Manny Torres is an Atlanta, Georgia transplant from Brooklyn, New York. His crime-noir books include DEAD DOGS, FATHER WAS A RAT KING, PERRAS MALAS, CABRONES PERROS and A SIMMERING DISSONANCE. You can find his short stories in Starlite Pulp Review #3 and #4, and the anthologies BISHOP RIDER LIVES, ELEGIES IN THE DUST AND SLUT VOMIT II: AN ANTHOLOGY OF SEX WORK. His novella THE IDIOT CAPER appears in AMERICAN MUSE: STARLITE PULP NOVELLAS, VOL.1.
His upcoming novel, DEAD DOG ON THE HIGHWAY (published through Outcast Press) is the direct sequel to his first book, DEAD DOGS.
He enjoys writing, photography, watching films, the music of King Crimson, and rescuing and fostering cats. You can find him on Substack, Instagram (@_m.a.torres), and Blue Sky.
FR: Brian over at Starlite introduced me to your work, he pumped your novel, CABRONES PERROS. I bought it, and I had fun reading it. It’s part of a trilogy, tell us about the book, and the DOG TRILOGY?
MT: I’m glad you read it. It’s one of my favorite books I’ve written. I wrote three novels during the pandemic shutdown and revamped two old ones I had sitting around for years (FATHER WAS A RAT KING and PERRAS MALAS). CABRONES is the most biographical of all my books. The first pages up to the wedding are about my life around ten years ago.
I wanted to write a trilogy like Park Chan Wook’s Vengeance Trilogy. DEAD DOGS was inspired by the film Amores Perros and Mario Bava’s crime film Rabid Dogs. Originally the trilogy was going to be DEAD DOGS/Perras Malas and a third unreleased book. I kind of wrote Cabrones by accident. It was originally called After the Beasts, but I liked the ring and stupidity of CABRONES PERROS. I wanted that one to take place in Florida and incorporate the Caribbean culture I grew up with. Not just Hispanic culture, but West Indies, Lower Antilles, Jamaica and Virgin Islands.
DEAD DOGS was my first published book. It came out of the ashes of a movie project I was supposed to film but due to the death of a friend and collaborator, I decided to write the novel version of what the movie might have been. There’s a documentary I made with Derek Lord, my friend who passed. It’s called The Trespasser and it is the nucleus for DEAD DOGS. That’s as close as I ever got to writing “Walmart noir.” A lot of the book is based on stories Derek told me. It’s also based on a few other people I know.
Perras Malas is the second part of the trilogy, and this is several acts of vengeance inspired by the books of Virginie Despentes, Kathy Acker, Diamanda Galas and the Female Prisoner Scorpion films starring Meiko Kaji. I wanted to write about the fury of women scorned and I’m pretty sure I got it right because I’ve been chasing that high from writing it ever since. It’s probably the best thing I’ll ever write (haha).
Thematically, CABRONES PERROS joined the trilogy party, and I decided to conclude Shank’s story arc from Perras Malas, and it all seemed to fit together. It’s amazing what finding a plot to a story will do to a book. CABRONES allowed losers, it some biographical themes, even some childhood adventures, and create a Florida noir that was very much my homage to Elmore Leonard, his ensemble cast of losers, and sunny, drunken locations and fun-loving criminals.
FR: The books has entertaining characters, sometimes over-the-top but I mean that in the best way. Tell us about Nolin, did you know a person like him? Or is it strictly from the imagination? Same with Shady, tell us about her?
MT: Nolin was my father’s nickname. The character in the book was inspired in part by my own life. I’ve never been to prison, though. I’ve taken boxing for self-defense, but I’ve never boxed. I wanted to write about a boxer like in FAT CITY, or in Stanley Kubrick’s Killer’s Kiss. Boxers make great noir characters and are a blank canvas for whatever type of struggling archetype you want to write about.
