Suburbs of suspense! Freeways of fury! Levittowns of lust! Garden Cities of greed! (I'm pretty sure that cover shot is from Long Island City, which is actually in Queens, but hey it's still connected to the glacial moraine that is Lawn Guyland.)

My story “Ending in Paumanok” will appear in Long Island Noir, due out this May from Akashic Books. The anthology is edited by Kind Kaylie Jones and also features the works of Jumpin’ Jules Feiffer, Madcap Matthew McGevna, Nice Nick Mamatas, Quick Qanta Ahmed, Chummy Charles Salzberg, “They Call Him Mr. Coleman” Reed Farrel Coleman, Tough Guy Tim McLoughlin, Sweet Sarah Weinman, Jazzy JZ Holden, me, Smart Sheila Kohler, Jolly Jane Ciabattari, Snazzy Steven Wishnia, Kinetic Kenneth Wishnia, Amiable Amani Scipio, and Timeless Tim Tomlinson. Pre-order a copy now. As with other books in the Akashic city series, the stories in this book take place in different towns and neighborhoods in the given locale. My story takes place in Southhampton and Riverhead but most of all in Stony Brook. Here’s an excerpt from the beginning of my story:

ENDING IN PAUMANOK

by R. Narvaez

Mary hated driving so close to the water. She couldn’t even see it—an incoming storm blackened the sky and the sea beneath it—but she could sense the Atlantic pulsing out there, just off the passenger side, moving like some great predator teasing its prey. “Out of the cradle endlessly stalking,” said Mary to herself.

She stepped on the gas. There was no traffic to weave through that early in the morning.

She took Dune Road to the reservation, then turned on to Old Point Road. Tommy Hawk’s Trading Post was just where Lawrence said it would be. A weathered cigar store Indian leaned on its side in front.

When Mary shut off the car, her hands were shaking.

For the whole story, buy the book!

I’ll be doing readings and signings this May in the City and on the island. Stay tuned for details.

“Only one place to go — back to the South Bronze … the university of the streets! Get a good schoolin’ there — if you’re into learnin’ about dope, numbers, rats and poverty!” —El Tigre Blanco

Here are the first couple of paragraphs of what I’ll be talking about at the National Council of Teachers of English this weekend. I’ll be on the panel “We’re On the Case: Latino Writers of YA Mysteries,” featuring Sarah Cortez, Rene Saldaña, Sergio Troncoso, and Ray Villareal.

Tinting Fiction: Writing Genre Fiction Geared Toward Age and Ethnicity

When I was a boy there was a superhero called the White Tiger, who was created by Marvel Comics in 1975. The White Tiger was distinguished among the ranks of Marvel’s heroes in that he was their first Puerto Rican superhero. His secret identity was Hector Ayala, and he found the amulets that gave him his martial arts powers in a trashcan (Mantlo). He used Spanish phrases on every pulpy page, a “¡Madre de dios!” here, a “¡Carajo!” there, to remind us that he was Latino, lest we forget. In time, Ayala becomes psychologically and physically addicted to the amulets. He retires, but years later, in a botched attempt to prevent a robbery, he is caught holding a stolen TV and standing over the body of murdered police officer. At his trial, Daredevil is his lawyer, but after Ayala loses his temper when questioned about his marriage (oh, that fierce Latino temper!), he is found guilty. Distraught, he grabs a gun and is subsequently shot and killed (Bendis). Thus ends the tale of the first mainstream Puerto Rican superhero, a poor guy who searches the trash and ends up shot by cops.

