The following review was originally published on October 20th, 2011.

What would happen if the characters you created were real enough to solve your real problems? In “Basement Noir,” a detective is created to solve a murder… but it’s not necessarily the case he really needs to solve.

I really enjoyed this story. It pulled me in right away, from the very first sentence, and especially after the first paragraph.

I was born in an instant. It didn’t feel like being born. It didn’t feel like jumping, fully formed, out of a god’s head like Athena did, either. But that’s what it was.

By the time Spade — the detective — started interviewing possible suspects, I couldn’t stop even if I needed to. The characters — especially the bellhop, Goat, and Mad — intrigued me, and I’d really like to know more about them.

“Basement Noir” was the first self-published short story I read, and was very well edited. There’s a stigma about self-published stories, and “Basement Noir” is a solid kick in the face to that stigma. It reads like a short story should read, and gives me something to aspire to with the stories I hope to self-publish in the next year.

If you’d like to read “Basement Noir,” you can download it for your computer, Nook, Kindle, or other ereader, for only 99¢. I read it on the Nook for PC, and I have to say, I can’t wait to get that HTC Evo I’ve been eyeing so that I can install Nook on it and read short stories on my break at work.