The Californer - New Novel WINCE Takes Unflinching Aim at American Gun Culture and Masculinity

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A blistering new novel turns a broke, coked-up, thrice-divorced gun enthusiast into an unforgettable antihero.

LOS ANGELES - Californer -- Drew Nellins Smith, author of Arcade (Unnamed Press, 2016), returns with Wince (Itna Press, July 2026), a darkly comic, razor-sharp portrait of American masculinity in freefall. Equal parts character study and slow-motion implosion, the novel follows a man who mistakes rock bottom for a second chance—and finds himself in far deeper trouble than he ever imagined.

Winston Fisher, Jr. —Wince to the people who still put up with him—is broke, unemployed, and freshly divorced for the third time. He drifts through his rented McMansion in a bathrobe, cocaine-addled and surrounded by the private arsenal he's assembled piece by piece. His mother won't stop calling. His newly engaged daughter keeps him updated on wedding plans. Both still believe in the man he used to be. Only his dealer and his best friend—an escort—know the truth.

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What starts as a side hustle, customizing AR-15s in his garage, spirals into something far more lucrative, far more dangerous, and somehow far more tedious than Wince expected. The tedium shatters when he discovers a cartel-run stash house tucked inside a South Texas junkyard. He can't stop imagining what it would take to rob it. Soon, he starts wondering if he's desperate enough to actually try.

Wince is an unflinching, often hilarious satire about depression, gun culture, and the particular American delusion that catastrophe can somehow be the first step toward stability.

Sam Lipsyte, author of The Ask, praised the book as "funny, profane, sly and bruising." Dan Chaon, author of One of Us, described it as "a trenchant, timely and hilarious noir." Novelist Donald Ray Pollock, author of The Devil All the Time, called Wince "gritty and compulsively readable," and praised Smith for "accomplishing the nearly impossible: making a repellent character likeable," while Nico Walker, author of Cherry, described the book as "a Chekhovian dive into the spiritual desolation of the American West."

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Drew Nellins Smith is a writer based in Austin, Texas. His work has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Believer, Tin House, VICE, and Literary Hub. Wince is his second novel.

Wince is available now on Bookshop.org, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and select independent bookstores.