SKINLESS: The Story of a Female Survivor
Book 1 of Charmay: New York Noir
By Maggie Moor
A thrilling crime novel. A female survivor. A story that refuses to stay quiet.
Skinless is a brutally raw thriller exploring art, identity, and the shadows we carry. Moves with the tension of crime noir and the raw interior intimacy of literary fiction— something fiercely human.
“A deeply moving, deliciously weighty work of fiction … On the surface, Charmay might come across as a typical femme fatale—an object of desire and danger, but [Moor’s] poetic, stream-of-consciousness prose drops readers directly into the mind of a trauma survivor, where her gifts for introspection and observation make her the perfect lynchpin for the author’s subversion… Those who surrender to the flow will be rewarded.”
Psychological crime noir that breathes jazz.
1999. NYC. After teenage abuse and homelessness, a singer masks her ‘skinless’ vulnerability behind a glittering alter ego to navigate the margins of street life—until the persona begins to destroy her.
STREET POETRY. BEAUTY. DANGER. SURVIVAL.
In a world chasing quick fixes and family rejection, Skinless follows sharp witted, resourceful singer songwriter Charmay, a teenage survivor of abuse and homelessness navigating the dangerous margins of street life at the turn of the millennium in New York City.
Pulled into the seedy drug, crime underground, she drifts between exploitation, addiction, and fleeting refuge, seeking solace in Cindy—a persona shaped by survival and manipulation.
Caught in a web of money, ambition, and hunger for intimacy—clinging to an increasingly violent marriage with a weed kingpin, a Wall Street financier obsessed with Cindy, and a music producer who cuts her open to get to her honest voice. Hustles on fire, Charmay blurs to Cindy. Beats. Bullets. Bedsheets. When her identities collide in a fever of flashbacks and betrayals, she is hurled into surviving the most horrific reckoning yet.
FOR READERS OF:
In the Cut • The Basketball Diaries • Cherry • Kerouac
Multi-Media Experience:
SERIES: Book 1 of the Charmay: New York Noir series. Standalone.
COMPANION ALBUM: Skinless: Songs from the Book. Jazz-noir and downtempo written and performed inside the novel. Recordings featuring Kenny Rampton (Wynton Marsalis) and Eddie Ojeda (Twisted Sister).
SUBSTACK SERIES: Explore Skinless: Inside the Story. 9 Episodes + 2 on next publication PSYCHOSX: The Hunter is Haunted.
Trade Reviews & Praise
“Moor’s writing is deliberately fragmented, refusing the neat architecture of conventional storytelling… it’s the only honest way to render a mind trying to hold itself together. Skinless offers a portrait of survival that doesn’t sanitize the mess—it is uncomfortable, occasionally overwhelming, and undeniably powerful; a raw, unforgettable journey.”
“An eloquent crime novel… Most of the book’s sentences vacillate between beauty and despair—street poetry renders the city in lush, sensual language... a woman’s relentless desire to survive.”
— Benjamin Welton, FOREWORD REVIEWS
“Shelved as a must-read… Moor tells Charmay’s experiences with abuse and betrayal in stark, unsentimental prose.”
Reader & Interview Highlights
“A humane, unsparing portrait—wringing hope from the drug-drenched, sex-soaked streets of 1990s New York City.”
— D. Ballantyne, Foreword, Clarion Interview
“Lyrical and unflinchingly honest… raw brilliance with the restless energy of Kerouac.”
— Goodreads, 5★
Reader Spotlight
“I’ve read 25 novels a year for 40 years. I never wrote a review—until now.
Moor drops you inside Charmay’s mind in real time—
sentences that break, loop, and collide the way thought actually moves.
You don’t observe this character—you’re inside her.
It’s not just the story. It’s the execution.
That’s why serious readers need to read this novel.”
—MMcLaughlin, Where Y’at, AVL Music
4.6★ on Goodreads
Reader Praise
“Skinless is not an easy read, and that’s exactly why it matters.” — 5★
“Being dropped inside a living nervous system.” — 5★
“Raw, poetic, and fearless—a voice that cuts to the bone.” — 5★
“You don’t read this book, you feel it.” — 5★
Enter the World
Charmay | Cindy
Charmay
Hard-boiled, but skinless.