The White Tiger is an example of how writing an ethnic character for a genre market can go horribly wrong. Rather than embodying the thrills of adolescent fantasy, for example, the Tiger is stuck in a stereotypical world of urban ills such as poverty, drug dealers, and gang violence. While the Tiger was meant to diversify comic books and broaden the audience, the result seemed naïve at best and patronizing at worst. This is one of the problems of writing ethnic characters for any market, but it produces particular challenges for the YA audience when you consider that the images and characters young people read can form the basis of their lifelong beliefs.

poems
Dirtnap by J.R. McCarthy
Henry Rollins by Richard Tyrone Jones
The Kiss of the Rubber-Lipped Elephant by Andrew H. Oerke
Proximity and Elapsion by Adam Vatterott
Morning Constitutional by Ook, Warrior Poet
Where the Old Winding Road Twists by J.C.

prose
A Clean, Well-Lighted Crypt by The Bare-Fanged Contessa*
A Staff Letter from the Headmaster of Nobblesnuff’s Academy of Wizardry by Amy Vansant
House on Haunted House by Gordon Stanley*

classic asinine
How Little Red Riding Hood Came to Be Eaten by Guy Wetmore Carryl

podcasts
Episode 94: Rise of the Planet of the Asinine. Including “How Little Red Riding Hood Came to Be Eaten” by Guy Wetmore Carryl (read by Stoney Emshwiller).

MY KOOKY, BAWDY, college-educated Aunt Terry and I had often discussed our family’s Taíno roots. My family comes from Puerto Rico, and the Taínos were the Native Americans who inhabited the Greater Antilles and Puerto Rico in the Caribbean at the time when Christopher Columbus arrived to gentrify the ‘hood. Some say every trace of Taíno blood was erased by the Spanish and by time. But, according to the study funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, 61 percent of all Puerto Ricans have Amerindian mitochondrial DNA. Indeed, Taíno showed on the faces of all the women in my family, especially Terry, high cheek-boned and reddish skinned.

Read the rest here.

poems
Self-Portrait of the Artist by Vernon Waring
Painting by Graham Everett
Nancy Grace Bitchslaps My Muse by Figgie Creamcheese
Choy’s Religion by Ann Steiner
This is My Mind, This is My House by William Wesley Ankrum
Lust by Jekwu Anyaegbuna
Describing the Ideal Art Film about Equality by Dustin Michael

prose
Book Review: Ship of Fool, William Trowbridge by Adam Vatterott
Broke Bert Mountain by Richard Cairo*
Germline by Richard Tyrone Jones

classic asinine
A Pretty Girl by J. Gordon Coogler

podcast
Episode 93: Asinine Night 3D

THE HOLLOW MAN, John Dickson Carr

The Hollow Man would make Raymond Chandler kick a hole in a stained glass window. The book’s protagonist, Dr. Gideon Fell, is one of those idiosyncratic, overly clever characters who exist only in cozy mysteries, someone you would never want to know socially in real life — because wherever he goes someone dies. He is also exactly the kind of fellow Chandler decries in his essay “The Simple Art of Murder”: “The hero’s tie may be a little off the mode and the good gray inspector may arrive in a dogcart instead of a streamlined sedan . . . but what he does when he gets there is the same old futzing around with timetables and bits of charred paper and who trampled the jolly old flowering arbutus under the library window.”

But in trying to write my own crime fiction, I have been intrigued by the idea of clues, of leaving evidence around to engage and perplex the reader. TV’s Columbo is one of those types of clue-strewn mysteries. After Columbo, ahem, I mean Peter Falk died, I read an interview with one of the shows co-creators, William Link. Link mentioned that his writing partner Richard Levinson and he were influenced by Carr, someone I’d never heard of. Curious, I Googled Carr and found that he was quite popular in his the 1930s and ’40s and that one of his best known works was The Hollow Man (aka The Three Coffins) . . . I had to read it.

Read the rest here.

prose
Dark Noir: The Tax Man Always Rings At Least The One Time by Richie Narvaez*
The Jig Is Up, a Travelogue of Ireland by Eileen Budd
Lunch with Imaginary Gary by Adam Vatterott

classic asinine
If They Meant All They Said by Alice Duer Miller

podcast
Episode 92: Captain Asinine