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One Last Call for Hardluck Stories

After a five year run Hardluck Stories will be shutting down, but we're going to go out with a bang with one final issue. The Theme is 30s Pulp Noir, editors are Ed Gorman and Dave Zeltserman, and illustrations will be by the incomparable Jean-Pierre Jacquet. Maximum story length is 4000 words, deadline: May 1st, 2008.

Pulp fiction was a major form of entertainment in the Twenties, Thirties and Forties of the last century. Its stories ranged from the gothic heroics of The Shadow to the street realism of Sam Spade.

And from pulp fiction evolved many of the stories and tropes we read and write today.

We're going to publish a Pulp Noir issue, stories that honor the traditions of those great and sometimes not-so-great magazines that once numbered more than three hundred.

Stories, as long as they're noir at heart, can reflect the whole range of pulp fiction from costumed heroes (Phantom Detective) to hard-boiled crime (Black Mask). We don't want camp or spoof and we've decided against private eye simply because we don't want to be inundated with one type of story.

Help us celebrate our ancestors. Let's make the Pulp Noir issue a tribute to a vital and an entertaining past, as well as a hell of an issue for Hardluck to go out on.