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Kelli Stanley is a noir fiend. Her first book takes noir conventions and sets them in Roman occupied England. Nominated for a Bruce Alexander Memorial Mystery Award, Kelli is proving to be one of the new hot new voices in noir fiction. Kelli joins Pop Syndicate today to talk about her latest projects and the current state of noir fiction.

Congrats on the signing with Thomas Dunne/St. Martins. What will be the first book you release through them?

First, let me thank you and Angela, Stefan, for having me on Pop Syndicate! As a pop culture aficionado (and ex-comic book retailer), I love your site!

My first book through Thomas Dunne is a very dark story set in 1940 San Francisco called RICE BOWL. It introduces a continuing character—Miranda Corbie—PI and ex-escort, a woman in a stereotypically man’s role but a woman wholly feminine … as well as my answer to what a femme fatale might really be like. A writer friend of mine calls her the only truly hardboiled woman she’s ever read.

The story itself takes place mainly in Chinatown, as Miranda defiantly investigates the hushed-up murder of a young Japanese-American numbers runner … and exposes the bitter and destructive racial tensions between Chinese and Japanese in the wake of the Sino-Japanese War … particularly in the aftermath of Nanking.

Dark times, dark story. And, I think, a serious and unique take on themes traditional in the noir and PI subgenres.

Tell us about your book Nox Dormienda (A Long Night for Sleeping).

I call NOX “Roman noir” as both a description and a pun on the French literary term. It’s literally “black novel”, and usually refers to the hardboiled style of mystery invented by Hammett, Chandler, Cain and the pulp masters. The atmosphere is less dark and more playful than RICE BOWL— RICE BOWL is straight noir fiction with a PI protagonist.
NOX is actually an homage to Chandler’s THE BIG SLEEP—and the title, which comes from a line of ancient poetry, is the first use of that metaphor (Chandler was classically educated). Arcturus, the first person narrator, is a half-Roman, half-native doctor who finds himself embroiled in a murder case with very high stakes: if he doesn’t figure out who killed an imperial spy bearing bad news for the governor, civil war between Britain and Rome might result. To complicate things, there’s a beautiful blonde who was connected to the victim ...

What attracts you to the noir genre?

Noir is really so much a part of me that it’s difficult to analyze why … I wrote my first noir play when I was in the third grade! As a writer, I like layers and complexity – what we experience in real life, as opposed to a streamlined simplicity of stereotypes. Human beings are full of surprises. Noir lets me upend expectations and explore characters struggling through life and death and guilt and innocence—epic themes, without the pretensions of “The Great American Novel.”

How did you decide to set a crime noir story in ancient Rome?

Well, I started NOX in grad school—I spent a long time in academia, between a BA and a MA in Classics. I did not want to pursue a terminal degree, feeling that it would live up to its name in terms of my creativity. So I thought, why not use the knowledge I’ve gained in a different, really fulfilling way? At the time, there was no other series featuring a Roman doctor—and I thought a medicus would make a perfect protagonist, a logical person to be involved in ancient forensics and investigation. After I received my publishing news, Ruth Downie’s book MEDICUS—which I’d never heard about—debuted. But even though Arcturus is a doctor in Roman Britain—as is her protagonist—my series has a completely different feel, because of the noir style and pace.

Ancient Roman times is a big area with lots of angles to choose from.  What made you choose Roman Britain?

Arcturus is an outsider—most PI-type characters are, and he reads like one—a reviewer called him a Latin-speaking cousin of Marlowe. I like writing about the intersections of culture, whether they’re lodged in one person or in a neighborhood or a city … or, in the case of Roman Britain, a country. The city of Rome itself doesn’t interest me as much as how the larger culture affected other populations, and what tensions emerged from its presence. And I love Britain. Always write about places you want to “live” in, either mentally or physically. So Roman Britain—the far-flung, almost mythical northernmost province of the Empire—was a natural choice.

Plus, I had excellent source material thanks to Tacitus, who wrote a monograph on his father-in-law, the governor of Britannia at the time.

Why base characters on actual people?

I think that’s part of the fun of writing historicals … figuring out how much fact and reality you can weave in to a fictional story, with the goal that they become so blended, people can’t tell them apart. Sometimes you as the writer can’t tell them apart, at least emotionally … using real people—real names, real carvings on real headstones—helps anchor you in the time, in the environment. It keeps you focused and helps make the history as vivid and alive as a contemporary thriller.

And luckily, there is enough—but not too much—information available on the period and characters like Agricola (Tacitus’ father-in-law). So I can feel free to expand and improvise, drawing on what I know and research, but also serve my own needs as a fiction writer.

You spent three years researching and writing Nox Dormienda. Having laid down the base, does the research get easier? Were you able to map out where you want the character to go in future books as you were researching?

Actually, I spent about eight months writing it … but it still took three years until it was published, because I was in grad school, went through agent trauma, and then submitted it without an agent to Five Star, and their publishing date was a year and a half ahead of acceptance. I literally knew nothing about the publishing industry, and having my first book come out from a small press was an incredible learning experience for which I’m very grateful!

As far as research goes, I spent about a decade as an undergraduate and a graduate learning to read Latin and ancient Greek, analyzing archaeological data, reading prose, poetry and philosophy, studying ancient religions, etc. etc. So my background in Classics was what really enabled me to have the confidence to fictionalize the era, rather than the specific research I did for the book. And I’ve lived in Italy and spent time in England, and that was important, too.

And I don’t know if it gets easier, as much as that you become more familiar with the tools available … certainly the internet has helped in immeasurable ways, from image resources to identifying books and articles. That goes for both series, by the way. I usually have an idea of where my character is headed—broadly speaking—for a good three or four books down the road, and because NOX was the first book I’d ever written, I was especially detailed about Arcturus.

What made you want to be a writer?

I’ve always written … mostly poetry. I grew up reading poetry, loved to write sonnets. Then later—as an adult—I tried my hand at screenplays, found an agent in LA, but realized that unless I was willing to move there it wasn’t going to do me much good. And ultimately, you very, very rarely realize your vision, because film is such a collaborative art.

Then—in grad school—I really hungered for something creative. I translated a great deal, but that wasn’t enough. Family, friends, teachers had always told me I should be a writer … so I decided to give it a try. When I first graduated from high school, I pursued a Drama degree for a couple of years, and the funny thing is that, for me, writing is a good deal like acting. I get in my characters’ heads … writing helps fulfill a creative need in me on a lot of different levels.

So NOX was the first novel I wrote, and I was lucky enough to see it published.

You’re a huge fan of classic noir films. How do you feel about modern noir films like the Chandler-esque Brick?

Funny you should mention Brick … a writer friend of mine compared NOX to it.  I liked it very much—it’s something new and refreshing, rather than a tired, overwrought imitation (The Black Dahlia) or an adolescent fantasy with over-the-top violence (Sin City). I don’t consider Sin City a noir in any way, shape or form. In fact, to me, it’s anti-noir. Noir deals with fallibility, humanity in all its myriad weaknesses, and is anchored in a sense of human suffering. Not inhuman superheroics and supervillainy.  Hollywoodland was, I thought, a decent film. My favorite neo-noir is LA Confidential—a classic in every sense of the word.

The problem, of course, is that film noir was born in the Hays Office era of censorship, which forced the filmmakers to be more creative and allowed audiences to learn and understand their codes around the “Code”. And no one who made the films thought of them as anything other than crime melodramas—usually low budget ones at that. So you as a contemporary film maker can be true to what film noir tried to do for its own time—entertain, and in the hands of the best creators, anchor the escapism in socio-cultural commentary and criticism—or you can imitate the look of it without any relevance or any clue. That would be The Black Dahlia.

Why decide to do a series and in how many books do you plan to have Arcturus featured? What attracts you to multiple books with the same character?

I invest deeply in my characters … they all have histories, and—I hope!—futures. The latter depends on publishing success, of course. I have plot synopses for the next three Arcturus books planned out, am researching the sequel to RICE BOWL and have sketches for the next four books in that series. I’d love to do a stand-alone here and there as well, but series books are both creatively satisfying for me and a sound business choice. It takes time to build up a readership, and a series can help writers do that.
For me, it’s important to show how life events change people. How experience affects them. Continuing characters allows for this sort of exploration. And you don’t always necessarily have to use the same protagonist—my friend, the noir writer Bill Cameron, has begun a wonderful series of books set in contemporary Portland – but the first two, LOST DOG and CHASING SMOKE, feature two completely different protagonists. So will his third.

What’s on your bedside table to lull you to sleep at night?

Right now, the advanced reading copy of a debut book from a friend: Rebecca Cantrell’s A TRACE OF SMOKE, which is a brilliant historical noir set in 1931 Berlin. It comes out in May.  I’ve also got a number of non-fiction books on the Spanish Civil War and San Francisco history, as well as Life magazines from 1940—all research for the sequel to RICE BOWL. None of these exactly lull me to sleep!

Do you have any advice for people wanting to write noir fiction?
Read as much as you can, and not just noir—read what the seminal noir writers read. Read the classics—literally. Sophocles. You don’t get more noir than Oedipus Rex. The best school for writers is a large library!

And watch the films. Chandler, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Cain—they all wrote for the screen, along with many other amazing writers. Listen to the dialogue snap and crackle.

What are the crime noir books that people should be reading but aren’t?

Crime and Punishment. The Mayor of Casterbridge. Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. If you expand your horizons, you’ll see noir themes in unexpected places. From the noir period proper, Patricia Highsmith is a must. I’m very fond of Cornell Woolrich. Kenneth Fearing’s The Big Clock and William Lindsay Gresham’s Nightmare Alley. And the novels of the underappreciated Elizabeth Sanxay Holding, whom Chandler admired greatly—she’s terrific.

Where can we find you on the web?

I’ll be launching a new website in a couple of months, but at the same address: www.kellistanley.com. My blog is called Writing in the Dark—http://kellistanley.blogspot.com.  I’ll be here on Pop Syndicate talking about noir, and I’m around in all the usual places … Facebook, Twitter, Crimespace, MySpace, and Red Room, which is a wonderful community for authors and readers.

Thanks again for the chat, Stefan—it’s been really fun! 

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