Noir for the Neural Age
Three series, three generations of noir, spanning over a century of the same city's slow corruption. Pick your era and start there.
Choose your point of entry.
Obsidian Knights
The city before the wires went in. Modern noir, human-scale crime, and a detective's only backup is whoever's willing to show up. Starts with Dead Men Tell.
Enter Obsidian KnightsCarbon Shift
The city starts trading flesh for hardware, and nobody's written the rules yet. Neo noir for the first generation that has to live with what it's traded away.
Enter Carbon ShiftRejection Cycles
Full augmentation, resurrection on demand, and a defect that's bringing people back wrong. Bio-punk noir for a city that's forgotten what dying used to mean.
Enter Rejection CyclesJohnny Tabales
on file
North Carolina Division
Johnny Tabales writes noir out of North Carolina, tracking one city across three eras of the same slow trade: humanity for technology. Ten manuscripts in, he placed as a finalist three times in the 2025 Ready Chapter 1 Pro Writing Challenge before turning to his debut, The Lazarus Defect.
His research doesn't come from a keyboard. He worked as a technical contractor for the West Palm Beach Sheriff's Office and now implements medical technology systems for a living, on top of a hitch in the U.S. Navy's VS-24 "Scouts." Law enforcement, medicine, and military discipline all bleed into the page.
Off the clock, he's in Charlotte running the more chaotic assignment: father of three, grandfather of two, youth sports coach, and a self-appointed chef who thinks a good story is better served with dinner.
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