Concrete Underground

“Independent fiction” has been in an interesting place for the past few years. It's definitely started to get a lot more respect than it has, but something I've noticed about a lot of independent authors is that they're telling the same types of stories as the major publishing houses - crime stories, science fiction, and vampire romances. Nothing against the stories themselves, but there's often little to distinguish them from the mainstream.

Concrete Underground, on the other hand, is described by the author as a “punk as fuck” crime story, which is not something I can ever recall a mainstream publisher advertising. Which, depending on how you feel about punk, might be a selling point, and might not. Regardless, it's a story that feels edgy, feels unpolished, and experiments with narrative structure in some interesting ways (especially one part in the middle where - well, I'm still not sure what happened). It's experimental, but keeps a pulpy feel that would drive away most readers looking for something capital-L “Literary”.