Maggie Moor- NYC- SKINLESS: The Story of a Female Survivor, Psychological Crime Noir: (Book 1), Charmay New York Noir Series.
Skinless: The Story of a Female Survivor
Street poetry. Beauty. Danger. Survival.
Skinless: The Story of a Female Survivor | New York City, 1999 | Psychological Crime Noir | (Second Ed, Expanded, Revised – 2025)
A raw, first‑person psychological crime noir, told with the intimacy of memoir—Charmay, a young singer‑songwriter in NYC’s underworld, navigating addiction, violence, and the brutal cost of surviving what should have broken her.
“Skinless is an eloquent crime novel about a woman’s relentless desire to survive.” — Benjamin Welton, Foreword Reviews
“A humane, unsparing portrait—wringing hope from the drug‑drenched, sex‑soaked streets of 1990s New York City.” — Danielle Ballantyne, Foreword Reviews
“Skinless offers something rare: a portrait of survival that doesn’t sanitize the mess. That portrayal is uncomfortable, occasionally overwhelming, and undeniably powerful.” — BookLife
About the Book
Street poetry. Beauty. Danger. Survival.
At the turn of the millennium in New York City, after teenage homelessness and childhood abuse, Charmay—a street‑smart, velvet‑voiced singer‑songwriter—develops a glittering alter ego, Cindy, to survive the PTSD she calls “skinless,” a raw vulnerability she drinks to numb and sings to soothe.
Over two turbulent years, chasing quick fixes and the American Dream, she’s pulled into a maze of small‑time hustles and crime that devolves into a dangerous game of secrets, lies, and power. Longing for her estranged father and the girl she once was, she clings to three men—and “Cindy”—for protection and hope, until hustles collide and masks ricochet into beats, bullets, and bedsheets, and it’s never clear who is really in control or who is using whom.
By the final chorus, Skinless becomes a strange evocation of turn‑of‑the‑century America—the times we live in and the forces we live by—as Charmay struggles between the mask that kept her alive and the honest voice that could make her whole.
For readers of Milkman, Cherry, In the Cut, The Basketball Diaries, Harley Rustad’s Twinsgate, Lucy Treloar’s Days of Innocence and Wonder, with elements of independent films & TV like George & Tammy, Last Night in Soho, Lost Highway, True Romance, and Blue Valentine.
Reviews & Praise for Skinless
BookLife writes:
“Moor’s fiction debut strips away pretense and sacrifices comfort for vulnerability… Moor’s nonlinear construction demands active engagement from readers… For readers who love voice‑driven, psychologically layered fiction that doesn’t flinch, Skinless offers something rare: a portrait of survival that doesn’t sanitize the mess. That portrayal is uncomfortable, occasionally overwhelming, and undeniably powerful.”
— BookLife
Read the full review on BookLife
Foreword Reviews
“Most of the book’s sentences vacillate between beauty and despair… Skinless is an eloquent crime novel about a woman’s relentless desire to survive… her street poetry highlights the city’s colors and sensations in lush, sensual language.”
— Benjamin Welton, Foreword Reviews
“A humane, unsparing portrait—wringing hope from the drug‑drenched, sex‑soaked streets of 1990s New York City.”
— Danielle Ballantyne, Foreword Reviews (Interview)
Reader Praise
“Lyrical and unflinchingly honest, Skinless is a psychological portrait of trauma, trust, and the courage it takes to face your own truth. Perfect for readers who love the raw brilliance of The Bell Jar and the restless energy of Kerouac.”
— Goodreads, 5‑star review
Enter the World . . Meet the Players, Hear the Songs, Watch the Reels
Skinless Players. . .
CHARMAY
A vulnerable yet fiercely creative singer, Charmay survives trauma by singing, drinking, and slipping into her alter ego, Cindy. Caught between an intoxicating downtown scene, a drug‑dealing filmmaker lover, and predatory attention, she’s torn between her authentic artist self and the persona that keeps her safe. Music is both her refuge and her last chance at wholeness.
From the book: “Me. Cool air; tawny skin. Long dancer’s limbs, lanky legs. Naked on my back. Gold chestnut waves; my hollow eyes blindly, wide open staring into hue, blue.”
"CINDY"
Charmay’s “seductive alter ego:” invented by Charmay to shield PTSD— “Skinless”—and pay the bills. Cindy is a magnet for high powered, wealthy men, and danger.
From the book: “But my mom named me after Cinderella. . .” Cindy eeked. That was a new story I had concocted. . .
