HIGHWAY 62

FAKE BELIEVE​

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THE EIGHTIES, LOS ANGELES

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“Maxwell’s prose is austere and stinging.” 
– Laird Barron (Swift to Chase)
 
“A slick night ride through LA's underbelly. Full of pulsing music, mystery and the darkest of magic—you'll be hooked.”– Emma J. Gibbon (Dark Blood Comes from the Feet)
 

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Cait MacReady is an ex-punk rocker, having spent her college years bouncing around the underground that was quickly burning out and becoming something more hardcore. She spent time interning with occult mystery hunters running their own ramshackle television show. She became a librarian and book restorer. She became a forger, recreating lost and forbidden volumes of magickal power, all the time never once believing that there was anything to all that and steering well clear of anyone who did.

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She made up a book of her own. Just to see what happened. To see if she could fool anyone into thinking that it was real history, real magic, real power.

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Then she met the Queen.

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The Queen already knows about the book, already believes in its power, already craves what is written within those pages. And she'll do anything to possess it.

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Originally released in 2018, The Queen of No Tomorrows returns in summer of 2023 in a revised edition. Accompanying the original novel is a new novella entitled "Dreams are Made of Us," telling the story of the band Dreamless, who may have stumbled into overnight success after ten years. But success comes at the cost of playing someone else's song. Only this time it's the Queen of No Tomorrows who is calling the tune.

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Hazeland returns this summer.

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“Matt Maxwell gives us a lean, weird, noir meditation on yearning and creation that's as guarded and dangerous on one hand and lonely and desperate on the other as the 1980s Los Angeles punk rock underground of its setting. Queen of No Tomorrows delivers with economy and surprising heart.” 
– Matthew Wayne Selznick (Light of the Outsider and Brave Men Run)
 
“This dark, subversive ride produces profound longing for an LA you've never experienced but wish you had. Maxwell has the rare ability to craft stories that leave you saturated with horror and awe in equal measure. I absolutely loved this book.” 
– Corinna Bechko (The Expanse and Green Lantern: Earth Two)

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Further plans call for a new Hazeland release bi-annually. In 2024, expect both All Waters Are Graves and Asphalt Tongues. 

 

All Waters Are Graves has Cait tangling with not only the fallout of The Queen of No Tomorrows and her refusal to accept what is a newer and stranger reality for both her and Los Angeles as a whole. A sunken and drowning voice is calling out from the depths of the Pacific, calling back not only things from the depths but things out of time.

 

Asphalt Tongues is a collection of related stories from Hazeland. A private investigator makes a promise that costs him more than he'd imagined. A vet returns from twenty years of wandering the world to find his old neighborhood razed and all that remains is a crate of strange bottles containing ghosts within. An industrial-goth singer comes to LA and finds the path before her strangely familiar as if lived-in before. A lonely girl falls in love and bares her soul to the girl she thinks comes from across town, not knowing the truth. Two bank robbers pick the wrong after-hours club to rob, unaware that within it waits the Queen and her entourage. An unlicensed cabbie picks up a fare that takes him not only across Los Angeles but to the outer edges of Hazeland. Cait MacReady is invited to an auction of the strange and outré, where she finds that everything is for sale and that even means the tangible stuff of legend.

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“LA noir goes weird and eerie in Matt Maxwell's Queen of no Tomorrows. You might think you’re merely faking an ancient text for profit, but the power of The Word is real and its truth will likely slither from the shadows of your imagination and bite you. Intriguing and finely written.” 
– Jamie Delano (Hellblazer and the Leepus books)
 
“Queen of No Tomorrows is a dark and riveting page-turner where magic and otherworldly horrors lurk just beneath the surface of everyday life (and between the covers of a unique book). Mixing a noir-vibe with supernatural fantasy, the story is a suspenseful ride that comes to a satisfyingly epic finish.” 
– Maria Haskins (Six Dreams About the Train and Other Stories)

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