It was fun figuring out how to write fight scenes that actually packed a punch. I hardly ever insert myself into my stories or books, but in this case his character was built out of a book I’d started writing around 2014. This was going to be a serious and existential story, something like THE STRANGER by Camus or the fatalistic love affairs of ANTONIONI, but I started laughing at myself for being so pretentious. So that book never got finished. I kept the beginning of the narrative more or LESS, smoked an awful lot of weed and CABRONES PERROS is what readers got.
Almost all of those characters have existed in my life around the same time. Everybody in East Atlanta and the locations; the gangster cousins/friends, the ex-girlfriend, the sister, even the photographer who helps traffic girls. The character who Nolin befriends, Rig, is a real guy who quite literally rode into my life on his motorcycle, gave me the same speech that’s in the book, and rode away. Great guy. He’s out there somewhere across America, committing heroic acts as we speak.
Shady was a woman who drank with us at 529 Sports Bar and Lounge in East Atlanta Village before it was sold and got a makeover. There was a period where a close friend owned and ran that place and I happened to live within walking distance. Those were two solid years of heavy drinking. Shady was an androgen who used to buy us shots and brag about her latest female conquest and about the fake penis she carried in her pants (she never presented it). Really, most of the characters in the book have their real-life counterparts. I wish I could have continued writing that book. It was hard to stop. Of course, it ends with Chuck from DEAD DOGS telling Nolin the story of DEAD DOGS, so the trilogy becomes a loop narrative.
FR: What I admire about you as a writer is that you are always writing, between the Dog Trilogy, the novella with Starlite and the tons of short stories you publish you are prolific. Do you have a preferred time of day you write, where you show up every day? Or do you show up every day when working on a project only? Is there research that goes into the work?
MT: Writing is very much like musical composition. Assembling words into something more or less cohesive AND coherent. I try to paint images with words. But sometimes it’s music I’m hearing which then becomes ideas that become images which become words.
If I’ve started something I plan on turning into a book, I carry a notebook with me and write whenever and wherever the ideas arrive. I wish I could write early in the morning, every morning. Like, sitting in front of my home computer and getting it all out. That’s when narratives spill out easily. I’m also an artist/painter/illustrator so sketching is how I work out ideas. I write a lot because I’m always sketching scenarios, dialogue, characters, etc. When I have the story and plot, the story writes itself. Sometimes my desk job affords me downtime to sketch or write an entire book. I tend to write very quickly but the transcribing and editing is usually a 6-month to a year process to get it right. At least with a novel. Short stories have to be done quicker to meet deadlines. My system for short stories is write and edit as quickly as possible.
FR: In CABRONES PERROS there are some social issues in the roots of the story, such as Human trafficking. That’s a hard subject matter to listen to on the news, never mind putting it into a story. How do you approach such heart-breaking subjects, yet keep the story fresh and fun?
MT: When I have to write about something terrible, like dog fighting or human trafficking, I approach it in a way that’s real. I take small steps because it can be emotionally exhausting. Someone asked me why I write such violent books, and my answer is that the violence in my stories is how I come to terms with the terrible things in the world. Trafficking, animal cruelty, war, and murder are terrible things, so I write what I write to come to terms with the ugliness of it all. So, I can have some sort of closure. The least I can do is give a voice to the disenfranchised. But even in the darkest times, the disenfranchised still have hope and humor. Maybe that’s from the way I was brought up. Finding humor even in the bleakest of places.
FR: A question I ask everyone. Give me three dead writers you love. Three living writers you love to read. And one writer you love to read that your readers wouldn’t think you would like?
MT: Dead:
Shane Stevens is one of the most unsung heroes of crime noir. His early books are rare, but they’re so gritty and true that there really hasn’t been anyone writing what he wrote. James Ellroy and Donald Goines come close, but no. Stephen King stole a lot from him for The Dark Half.
DEAD CITY is one of the most disturbing and bloody gangster books ever written. It leaves you feeling all kinds of fucked up, not unlike MURDER MACHINE by Gene Mustain and Jerry Capeci (which was based on the DeMeo crime family).
Three of his early books were written from the point of view of black gang members and pimps, so everyone reading him at the time of their release, including critics, believed that he was actually black. Most of his books are painfully out of print. I’ve been trying for years to track down who owns the copyright so I can get them back in print again.