EXPLORE SUBSTACK: Episode #4 Charmay & Cindy. Double Life. Alter Ego
“Skinless” as its own character. Though non-human, “Skinless” is a force that influences Charmay’s actions throughout. “Skinless” is what she calls her raw, vulnerability, usually coupled with PTSD flashbacks—sometimes appearing as the face of her critical mother from inside a candle flame or mirror, sometimes as her her own body sensations and inner mental lashings. Charmay drinks to soothe “Skinless,” and never speaks of these experiences to anyone, not even Sam.
SAM BLACK
Sam Black, a Cuban American aspiring filmmaker, bankrolls his dreams by dealing drugs. Charismatic but volatile, he and Charmay light up late‑’90s downtown NYC as art, jealousy, and hustles clash.
From the book: “Where is that dang-nat—” he hopped ball-toe, cuffs up. “Man I gotta get back in the ring. Golden gloves, baby! I wanna coach kids and help people out the way they did for me back in Miami!” Sam went swinging at air, “Whambop a-round.”
EXPLORE SUBSTACK: EPISODE #6 Meet the Players, Skinless World
EDDIE CRUISE
A famous musician and producer. Mercurial, introverted, intense. Cruise appears at Nightingales East Village dive where Jesse invites Charmay to sing. Eddie shows interest in working with Charmay but requests she stop “performing:” hears gold—and grinds her raw for it.
From the book: Cruise blinked, zipping his soft bass case. “Hey, man, y’know. Jason, is it? Jess?” Languid recovery—palm smoothing his hair—he eyed me. “Ah, yeah. Right. People do like something to look at. But I kinda come down here to disappear, you know what I mean.”
JESSE
Sam’s business partner. Naive, addict. Rock drummer. Wealthy son of a State Judge. Introduces Charmay to Eddie Cruise.
As described in the book: “So, silk butterscotch Jess, grazing his usual shirtless dangly arms, low-hang slim-hipped skater shorts, red, and dead-like bloodshot aqua eyes, opened the door.”
REX RAVEN
A Wall Street foriegn exchange executive, well-bred. A depressed divorcèe. Rex becomes obsessed with Cindy—not Charmay—start setting ways to lure her in, every door a trap.
As described in the book: His hat caught my eye first. A cashmere hat with a black band, and feather. He was chatting a gal. She’d just danced for someone else, pulling her blue glitter dress on overhead. Looked like she’d met Rex before, casual chit. No biggie. I’d seen him around Darlings a few times, past months, Rex. Didn’t know his name. Never stayed long, never chose one girl.
SKINLESS: THE WORLD...
A Lynchian current throughout NYC—haunting, colorful, illusory, darkly comic. . .
Across two years slipping between past and present in New York’s underground, we see it through Charmay—our velvet‑voiced, street‑smart, trauma‑bruised singer who, by night, becomes Cindy. Three forces keep the pressure on: producer Eddie Cruise hears fire and pushes her voice raw; Sam Black earns her trust even as danger gathers; and Rex Raven opens glittering doors—and traps. Between gigs and after‑hours sessions, Charmay chases Eddie for a record deal.
Surrounding her is a family out of true: parents who unsteady her; Wanda, five years ahead, aloof; Aidan, two years behind, at the crux of the storm. Hart, the uncompromising vocal coach, pulls her toward the mic until the truth shows through. In Sam’s orbit, Eric—a recent law grad itching to go into business—stirs the pot. Comic detours arrive via Doctor Ski, Sam’s psychologist who meets the couple once, and Doctor Doggie, the dog‑obsessed referral who sends Charmay sideways. Down in Miami, Sam’s Cuban‑American family—his parents and sister Barbie—spin a fun‑loving visit that barely hides the fractures. And Sam’s vendetta zeroes in on Jesse—a well‑educated son of a state judge, newly addicted as he chases a rock‑drummer dream, naive as a deer—putting their cash side hustle on a knife‑edge as his loyalty comes into question.
The city adds its chorus. At Lucky Strike, Rex Raven and his trio of associates hold questionable court while a pop singer and a little wicked man slip between sets. In a Tribeca loft, Director O., a power filmmaker, works the room to woo Charmay as Eric’s friends whirl through—and after the party, the NYPD pays a visit. At Hudson’s, Felp presides, Max the vampiric maître-d’ deadpans, Frank hits his cues, and a jazz singer scores the night. Elsewhere, at Darling’s Gentleman’s Club—where Cindy takes shape—Gil, ever loyal, offers dad‑like counsel; at Chanel, where Rex suits Cindy up, an associate fashions her armor; and at Fortunoff’s, Stringbean, the comic diamond rep, performs a sales routine to seal the deal for Rex and Cindy.
