NOIR: A Cover Reveal and Pre-order
The novel will be published on January 30th!
I have loved this novel since I first wrote it fourteen years ago, and so it’s exciting to have its tenth anniversary edition complete and ready for all of you.
Cover Art by my good friend Christopher Olson. I love the textured look of it.
"In this novel of desire and doom, with its collision of voices and a femme fatale who dresses in the dreams of everyone around her, Rathke is the best kind of possessed writer—the kind who has the courage of his possession, whose exorcised words exist in defiance of their author."Â
—Steve Erickson, author of Zeroville
"In Noir, Rathke exposes the pale, sickly underbelly of a vibrant utopia for all to see. He unravels the quiet metaphysics of the detective thriller by letting all of the witnesses carry equal weight. Rathke has a faith in his reader that makes the experience of reading his work one full of extraordinary rewards and teeming satisfaction."
—Jac Jemc, author of Empty Theatre
"Noir: A Love Story is a surreal space held together by wonder and love, the kind of love like holding your breath underwater to see the bright wonders of the sea just a bit longer, a prolonged and incandescent lyricism that signifies a brutalized and beautiful honesty of a single, elusive dream. The book's narrative lives on as an impression or sustained note, the possessed writer who haunts the reader with his sublime vision, the reader who in turn remains haunted and unknowable. Indeed: 'Time eats you. Dead or dreaming.'"
—Janice Lee, author of Damnation
"Edward J Rathke's Noir: A Love Story comes on like Rashomon in overdrive, leaping giddily from folklore to metaphysical mystery, philosophical aperçu to Bukowskian spiel, dream journal to ideological critique, and somehow equally comfortable and adroit in each mode. Teetering between the urgency of present moments and the thrum of the primordial and timeless, Noir boldly documents the jarring, involuntary coming of age of a community and its denizens, demanding our fullest intellectual engagement but never ceasing to mesmerize."
—Tim Horvath, author of Understories
Here’s an excerpt:
My novels:
Glossolalia - A Le Guinian fantasy novel about an anarchic community dealing with a disaster
Sing, Behemoth, Sing - Deadwood meets Neon Genesis Evangelion
Howl - Vampire Hunter D meets The Book of the New Sun in this lofi cyberpunk/solarpunk monster hunting adventure
Colony Collapse - Star Trek meets Firefly in the opening episode of this space opera
The Blood Dancers - The standalone sequel to Colony Collapse.
Iron Wolf - Sequel to Howl.
Sleeping Giants - Standalone sequel to Colony Collapse and The Blood Dancers
Broken Katana - Sequel to Iron Wolf.
Libertatia; or, The Onion King - Standalone sequel to Colony Collapse, The Blood Dancers, and Sleeping Giants
Noir: A Love Story - An oral history of a doomed romance.
Some free books for your trouble: