This was my first semiprofessional sale, but the anthology I sold it to is no longer available, so I thought I’d put it up on my website.

It’s a mashup of Damon Runyon; detective noir; and sword and sorcery, three odd tastes that go oddly together. What originally sparked it off was reading (or partly reading, because I got bored and didn’t finish) a book about a dwarf noir detective that lacked the compelling voice of noir and instead plodded along in the manner of poorly-written epic fantasy. I thought, “I can do better than that!” and… well, this is the result.

I’ve since read Ari Marmell’s much better noir fae detective books. This story probably wouldn’t have existed if I’d read them first, because he does it right.

http://csidemedia.com/shortstories/axe-stone-dwarf-detective/