James Carlos Blake—recently deceased, I’m surprised he’s not more popular. His westerns rank up there with Cormac McCarthy’s. His short stories and novellas are epic, his language fluid and vivid, and he doesn’t exactly create heroic characters. He wrote THE FRIENDS OF PANCHO VILLA which could easily be some adjacent sequel/prequel to THE WILD BUNCH. His western, IN THE ROGUE BLOOD, is like BLOOD MERIDIAN except with lots of incest.
Rafael Bernal wrote only a few books and only two have been translated into English. After I finished the hilarious THE MONGOLIAN CONSPIRACY, I immediately sat down and wrote an entire novel inspired by it about an alcoholic who has to go to a border town in West Texas to kill a man. With hilarious results. Bernal wrote another book about insect alien invaders which I haven’t read yet. THE MONGOLIAN CONSPIRACY has been filmed twice and both movies are great, and a Spanish language only adaptation is also worthwhile.
Living:
Miriam Gurba is highly rebellious, and irreverent and writes powerful, personal stories. She is a survivor of domestic violence and has written and spoken about it a lot. She wrote the essay, “Pendeja, You Ain’t Steinbeck,” a takedown of the faux Mexican noir AMERICAN DIRT by Jeanine Cummins. She’s a legend in her time, surpassing lipstick feminism and the established norm. She challenges notions of feminism, sexuality, and what it means to be a brown person in America. Her writing is sometimes painful but often very funny.
Yuri Herrera—if ever there was a modern writer worthy of Juan Rulfo, it is he. His novellas are short and minimalist, but pack more politics, violence and history than most big books. SIGNS PRECEDING THE END OF THE WORLD is a masterpiece of frontera noir and cartel storytelling. Some writers try to emulate his style and substance, but no one comes close to the sweat and dust of his books.
Jack Moody is a peer. No one will be privy to the conversations we’ve had behind the scenes, but the man can write and has written some truly fantastical novels and novellas. His books remind me of old magical realism and sci-fi books of old that were not easily categorized. His book CROOKED SMILE is filled with strange situations and hallucinations as the main character drinks himself to oblivion. I’ve never read anything that borders so much on sci-fi that captures the motions and sickness of alcoholism. His first book, THE MONOTONY OF EVERLASTING, is about a man who’s cursed into immortality. It says so much in so few pages but is absolutely legendary in scope. The book has haunted me since I read it. It feels like it was written in the early 70’s at the peak of druggie sci-fi.
The writer who may come as a surprise that I read is sci-fi author and Esperanto enthusiast, Harry Harrison. Before I read Vonnegut Jr., Harrison provided many, many hilarious adventures, in particular the STAINLESS-STEEL RAT series. He also wrote the WEST OF EDEN series and MAKE ROOM! MAKE ROOM! which became the movie Soylent Green.
FR: You are versatile, you write novels, novellas, and short stories. What is your favorite one to write? Why?
MT: Everything I start to write begins with the intention of being a novel. I always hope to hit at least 50K words. Sometimes it’s more, mostly it’s less, which then becomes a novella. Short stories are the most challenging because of having to wrap up a narrative with a lot less words. Writing a novel allows the story to breathe and gives growth to characters. My stories, whether in novel form, novellas, or short stories, are about characters in search of a story. I never outline anything because I never stick to it. But sometimes unfinished stories are left like love letters to my future self, which I wind up completing years later. I usually finish about 90% of what I start to write.
FR: You published CABRONES PERROS with Outcast Press. How is working with them? The publishing, editing? Etc. Also, I really like the cover art. For me, cover art is an important part of the process. Tell us about that?
MT: I was published by Outcast Press by accident or perhaps cosmic coincidence. I had reached out to the owner, Sebastian Vice, to read some of their books to review them. We hit it off well. We bonded on our shared love for James Sallis, and he told me he enjoyed DEAD DOGS. Somewhere in the conversation I told him I had written another crime book that was a hundred times more violent and transgressive than DOGS, but he declined because he didn’t feel that a crime book would fit the press’s format. I told him, well, it’s not a procedural or anything and then he said he’d run it by his head editor, Paige Johnson. She was hesitant but after she read it, she loved it and the rest is history (that became PERRAS MALAS).
