader, you can start reading Discount Noir in a matter of minutes. The publisher, Untreed Reads, has it available for download for the appropriately-discounted price of $4.49 (at the time of this post). That’s a lot of entertainment for less than you’d pay for a dozen partially-hydrogenated fat & sugar cupcakes or one of those terrible straight-to-dvd movies from the giant bin at you local megamart!

Love this trailer whipped up by contributor Daniel O’Shea: