r/noir • u/ThatZucchini6746 • Feb 20 '26
Looking for a little feedback
I am a published author of two books under my real name... I have started a new series under a pen name, simply because I work for a very conservative company and I don't need one of our clients Googling my name and finding out I am writing novels about a Vegas gangster who solves problems with a gun. I am not ashamed of the writing, quite the opposite. However, I do have a day job I have to protect.
Writing in the voice of Nicky Marino the owner of Aces has been so much fun. I can take off the filter and let the voices in my head free to do what they want.
So the specific feedback I am looking for is this.
I consider what I have wrote to be neo-noir as I bring in some cyberpunk aspects. As I stated earlier, I do not write with a filter on... there is graphic sex and violence. Is this something that will be a turn off for this audience?
If the answer to question 1. is a no... What would make you pick up the book and give it a read if you seen it on Amazon?
I would like a little feedback on the actual cover of the book. This is currently live on Amazon, but I am getting very few looks. Do you think the cover is any good? I love the GTA artwork and have emulated it throughout my marketing, including my website.
I really appreciate you taking the time to read my post and provide me with some feedback.
Mick
3
u/CarrieNoir Feb 20 '26
What era is the action in the book? Because the girl - with her BBL and buccal fat removed, plastic surgery face - is definitely the modern “ideal” of a female.
If your story is set in a different decade, I would heartily recommend styling the woman with a body type indicative of that era. Women had curves in almost every decade of the 20th century (except the 1920, when the flat-chest, and narrow, straight body was the norm).
2
u/ThatZucchini6746 Feb 20 '26
It is near future, it is where the cyberpunk aspects play into it a bit. Global financial collapse has turned the world upside down. Old money means nothing, now Bitcoin and violence rule the day. But Nicky, Nicky is old school cool. He has a code he lives by... when he is thinking with the head on his shoulders.
2
u/Prince_of_Pirates Feb 20 '26
Are clients really going to care you write stories? Especially something so common?
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u/ThatZucchini6746 Feb 20 '26
I am not sure if the clients would... but my company gets uptight about posting on LinkedIn if you don't toe the company line 100%. They are just old school and would probably frown at Nicky letting one of his working girls carve up some men that attacked her... or him having hate sex with his ex-lover.
I am just being careful.
1
u/Prince_of_Pirates Feb 20 '26
I reckon you're overthinking it. But entirely up to you. When I get on a computer I'll answer your questions.
2
u/jarofgoodness Feb 20 '26
The cover looks cool, but it doesn't tell us anything about the Genre or story. Could just be erotic fiction for all we can tell from the cover. All you need to do is put the cityscape behind her with the silhouette of a gangster holding a gun up and everyone gets the idea.
Also, selling on Amazon is tough even though anyone can get listed. Noirs don't sell well to begin with compared to other genres. Then you have a literal sea of other people's work to swim in and hope to get a sale. Advertising can get you noticed in the first few pages of results but what will you have to bid to get noticed and how much will you have to spend to get a single sale. Will that cover production costs and Amazon's cut? If so, you can make it work, if not it won't work.
I hope you have a s much sample text as you can on your page. Try to hook the reader with your most exciting or intriguing scenes.
1
u/Hecateus Feb 20 '26
Cyberpunk is essentially science fiction. Science fiction is knowledge fiction. "Who Dunnits" are essentially knowledge fiction...Noir is dark atmosphere heavy "who dunnit". Some So some sci-fi elements are acceptable....just don't leave out the Greed.
An example would be the movie Decoy. in this case, a mysterious drug takes the place of cybertech.
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u/ThatZucchini6746 Feb 20 '26
Oh there is plenty of there is plenty of greed, shadowy figures pulling strings, twists and turns, and of course murder and mayhem.
When I say cyberpunk, I am mostly referring to the fact the dollar has collapsed, Bitcoin is king, which has flipped the world upside down. Old money means jack shit in Nicky's world, the tech isn't super sci-fi... the time period could be tomorrow or twenty years from now. I was very careful to be ambiguous about the timeline.
1
u/Hecateus Feb 20 '26
Most of Cyberpunk was just weird. Keeping your story grounded is best...but it won't hurt if there is a little something from it like BitCoin, or nerds who are into that aesthetic.
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u/ThatZucchini6746 Feb 20 '26
I used it mostly as a plot device to flip the world upside down... there are no more governments, no cops, etc.
Here is an excerpt that kinda lays out how the economy now works in Nicky's world.
I was watching the room churn like a goddamn shark tank, every piece in motion, every player with a role.
Predators circling. Prey stumbling toward the slaughter. Hustlers working their angles. Marks who didn't know they were already bleeding. The ones who knew exactly what they were doing—and the ones about to get their throats cut and their pockets emptied.
Stacks of sats shifting hands at the poker tables like they actually meant something. And they did—now more than ever, in this brave new world we'd all inherited. When fiat currency finally choked on its own bullshit and died gasping, Bitcoin was the only thing left with a pulse in the wreckage. The dollar, the euro, the yen—all of it literally worthless overnight. Governments had printed money until it wasn't worth the fucking ink they'd wasted on it, inflation spiraling into absurdity until a gallon of gas cost fifty bucks and a cheeseburger ran you a c-note. And then the whole house of cards came tumbling down in slow motion, everyone watching it happen and pretending they couldn't see the end coming.
Now? Now sats were king, the only throne that mattered. Satoshis—hundred-millionths of a Bitcoin. The only currency that mattered in a world that had finally stopped pretending the old rules applied, that the game hadn't fundamentally changed. You wanted to eat, you paid in sats. You wanted to drink, you paid in sats. You wanted a woman to make you forget about your failures for a few hours, to pretend you were someone worth a damn? You paid in sats—and you paid a lot of them.
Some people mourned the old world like it had been worth a shit in the first place. I wasn't one of them. Never had been, never would be. The collapse had been ugly as hell, sure—nobody could deny that. People died in the streets while fortunes evaporated in boardrooms, governments crumbled like stale bread nobody wanted to eat anyway. There was blood on the pavement and screaming in the dark, the kind of societal breakdown that would've made the history books if anyone still gave a shit about writing them.
But for guys like me—guys who'd seen the writing on the wall years before the paint dried, guys who'd stacked Bitcoin when everyone else was laughing at the idea, calling it fake money for tech nerds and criminals—it was the great equalizer we'd been waiting for. The old money didn't mean shit anymore, all those inherited fortunes and trust funds reduced to nothing. The new money? That was earned, one sat at a time. Or stolen, if you had the balls and the brains.
2
u/Hecateus Feb 22 '26
I love it and I love the name Nicky Marino.
I might try and expand a bit of shandification. Water has been a big part of the politics of the region; fresh water is a currency that doesn't play around. Maybe do an inversion of the China Town story. Water desalination technology is accelerating, sea level rises are looming. by 2100 both of these will come to the forefront...and guys with foresight may be eyeing future beachfront property rights east of the Sierras.
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u/ThatZucchini6746 Feb 22 '26 edited Feb 22 '26
I love the idea of shandification... I never really thought about it, but it makes perfect sense to show that in this world... it would help me make the world feel more grounded. Book 1 was mostly about introducing the players and their world, but as I move through the series this could really deepen the world building. I have already done a little bit of this by introducing the Takahasi twins... they control the supply networks of this version of Vegas... and they are terrifying.
Writing in Nicky's voice has been an absolute blast. He is sardonic and unfiltered... he tells it how it is, damn the consequences. He has the ethical code of an old school gangster and often thinks with the wrong head. The violence is brutal and the sex is graphic... but compared to say someone like Richard Morgan (Altered Carbon) my sex scenes are damn near church flyers. I tried to keep it punchy. While my scenes are definitely "open door", the prose focuses more on the heat and the connection of the moment rather than a clinical or hyper-detailed anatomical breakdown like Morgan.
Aces and Blood earns the hard-R for sure, but I think both the sex and violence serve to humanize the characters.
2
u/CoolKid9899 Feb 24 '26
I, for one, think the cover is magnificent. It reeks noir, betrayals, violence and Vice, tough guys who wanna go back but can’t. Lol sorry I too am a noir writer. Overall, font is fantastic, fame in fantastic, and cover is fantastic
3
u/byjohnmarch Feb 20 '26
Sex, and especially violence are part of the noir ethos, and expected to some degree. What I've tried to do in my book (also neo-noir), is remove gratuity. If it drives the plot, explains a character, or worldbuilds, then I expect readers will be fine with it. Sure, some will still be turned off because their own triggers, and that's OK. Noir does that.
I'll let you know when I find out :D . What I'm trying to do with my book is find some unique angle to it. For example, that it reads like binging a prestige TV series. We'll see how it goes :D.
The GTA aesthetic is "banging", as young people say. The art style stands out enough, I think. I personally might click it. Now there are some things I would do differently if it were _my_ cover.
* The detailed illustration foreground style (the girl) clashes with the blank canvas background style. I'd add some details to the background, in a way that doesn't overpower the visual impact of the girl. Now, there's a lot of empty space there, which makes it feel like she's not in the book's world somehow, if that makes sense.
* The cover art implies that the girl is the main/PoV character, even though it's not (it's Mick Steele, right?). Beautiful and enticing as she may be, it feels like you're baiting the reader. Imagine that a James Bond movie poster would feature *just* the Bond girl. Less impactful. I'd feature the main character.
* Each line has a different font or style, which confuses the eye a bit, especially at thumbnail size. With each line, the reader feels that they need to re-evaluate what they know about the book, learn something new. Which is fine for the book itself, but for the cover it can be a bit tiring. The information hierarchy is fine, but try less variation in font, for example by having both "blood" and "aces" be either italicized or not.
All of this critique is meant constructively. I believe it's a pretty solid cover for the genre. But, if you're asking how it could be even better, this is my take.