Los Angeles. The city that never sleeps.
And neither does crime.
These stories take inspiration from those hard-boiled detectives of yore, with broken noses and steely eyes. The white knight you could rely on because the rest of the world had soured like a rotten apple. Even if he (or she) didn't follow the rules.
Or maybe because they broke them in order to see justice done.
Come see what the MCM Syndicate has to say about these types of "heroes" as we enter our seventh year of publication.
MCM - So Criminal, It's Good.
About the Authors
Chris Chan
Chris Chan is a writer, educator and historian. He works as a researcher and “International Goodwill Ambassador” for Agatha Christie Ltd. His true crime articles, reviews, and short fiction have appeared in The Strand, The Wisconsin Magazine of History, Mystery Weekly,Gilbert!, Nerd HQ, Akashic Books’ Mondays are Murder webseries, The Baker Street Journal, The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories, Masthead: The Best New England Crime Stories, Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, and multiple Belanger Books anthologies. He is the creator of the Funderburke and Kaiming mysteries, a series featuring private investigators who work for a school and help students during times of crisis. The Funderburke short story “The Six-Year- Old Serial Killer” was nominated for a Derringer Award. His first book, Sherlock & Irene: The Secret Truth Behind “A Scandal in Bohemia,” was published in 2020 by MX Publishing, and he is also the author of the comedic novels Sherlock’s Secretary and its sequel Nessie’s Nemesis. His book Murder Most Grotesque: The Comedic Crime Fiction of Joyce Porter (Level Best Books) was nominated for the 2022 Agatha Award for Best Non-Fiction. Murder Most Grotesque, Sherlock’s Secretary, and his anthology Of Course He Pushed Him & Other Sherlock Holmes Stories: The Complete Collection were all nominated for Silver Falchion Awards.
Annie Reed
Award-winning author Annie Reed describes herself as a desert rat who longs to live by the ocean. Since she hasn’t yet convinced her family to relocate to a nice chunk of beachfront property, she’s done the next best thing—written a series of stories set in a contemporary Pacific Northwest city where magic and reality go hand in hand.
Private investigators Diz and Dee populate Annie’s more lighthearted stories, while denizens of a much rougher neighborhood lurk in her Tales From the Shadows.
A talented and versatile writer whose fantasy, science fiction, and mystery stories have sold to a wide variety of publications, including five of the first seven volumes of Fiction River’s inaugural year.
Jason A. Adams
Jason A. Adams writes across the spectrum. His stories include science fiction, fantasy, horror, Appalachian folk tales, and even a little romance here and there.
You can find more of his work and sign up for updates from his Brain Squirrels at www.jasonadams.info, and in the pages of Pulphouse Magazine, most recently in issue #9. His stories have also appeared in the 2019 Winter Holiday Spectacular from WMG Publishing. Several more stories will appear in upcoming issues of Pulphouse Magazine and Holiday Spectaculars, so stay tuned!
Jason, a recovering Air Force brat who grew up all over the US and Japan, now perches in the mountains of Southwest Virginia with his beautiful wife Kari Kilgore, four spoiled cats, and assorted wild visitors from the nearby forest.
Joslyn Chase
Kari Kilgore
Kari Kilgore started her first published novel Until Death in Transylvania, Romania, and finished it in Room 217 at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, where a rather famous creepy tale about a hotel sparked into life. That’s just one example of how real world inspiration drives her fiction.
Until Death was included on the Preliminary Ballot for the Bram Stoker Award for Outstanding Achievement in a First Novel in 2016. Kari’s short myth The Spider Who Ate the Elephant placed 2nd in fiction in the 2019 Virginia Writers Club Golden Nib contest.
Her professional short story sales include several to Fiction River anthology magazine, and several holiday-themed anthology projects with WMG Publishing that range from mystery to contemporary to romance.
Kari writes first and figures out the story’s genre later. That results in mystery, fantasy, science fiction, romance, contemporary fiction, and everything in between. She’s happiest when she surprises herself. She lives at the end of a long dirt road in the middle of the woods with her husband Jason A. Adams, various house critters, and wildlife they’re better off not knowing more about.
Kari’s novels, novellas, collections, and short stories are available at www.karikilgore.com and www.spiralpublishing.net.
Leah R Cutter
Leah Cutter writes page-turning, wildly imaginative fiction set in exotic locations, such as a magical New Orleans, the ancient Orient, rural Kentucky, Seattle, Minneapolis, and many others.
She writes fantasy, science fiction, mystery, literary, and horror fiction. Her short fiction has been published in magazines like "Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine" and "Talebones", anthologies like Fiction River, and on the web. Her long fiction has been published both by New York publishers as well as small presses.
Read more books by Leah Cutter at www.KnottedRoadPress.com.
Follow her blog at www.LeahCutter.com.