Across town, Sam and Charmay explore La Trapeze—a crisscross club of hidden fantasy—while the Morgan Hotel homes the late‑night Sam‑and‑Jesse scheme. A penthouse suite at the Peninsula glitters above it all; underground Brownies steams in the small hours. After hours at Nightingales, the East Village haunt, Hart pushes Charmay to the raw as Skinny on guitar and Bleu on bass lay down a pulse that follows her home, Jesse’s wide‑eyed college friends crowding the tables.
And through it all, family moves like silent snipers; Charmay muscles through her father’s abandonment as the inner voices swell. Woven through that chorus is a reflective voice—steady, lucid—speaking from the other side now, threading hope through the noise. But back in the story present, Charmay runs from Skinless toward Cindy for solace; in the desperate hours, she writes songs on New York City streets, fleeing surfacing shadows—figures from the past and Skinless flashbacks, PTSD flares that render her formless—tilting the present into a waking nightmare.
Yet that reflective line keeps time, offering spiritual ground born of metaphysical and hard‑earned experience. In the end, the click of Charmay’s heels on New York City pavement becomes the pickup into the next song.
For readers who love literary noir, psychological suspense— with a hard‑boiled edge— and honest first person narrative.
Watch the Skinless Book sizzle (40s)- NYC Psychological Crime Noir
SKINLESS: The Music
From Songs to Story: NYC Psychological Crime Noir
This novel has a companion album, Skinless: Songs from the Book (Charmay & Maggie Moor), featuring songs written and performed by Charmay in the story—lush downtempo, jazz, and chill‑out electronica that extends the world of Charmay: New York Noir.
Watch the Skinless Trailer with Music from the Book
Go Deeper into the World of Skinless
SKINLESS: Inside the Story : 8 Episode Spotlights + Bonus Content | Free
Substack is where Maggie Moor shares exclusive in-depth content on the world behind Skinless—chapter excerpts, visuals, themes, story, song, and the real‑life threads that inspired the book. It’s a space for readers and listeners who resonate with raw voice, survival, and turning hard experience into art. Join the mailing list on Substack. Free Content. 
More Praise for Skinless, second edition (2025)
What Reviewers are Saying about Skinless
“Moor’s fiction debut strips away pretense and sacrifices comfort for vulnerability…A life saturated with abuse, addiction, and the exhausting work of simply existing. What makes SKINLESS distinctive is how Moor’s prose operates. The writing is deliberately fragmented, refusing the neat architecture of conventional storytelling. For readers willing to inhabit a chaotic interior landscape, Skinless offers something rare: a portrait of survival that doesn’t sanitize the mess.” — BookLife
“Skinless is an eloquent crime novel about a woman’s relentless desire to survive… Most of the book’s sentences vacillate between beauty and despair. Charmay expresses euphoria, sadness, anxiety, and anger as she shows off her raw will to live… her street poetry highlights the city’s colors and sensations in lush, sensual language. A humane portrait of often inhuman actions, Skinless is an eloquent crime novel about a woman’s relentless desire to survive.”— Benjamin Welton, Foreword Reviews
“A humane, unsparing portrait—wringing hope from the drug‑drenched, sex‑soaked streets of 1990s New York City.” — Danielle Ballantyne, Foreword Reviews (Interview)
“Lyrical and unflinchingly honest, Skinless is a psychological portrait of trauma, trust, and the courage it takes to face your own truth. Perfect for readers who love the raw brilliance of The Bell Jar and the restless energy of Kerouac.” — Goodreads, 5★
“Raw, poetic, and fearless. Voice cuts to the bone. An unflinching act of emotional courage; both visceral and lyrical. Will stay with me.” — Goodreads, 5★
“Maggie Moor has a voice unlike any I’ve ever encountered—both hip and illuminating, a voice that lifts the mind to a place it’s never been.”—Kate Lardner, author of Shut Up He Explained: The Memoir of a Blacklisted Kid
“Skinless is a revelation. Meet Charmay. Skinless is also a revolution—of survival… In a word, Skinless is a stunner.”—Stacey Donovan, writer, editor, ghostwriter; author of Dive and The Red Shoe Diaries book series
“Skinless immerses you in a voice. Duality between Charmay and Cindy…fighting for space inside one woman. Like living in a story than just reading one.”—Goodreads 5 ⭐️ (sec. ed 2025)
“This book isn’t easy but it’s unforgettable. Skinless feels like standing in front of a mirror and finally seeing everything you’ve been trying to hide. Charmay’s story is painful, messy, and beautiful all at once. She’s not perfect, and that’s what makes her so real. I saw pieces of myself in her, the way she tries to be strong even when she’s breaking, the way she builds a mask just to make it through another day. Maggie Moor writes with such truth it almost hurts. Her words don’t feel like fiction; they feel like life. What I love most is how this book doesn’t rush the healing. It lets it be slow, uneven, human. Because that’s how it really is. By the time I finished, I felt this strange mix of sadness and peace. Skinless doesn’t just tell you that you can survive, it makes you believe it.”— Baikinf, Goodreads Reviewer, 5⭐️ (2025)
“I have read 25 novels per year for the past 40 years, more or less. I never wrote a review until now. One type of novel I seek out are author’s first novels. So, I dove into Maggie Moor’s first novel with an open mind and limited expectations – but by the end of the prologue, I had to pause.
