Someone else noticed before I did.
Over the course of a few months, I wrote and published stories involving a bagel maker, and warring food trucks, and a restaurant scam. A friend asked when my collection of food noir stories was coming out. When he said that, I was working on a story about a bouncer at a pastry shop.
It’s not surprising I’d fall into a theme, with writing about food. I like to eat. But it’s more than that, too.
Food is the thing that binds all of us, across continents and cultures. No matter where you go, there are signature dishes and traditions of hospitality. Sharing a meal is as much about emotional sustenance as it is about the physical.
Which makes food a fantastic storytelling device, especially within the confines of crime and noir fiction. They’re intersections where passions collide.
In total, I wrote more than a dozen stories with components of food or hospitality.
And now Polis Books is going to collect them in Take-Out—and it will include three stories that haven’t been published anywhere. The whole jam will be available in paperback and eBook, and it’s coming out in January.
That should fill the hole in your heart between Potter’s Field (coming in July and available for pre-order) and The Warehouse (due sometime in the back half of 2019).
I’m really excited to see this hit, because I think it represents some of my best short story work. Two of them were shortlisted for Best American Mystery Stories, and one (the title story, “Take-Out”) made the final cut. Another (“Foodies”) was nominated for a Derringer Award. One (“Confessions of a Taco Truck Owner”) I read at Noir at the Bar, and Todd Robinson told me he was putting it in the next issue of Thuglit before I even left the microphone. Best short story acceptance I ever got.
More on this soon. Three cheers to Jason Pinter for agreeing to publish it, and Josh Getzler for sealing the deal. This is going to be a fun one.
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Rob Hart 