Writing songs from hidden pain.
A velvet-voiced singer and survivor of childhood abuse and teenage homelessness— navigating family rejection and
searching for protection from a violent marriage and a transactional “father figure.”
To endure, she fractures—
building Cindy to protect the exposed core she calls Little Trash Girl and Rainbow Girl.
Cindy
A glittering double—elegant, high-earning, a magnet for power.
She turns trauma into performance,
using the external gaze as armor—
until Cindy begins to destroy its Charmay.
Men, Power, and the Quest for Protection
Sam Black
A Cuban-American filmmaker bankrolling his art through the New York underground.
Magnetic and volatile—
he and Charmay ignite in a fever of passion and “urban heat.”
Until his hunger for control turns love
into a dangerous game of ego and betrayal.
Eddie Cruise
A legendary producer navigating an industry that chews up its stars.
Mercurial and demanding—
he pushes Charmay to strip away the façade
and sing from her “skinless” core.
A path to stardom—
at a cost she may not survive.
Rex Raven
A Wall Street mogul who pulls Cindy from the club into a world of Chanel and “Harvard money.”
To him, she is the perfect femme fatale.
To Charmay, a transactional escape—and the “father figure” she longs for.
Power, desire, and control blur into dangerous trickery.
Jesse Boy
A judge’s son turned East Village drummer,
moving between the high-end and the gutter.
He threads the players together—
introducing Charmay to Eddie and Sam
as small-time scores spiral into violence.
Never clear if he’s loyal—
or playing his own game.
NYC 1999
Skinless pulls you into a street-poetry rhythm—a fever dream where the energy of 1999 Manhattan masks a dark, comic underworld.
From Chanel boutiques to gentlemen’s clubs, Tribeca lofts to basement haunts, the line between ambition and illusion begins to blur.
THE CHORUS OF THE CITY
Across a landscape “off its orbit,” Charmay moves through a cast of grifters, suits, and “family snipers.” Eddie Cruise pushes her voice to the raw. Rex Raven opens glittering doors that double as traps. Sam Black offers a dangerous kind of trust.
Wandering from dives to penthouses, to after-hours sessions and open mics, we live in the high-contrast luxury and hidden fantasies of a city split between hudden exposure and grotesque performance.
Surrounded by a chorus of dark urban relief vying for a role to support the desparate, sick, and glamorous. Drs.” and “Doggies,” vampiric maître d’s, frank waiters, diamond reps who treat the hustle like theater, late night club patrons, and criss cross swingers.
THE INNER VOICES
Woven through the noise is a steady voice— speaking from the other side of the trauma. But in the present, Charmay is running. She writes songs in rock-bottom moments on New York streets, fleeing the “Skinless” flashbacks and PTSD flares that tilt her life into a waking nightmare. In the end, the click of her heels on pavement
carries her forward—into the unknown.
The Music
Skinless: Songs from the Book
Tracks by Charmay/Maggie Moor with Kenny Rampton, Mark White, Eddie Ojeda, and Aaron Monroe.
Apple Music • Spotify
SKINLESS: INSIDE THE STORY
9 Episodes + Bonus Music Features
Read exclusive insights, chapter excerpts, and more on SKINLESS.
SKINLESS OFFICIAL TRAILER
THE AUTHOR
Maggie Moor is a multi-faceted artist, a Gradiva-nominated clinician, a national-level figure athlete, a wellness expert, and a vitality visionary in mind-body healing. Her diverse background—working in trauma and addiction with female inmates at Rikers Island, working private investigations on the streets of New York City, and performing on stage as a singer-songwriter with legendary jazz and rock royalty—all converge to form her psychological suspense series, Charmay: New York Noir. Written from a raw, first-person perspective that places you deep inside the mind like a memoir, this is a world where the NYC underground meets the sharp precision of a psychoanalyst and the jazz-pulse of a siren.
BEYOND SKINLESS
Charmay: New York Noir
PSYCHOSX: The Hunter is Haunted publishes October 11.
