A Lit-Noir Publisher Focusing on Stories of the Desperate...and What They Do Next.
download.png

Whatever Kills the Pain

Read about the short story collection from C.W. Blackwell, publishing through Rock and a Hard Place Press in July 2025!

Whatever Kills the Pain

by C.W. Blackwell

COMING SOON!!! Publishing on July 18, 2025
Print ISBN: 979-8-9912950-7-9; eBook ISBN: 979-8-9912950-8-6
Preorder the eBook on AMAZON

In this gritty collection of crime stories, Derringer Award-winning author C.W. Blackwell mourns an America lost to the shadows, exploring a broken economic system that has given rise to rampant inequality, violence, and darkness.

Crackling with energy, emotional depth and unflinching violence, and filled with characters desperate to reclaim what has been unjustly taken, plotting the heist of a lifetime, or grappling with chance encounters that might free them from the bonds of wage exploitation-or send them to early graves, Blackwell fearlessly documents an America sick with greed and hate.

Nearly everyone has an angle, a fight, or a spark of hope, yet some have learned there isn't a cure for every ill, and that sometimes the best medicine is whatever kills the pain.

Read the James D.F. Hannah interview with C.W. Blackwell on his “Five for Them, One for Me” series of interviews, exclusively on his That Noise at 2 AM substack newsletter