Wince

A Novel · ITNA Press · July 4, 2026

Winston Fisher, Jr. is broke, unemployed, and coming off his third divorce. High on cocaine, he wanders through his rented McMansion in a bathrobe, taking little notice of the piles of takeout containers or unopened mail, or even his firearms scattered throughout—a collection vast enough to be called an arsenal. His mother calls constantly. His newly engaged daughter texts updates about the wedding. They still think of him as the man he once was. The only people who know better are his coke dealer and his closest friend, an escort.

What begins as a side hustle—tweaking AR-15s in his garage—becomes something more lucrative, more dangerous, and yet somehow more boring than Winston imagined. The tedium breaks when he stumbles upon a cartel-run stash house hidden in a south Texas junkyard. Fantasizing about robbing it, he begins to wonder if he's desperate enough to follow through.

Part character study, part slow-motion implosion, Wince is an unsettling satire about American masculinity, depression, gun culture, and what happens when rock-bottom is mistaken for a return to stability.

Praise

"WINCE is a trenchant, timely and hilarious noir — imagine a Coen Brothers adaptation of a Ross MacDonald novel about contemporary McMansion Gun Culture, and that will give you an inkling of this sinister romp."

— Dan Chaon, author of One of Us

"Taking a smart, but arrogant gun nut/coked out slob and making him into a likeable character would seem like an almost impossible task for any writer, but that's exactly what Drew Nellins Smith has managed to do in his gritty, compulsively readable novel, Wince."

— Donald Ray Pollock, author of Knockemstiff & The Devil All the Time

"Funny, profane, sly and bruising, WINCE delivers criminal thrills with satirical wit. Winston Fisher is a hero (anti-hero, unhero) for our time."

— Sam Lipsyte, author of The Ask and Home Land

"Boldly bleak and brutal yet strafed with moments of screwy tenderness, at once a meticulous study in modern male dissipation and a no-bullshit Texas noir, WINCE is the aging-Gen X crime novel I didn't know I needed until I found myself unable to put it down."

— Justin Taylor, author of Reboot

"WINCE is a Chekhovian dive into the spiritual desolation of the American West, where in the big sky ring the echoes of civilization's violence."

— Nico Walker, author of Cherry

"There ought to be a warning sticker on this book—not about Wince's drugs and guns, not about his offensive thoughts about almost everything, not about the felonious and antisocial mayhem that he causes wherever he goes, but about the real likelihood that you'll somehow end up caring what happens to him. It takes guts to let a guy like Wince narrate your novel, but it takes a whole lot of skill to avoid caricature and to render up a real person."

— Chris Bachelder

"Wince is an audacious snapshot of our troubled post-COVID times — a world where you can order a gun as easily as takeout. Our guide through it, Winston Fisher, Jr., has no business winning our hearts, but he does."

— Patrick Hoffman, author of Friends Helping Friends

drewnellins@gmail.com