Paige is the best editor I have ever worked with, and a lot of people don’t realize what an asset she is to the writing community. Big five publishers don’t have editors who are as articulate and precise as her. Also, she’s not just checking grammar and spelling. She will tell you what will make a chapter work and contribute a lot to perfect the story. She certainly improved a few scenes in PERRAS MALAS. And that book being an angry shout against misogyny, it was amazing to work not just with Paige but also with Neda Aria. The copy editor, whom I can’t remember her name now, was also a woman. So, I got to publish this book about angry, vengeful women killing a bunch of really terrible men, and it was assembled by a talented group of transgressive writers and artists who were women. Neda is a novelist, painter and collagist and that’s her cover design. Since the book moved several dozen copies, Sebastian asked me if I had anything else lined up. I pitched him five novels that I was sitting on at the time. When he discovered I had a sequel of sorts to PERRAS MALAS that concluded the “dog trilogy,” he greenlit it. Chronologically speaking, CABRONES PERROS takes place about ten years after PERRAS MALAS, but about two weeks after DEAD DOGS. Some of the characters cross paths. The original cover was originally done by Cody Sexton of Anxiety Press, but I recently updated it with my own artwork and collage because I really wanted that Monte Carlo on the cover, haha.
All of my publishers, Outcast Press, Uncle B. Publications, Anxiety Press and Starlite have all been good to work with. But there’s no replacing Paige as editor. She’s the best. The official sequel to DEAD DOGS, called DEAD DOG ON THE HIGHWAY, will be published by Outcast Press in 2026.
FR: You and I share a lot of similar movies, music, and book tastes. Not many people “like” a post I share about The Faces, which brings me to my point. When I write, say the story I published in Starlite last year, I listen to music of the time. That story was set in 1969, and even though I like a lot of music of the time, I also dislike a lot of music of the time. Even if I don’t like it, if I think my character likes it, I’ll listen to it when writing a scene. Does listening to music play an important part of your thinking, dreaming, and writing process? You are your own writer, but do you find ideas in films, books, every day living too?
MT: On a side note, I’ve loved The Faces since high school. Music programming is a huge part of my writing process. I create soundtrack playlists as I write stories and they set the tone. I may even lift the lyrics, rewrite them, and incorporate them into the story itself. Mostly, I like to soak in the ambience of whatever I’m listening to. I think that started when I was a teenager writing weird sci-fi and horror stories (mostly sci-fi) while listening to The Beatles, Rolling Stones, etc. Nowadays it’s usually big, moody pieces by Godspeed You! Black Emperor, John Zorn, Sunn O))) or Tangerine Dream. Maybe some obscure Ennio Morricone records, soundtracks to 60’s and 70’s crime movies, etc. It all sets the tone, and I just ride that soundwave. Sound sculptures or even audio wallpaper helps me stay focused and in mood for writing. I think there’s a synesthetic grapevine there. I may listen to music and translate it into a story. Or words. I’ve always had that ability since I began writing as a teenager.
FR: What’s next for Manny? Are you working on anything now? Maybe just working on some short stories? Taking a break? What can we expect from you in 2026?
MT: Starlite Pulp invited me to write an essay for an upcoming release of theirs called MY CONFESSION: RECOLLECTIONS OF A ROGUE. This is the book by Samuel Chamberlain that inspired Cormac McCarthy’s BLOOD MERIDIAN. It’s one of the proudest moments in my writing career to share an essay alongside Stephanie Reents and Daniel Pyne. I feel like the adults are letting me in on their conversation now. My essay postulates that that MY CONFESSION, along with BLOOD MERIDIAN are both “boys adventures.” There’ll be a big to-do when it’s released, as Starlite Pulp Review is always wont to do.
