As a writer, I've been feeling restless. Upon completion of my most recent horror novel, The Loveliest Dead, I was not left with the feeling of solid satisfaction I usually feel upon finishing a novel. The thrill, as they say, was gone. I've been writing horror for twenty-one years. I began in the days of horror's wild popularity, and I've stuck around to watch it sink into obscurity as far as publishing is concerned. Very few people are buying horror these days. At least, they're not buying it from me. I’m in this writing game to make a living. I've been feeling frustrated, tired, and when it comes to horror, a little worn out.

Then one day I got into a conversation online with the great Tom Piccirilli about noir. He sent me a few books to read that he thought were representative of the genre and gave me a list of others to seek out.

The books arrived in the mail, and I picked one up and started to read. Before I knew it, I'd plowed my way through the whole stack in no time at all. The books were rich and deeply satisfying, filled with human drama and the kind of juicy morsels I've always enjoyed in fiction -- sex, murder, obsession, blackmail, betrayal. I bought more books and plowed through those. In noir, I'd found something that excited me again, something that made me want to sit down and write like a fiend. And I did.

MURDER WAS MY ALIBI was my first shot at the genre. Now, looking back on it, I realize that, while it has a few stripes of the genre, it's not quite noir, it's more of a hardboiled detective story, if that. But it's a step in the right direction. LOVELESS is definitely more on the money.

Noir is not necessarily about private eyes, although the hardboiled and noir genres sometimes cross paths. Noir is about desperate people who don't do the right thing. It's about not having enough money to pay the rent, or your bookie. It's a man discovering that he lost it and went over the edge and killed the woman who betrayed him, a man who now has to go on the run in the unsavory underworld. It's about danger and despair and love gone wrong. That sort of thing.

Noir and horror have a lot in common. They're both very dark, and both utilize shock and surprise. But noir is much more interested in the psychology of its characters, and that’s what appeals to me so much.

As I was writing my first novel in the genre, I decided to use a pseudonym for my work this genre. I decided on Arthur Darknell -- Arthur is my middle name, and Darknell is my dad's mother's maiden name, and I like it because it has the word "dark" in it, which is very appropriate.

This is among my earliest attempts at the genre — I'm still feeling my way along. It's a genre that's new and fresh to me, one that I've fallen in love with in much the same way I fell in love with horror so long ago. As a writer, I feel like I'm starting all over again, which, at 43, kind of makes me feel young again, and there’s sure nothing wrong with that.

I hope my horror fans will enjoy my noir just as much as they've enjoyed my horror fiction. If anything, I hope it introduces them to this wonderful genre, and inspires them to seek out some of the great writers of noir who are continuing to inspire me.

— Ray Garton

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