AUTHOR’S NOTE
Charlie Huston, Dashiell Hammett, Stephen King, Jim Thompson, Frank Miller, Raymond Chandler, James Ellroy, Mickey Spillane, Max Allan Collins, among countless others, have always been on a constant rotation in my reading queue as far back as I can remember. I’ve always loved the quick one-two jabs of the choppy sentences, the fast and loose flow of their dialogue, and the action-packed plot lines that have you turning pages so fast it feels as though the paper is going to ignite. Tearing through these classic bits of pulp fiction, I wanted so badly to be the protagonist in a pulp novel. It was a twisted fantasy, in truth, but it looked like such an exciting life. Even when the good guy was beating on an informant for more information or slamming down drink after drink before going to bed with the dame he met an hour before, a dame, mind you, who might very well be the death of him, the reader never lost sight of who the hero was. He was the tough guy, the gun for hire, the rogue. He was the badass in the room who didn’t care what anybody else thought of him. Whether he left a trail of bodies in his wake or wound up with the blond bombshell on his arm, he didn’t particularly care, just so long as he got the job done and collected a paycheck at the end of the day.
However, as I approached my midtwenties and was working in a bookstore, I realized that my life as a pulp novel protagonist would probably find me dead or in jail. Neither one of those options sounded overly appealing and so, instead of becoming a knock-around guy, I opted to birth one.
As the saying goes, it takes two to tango, and so while Levi’s father was a collection of classic noir and contemporary pulp novels, his mother was my personal inner rage over love gone sour.
Several years ago, when I had gone through a breakup that had left me, oddly enough, broken, I found myself seated in front of my computer with a blank document before me. Anyone who has ever gone through the torturous end of a tumultuous relationship knows that, in order to dig yourself out of the hole that you’re in, you need to find that one-and-only cure-all. That night, so many moons ago, I found out that my medicine was the written word. I had been writing for several years previous to this particular night in question, but it had been short stories that had been developed because of an idea, usually something silly or extraordinary. This time, the words sprang from me because of raw emotion. Thus, when my fingers twitched and moved toward the keyboard, Levi Maurice burst forth from my mind, barreled through my nerve endings, and beat his way right onto the page.
Levi started off as a short story that was supposed to get rid of some of my inner torment. He quickly commandeered the ship and created a life all his own. The days that I spent writing this piece no longer belonged to me. They weren’t colorized in reality; everything was set in black and white and shades of gray. My hometown of Woodstock, Illinois, and all of its local establishments became the backdrop for Levi’s seedy criminal underworld, my friends and neighbors became his pawns, and my thoughts became Levi’s inner monologue. I lived, breathed, ate, and slept Levi Maurice, channeling him more often than I care to admit.
Long story short, pulp novels and a bad breakup were what brought Levi Maurice to fruition. I have to give credit where credit is due and recognize that, while Levi came into existence because of these two things, had I not had the incredible drive of a beautiful woman, who showed up to pick up the pieces and pushed me along to follow my dreams, my words would still be nothing more than inked paper sitting on my desk. Instead of becoming scratch paper, my piece is situated here at Dutton Guilt Edged Mysteries, among fellow authors who share my insatiable lust for the genre, most notably two heavy hitters and amazing wordsmiths, Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins. I couldn’t have asked for a better crowd to throw my hat in with.
Thanks to Katie for giving me that shove, thanks to Dutton Guilt Edged Mysteries for giving me a shot, and thanks to you, the reader, for taking a chance on this book. Hope it’s a throwback to those gray-scaled days of yore.
Josh K. Stevens
Dutton Guilt Edged Mysteries