Also coming out this year is DEAD DOG ON THE HIGHWAY, the sequel to DEAD DOGS. I never meant to write a sequel, but more than one reader had suggested it. They wanted to see more of Phobos and Chuck from the first book (Chuck appears in THE IDIOT CAPER). He won’t be in the new book, so it’s Phobos on a solo adventure. His character is based on my friend Derek, who passed away from a drug overdose. Writing him an alternate ending has helped me heal the loss. In this new book he spends time in Mexico, almost gets killed by the cartel, breaks away from a chain gang in Texas and then hitchhikes his way to Atlanta. But nothing ever goes right for him.
I’m shopping a total of five novels around and I’m also working on two non-crime books. One is called TEENAGE OPERA about my time in high school playing in a band and collecting records. The second is about a photographer and the musicians that surround him. Both books are autobiographical but because they’re not crime stories, I have to figure out how to make them work. It’s all very personal stuff. And perhaps it will lead me to finish the book about my grandmother.
FR: I mentioned Starlite earlier. I think they are one of the best indie presses out there, and up and coming. I imagine they’ll be even bigger in a year’s time. You published short fiction in their review, but you also published a novella with them in AMERICAN MUSE. Tell us about your novella in the collection?
MT: I’ve told Brian Townsley more than once that Starlite is destined to be as big as Hard Case Crime. When Brian invited me to his podcast a while back, he discussed what his plans were for Starlite’s future and that he was putting together a novella anthology. I’d been sitting on THE IDIOT CAPER for some time. On two occasions it was almost released by two other publishers but for two different reasons it was dropped. This is one of my favorite books and I didn’t want to see it just sitting there. I offered it to Brian. Well, he invited me to contribute a book and that was it. THE IDIOT CAPER is a companion piece to DEAD DOGS, and it shares a middle section with my latest book, A SIMMERING DISSONANCE. I’d considered putting them both together, but they have two separate story arcs.
The IDIOT CAPER is my last lover letter to East Atlanta. It’s a day in the life of several criminal types looking for a suitcase full of drugs. I wanted to write a book based on Iggy Pop’s album, The Idiot. Some of the chapters are even named after some of those songs. I’d had that story for a while, probably as a screenplay originally. It has the usual themes I write about: drugs, druggies, drug dealers, gentrification, and how most criminals become desperate because of economic indifference. I got to make fun of Atlanta bourgeoisie, pointing out that it’s actually their fault that crime happens how it happens. I’ve never sold drugs in my life, but a lot of my friends and some of my relatives did out of necessity. My other book that links up with THE IDIOT CAPER is A SIMMERING DISSONANCE, where lipstick Marxists try to start a revolution and it literally blows up in their faces. It was an experiment to see what it would be like to write something like Jean Luc Godard’s Le Chinoise mashed up with a hitman book by Max Allan Collins. Or like George V. Higgins’s OUTLAWS or the wanna-be revolutionaries of THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE.
CAPER/DISSONANCE happen to share a middle section so if you read one, you eventually have to read the other.
THE IDIOT CAPER wound up on the first ever Starlite Pulp Anthology alongside a post-apocalyptic western, a Jack London adventure and this really great Hollywood-type noir. Mine represents gritty urban crime in the dirty south. Having it in that anthology has definitely been a highlight for me.
BONUS:
FR: You pick up Nolin from prison, curbside. He’s been locked up forever and sick of prison bologna, he needs a good time. Tell us what’s playing in your car when you pick him. Where are you taking him to eat in your city? What bar will you take him to, and what kind of drink will you buy him? And what will you tell him about the world that he doesn’t know much about because he’s been in the hoosgow?
MT: Since I called CABRONES PERROS my “salsa and reggae” crime story, I would probably be playing Toots & the Maytals’s Funky Kingston, which features heavily in the novel. It’s one of my favorite reggae records ever. We would be driving back to East Atlanta Village, so we’ll go get some grub at The Earl. Their nacho plate is so big it can be seen from the moon. We would wind up day-drinking at 529. I’ll tell him the government is now run by fascist mobsters, but we fly under the radar and get away with our own crimes.
