Between 2002 and 2008, Hardluck Stories published some of the best hardboiled and noir short fiction available anywhere on the web. This site preserves the record of that five-year run: thirteen-plus quarterly issues, a rotating cast of guest editors drawn from the top ranks of crime fiction, themed collections that pushed the genre into strange and dangerous corners, and a pair of long-form interviews that readers still pass around today. If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, it may also be lined with small crimes — and most of them ended up in these pages.
A Zine With a Five-Year Mean Streak
Hardluck Stories was founded in 2002 by a Boston-area crime novelist who believed the web could host short noir fiction every bit as sharp as the print digests — and that the form deserved better than the slush-pile graveyard it was getting elsewhere. The model was simple and a little reckless: publish quarterly, build each issue around a theme, and hand the editorial keys to a different guest editor every time. The guest editors who took that deal included Ed Gorman, Jeremiah Healy, Michael A. Black, Harry Shannon, Trey Barker, John Helfers, O'Neil De Noux, Charlie Stella, Allan Guthrie, Craig McDonald, and Iain Rowan, among others — working editors and working writers, people who knew exactly what a noir story should cost its characters.
The contributor list reads like a roll call of the era's hardboiled scene: Ken Bruen, Ed Gorman, Bill Crider, Charles Ardai, J.A. Konrath, James Reasoner, Norman Partridge, Bentley Little, Steve Hockensmith, Ray Banks, Patricia Abbott, Sarah Weinman, Adrian McKinty, and dozens more. Some were established names taking a swing at a theme; others published early stories here that readers went on to follow into long careers.
What Lives in This Archive
The site keeps the original structure of the zine intact, so links that pointed here years ago still land where they should. The major rooms of the house:
- The Archives — the complete issue-by-issue index, from Fall 2002 through the final 30s Pulp Noir issue of 2008, with every story and essay credited to its author.
- Hardluck Thoughts — the editor's column, a running commentary on noir publishing, recommended reading, and the state of the genre.
- The Guest Editors — the rotating-editor experiment that gave the zine its range, and the people who made it work.
- Submissions — preserved as a historical document, including the famous "one last call" for the final issue.
- Interviews — the sprawling Ken Bruen conversation from Spring 2004 and Craig McDonald's James Crumley interview from Spring 2006.
The Hardluck Aesthetic
The zine's taste was never a secret. Classic noir: dark, funny, shocking, and absolutely no compromise. The patron saints were Jim Thompson, James M. Cain, David Goodis, and Charles Willeford — writers who understood that noir is not a body count but a trajectory, the long slide of a character who believes, right up to the last page, that things might still work out. Hardboiled fiction, as the encyclopedias define it, brought unsentimental realism to the crime story; noir took the next step and removed the safety net. Hardluck Stories lived on that second floor.
Each issue chased the idea somewhere new: Psycho Noir in the Jim Thompson vein, Femme Fatales, Western Noir, Noir Blues, Borderland Noir along the Texas-Mexico line, Weird Noir, Crime in the City, a Horror/Crime crossover, and a bank-job issue complete with a noir comic. The final issue paid tribute to the 1930s pulps that started it all.
Where to Start
First-time visitors tend to follow one of three doors in. Readers who want the history go straight to the Archives and browse the issue lists. Writers usually start with Lessons in Noir, the craft essay on what separates the books that last from the ones that don't. And anyone who cares about the people behind the fiction should read the Ken Bruen interview — a conversation that started as a couple of emailed questions and grew to twenty-six thousand words about family, sin, God, crime, music, and booze.
The Editor
Hardluck Stories was created and edited by Dave Zeltserman, who ran the zine while building a crime-writing career of his own — novels that drew comparisons to Jim Thompson from reviewers and fellow writers alike. After the zine wound down in 2008, this domain carried his author pages as well, and those are preserved here too: about the editor, the books, and the short fiction. The Mystery Writers of America community that many Hardluck contributors belonged to remains the best map of where these writers went next.
Why It Still Matters
Web zines of the 2000s were the proving ground for a generation of crime writers, and most of those zines are gone — servers retired, domains lapsed, issues scattered. Hardluck Stories was remembered by its peers as one of the best of them. Keeping its index, its essays, and its history online is a small act of preservation for a corner of crime fiction that did its work cheaply, fiercely, and mostly for love. Pour something strong and have a look around.