What is Noir?

Official #1: Colour. Official #2: A literary genre.

Let’s fuse them for clarity: Storytelling with a dark, insidious tone. That’s Noir!

A visual example of noir is this picture.

She’s a ’50s noir cliché. The cigarette-wielding, sizzling-hot femme fatale was featured frequently in the decade of Noir. She-killers graced the pages of many noir novels. Men pursued her but often died doing it. A petite gun, stiletto, or poison bottle concealed in a tight-fitting dress was used to end such pursuits. Bodies ended up on rain-drenched streets, train tracks, and dark alleys. It seemed to be night all the time. Shadows were as much a character of noir as the femme fatale.

But noir needn’t remain in the dark times of the 1950s. Neo-noir updates it and brings its dark themes into contemporary narratives.

Twisted mindsets, decaying cities, and living on the edge of existence are words commonly associated with describing the ever-expanding nature of neo-noir.

Neo-noir erotica takes those dark elements and visits the bedroom. This unsettling romance story is not the predictable fairytale love affair most would expect. Romance and death arrive in equal measure. Not everyone lives happily ever after. It’s more about surviving life than falling in love.

How many of us survive a familiar struggle like that every day?

SEETHINGS was written to reveal some of those difficult life struggles in a modern context. It cuts close to the bone, exposing the complexities between couples trying to live their dreams while being unaware of a slowly evolving nightmare.

Merging one’s expectations with another’s can be potentially challenging regarding work, career, family, political beliefs, sex, sexuality, religion, health, money, recreation, social life, and family planning. Their differences are part of a potential energy source that fuels internal and external conflicts. Sometimes, the friction lures the duo down an emotional rabbit hole—a journey that leads to many things, including self-discovery.

One of the first lessons learned inside the hole is that discovery doesn’t translate to rainbows and sunshine. The rabbit hole has its own agenda. It takes us where we need to go because we need to go there. The phrase ’til death do us part takes on a whole new meaning.

And that’s about the noir mindset you need to engage to enjoy the dark journey into SEETHINGS.

–Michael

‘Forman’s writing style is artful, with the protagonist Mitchell’s warped thought processes masterfully exposed. The author has a powerful and vivid command of language and his word pictures are stark and disturbingly real.’

Linda J Bettenay, author of ‘Secrets Mothers Keep’ and ‘Wishes For Starlight’