“Whoa, this does not feel like a first novel, who the heck is Maggie Moor?”— Google “Maggie Moor” and you uncover an actress, a Jazz Singer, an elite Fitness model competitor and a licensed psychoanalyst working with people who have been traumatized or addicted. Then it dawns on you, the author of this book is all four of those people plus, now, an author. Best I can tell, this is not sequential, Ms. Moor is living all of these lives simultaneously.
OK. That helped. This is no typical first time novelist. Back to the book.
Within the first few pages, the reader instinctively understands that this book is crafted like “The Catcher in the Rye” and “The Bell Jar” in the sense that we realize that the main character is narrating their own story. Neither Salinger, or Plath or Maggie Moor overtly tells the reader that the “voice” telling their story has arrived somewhere on the other side of the plot that is about to unfold but the reader grasps this right away.
Ms. Moor has taken this technique to a much more intense place than I have ever experienced before as a reader. Whereas Holden Caulfield and Esther Greenwood are recalling a chaotic time in their life with a single voice that benefits from time and reflection; Charmay in “Skinless” is showing us all of the voices inside her head and using sentences that are jumpy and twisting and convoluted in the way that our minds work in real time.
Charmay’s “narration” is raw and instant and complicated. Salinger and Plath give us wonderfully crafted sentences. Ms. Moor gives us chaotic, broken sentences that have no benefit of reflection she gives us a real internal voice and Ms. Moor is relentlessly consistent about this until the epilogue.
Did you ever wish you could read the mind of a beautiful and complicated woman in real time while you were in the room with her? Hah! Be careful what you wish for because Maggie Moor makes that wish come true.
This is a thrilling and realistic story about living on the edge in New York City in the 1990’s told by an obviously intelligent, obviously gorgeous protagonist who is otherwise a victim of mental and physical abuse that got dumped into the streets with only her wits to survive and she is very busy doing just that – surviving amidst the chaos of the streets and the chaos in her mind.
Charmay has invented “Cindy” who is a successful stripper at those high-end gentleman’s clubs that sprang to life all over NYC in the 1990’s. It’s a great story with compelling characters but I did not write my first review ever because of that.
I wrote this review because this story is told entirely from inside the mind of Charmay, crafted in the moment, thinking and reacting in real time, using multiple voices (not personalities, except for Cindy, just voices) that comprise her very complicated personality and character. This is a writing exercise that would intimidate an author writing their 10th novel but Ms. Moor has pulled off this legerdemain gracefully, compassionately and compellingly. That’s why serious readers need to read this novel.”
EXPLORE BEYOND SKINLESS • CHARMAY: NEW YORK NOIR • CHARMAY MUSIC
Book Series: Charmay: New York Noir
Voice Forward Psychological Crime Noir
Street poetry. Beauty. Danger. Survival.
Charmay: New York Noir is dark, character‑driven literary psychological suspense series about a female songwriter navigating trauma, addiction, and crime in the shadows of New York City and beyond. Each standalone book follows her through the entertainment industry, the search for intimacy, the quest to heal…where performance and self blur, trauma lingers, and she refuses to disappear—beginning with Book 1, Skinless. Each book has a companion album.
Book 2, UPCOMING: Singer‑songwriter—now a covert PI—Charmay is drawn into a director’s mind games; art blurs with life, the bottle beckons, and a near‑death spiral leaves her with a final choice.
Contact Maggie Moor for More…Chapters/ TV Bible/ Film (Link in Footer)
Charmay Music
One drops from Book 2 of Charmay: New York Noir is available now: Music & Video:
Spiderwebb by Artist Charmay (written and performed by Maggie Moor)
Available on Apple Music, Spotify. Official video on Youtube.
Charmay—stepping off the page into noir electronic chillout. Maggie Moor creates moody, cinematic torch songs and images from Skinless and Charmay: New York Noir.
Keep watch for upcoming tracks, videos, and books.
Charmay’s debut single: “Spiderwebb” + three tracks from “Skinless: Songs from the Book”: torchy, evocative electronica and cinematic downtempo to offset Maggie Moor’s signature jazz-blues poetic singer-songwriter sound, featuring acclaimed soloists. Charmay is produced by Mark White (Spin Doctors) and Aaron Monroe (Missy Elliott). New York Noir.