Wince by Drew Nellins Smith

Wince

Drew Nellins Smith

$18.00 | ISBN: 979-8-9989551-2-9 | Jul. 2026

Paperback | 5.5x8.5”

Distributed via Ingram

COMING SOON

AIMING HIGH

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 and unopened mail, or even his firearms scattered throughout—a collection as vast as an arsenal. His mother calls constantly. His newly engaged daughter texts updates about the wedding. They still think of him as the man he used to be. 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, Drew Nellins Smith’s Wince is an unsettling satire about American masculinity, depression, gun culture, and what happens when rock-bottom is mistaken for a return to stability.

  • DREW NELLINS SMITH is the author of Arcade (Unnamed Press, 2016), a queer autofictional novel. His nonfiction has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Believer, Tin House, VICE, and Literary Hub, among others. His recent cover story on pirated J.D. Salinger editions was featured in the Boston Globe. He lives in Austin, Texas.