Biography
Kelli Stanley is an award-winning author of crime fiction (novels and short stories). She makes her home in Dashiell Hammett’s San Francisco, a city she loves to write about.
Kelli earned a Master’s Degree in Classics, loves jazz, old movies, battered fedoras, Art Deco and speakeasies. She is walked daily by a Springer Spaniel named Bertie.
She credits Raymond Chandler, Ernest Hemingway, Cornell Woolrich, Dashiell Hammett and Thomas Hardy as some of her major influences.
Kelli’s second novel, the San Francisco-set CITY OF DRAGONS, was released by Minotaur on February 2, 2010 to overwhelming critical acclaim.
CITY OF DRAGONS explodes the tensions of 1940 San Francisco like fireworks at the Chinese New Year Parade. First of a hard-hitting new thriller series, it introduces the unforgettable protagonist Miranda Corbie—ex-escort and now private investigator.
The novel opens in a February of 70 years ago, in a Golden Gate city as familiar as a postcard. A young Japanese numbers runner is murdered in Chinatown during New Year and a fundraising festival for China war relief. The cops and the brass want Eddie Takahashi forgotten, swept away. A casualty of the Sino-Japanese War. A legacy of Nanking.
But Miranda saw him die … and she’ll do whatever it takes to discover the truth.
"Children's Day", a short story prequel to CITY OF DRAGONS and set during the 1939 World's Fair in San Francisco, will be published in the highly-anticipated anthology International Thriller Writer's anthology, FIRST THRILLS, on June 22, 2010.
Kelli's debut novel, NOX DORMIENDA (A Long Night for Sleeping) (Five Star; July, 2008), was a Writer’s Digest Notable Debut, won the Bruce Alexander Memorial Historical Mystery Award and was a Macavity Award finalist.
NOX DORMIENDA marks the first of a new series and broke new genre ground as the first "Roman noir", a pun on its unique combination of Chandler-esqe hardboiled style and rich historical texture. The City and County of San Francisco awarded Kelli a Certificate of Honor for her creation of the new subgenre.
THE CURSE-MAKER--the sequel to NOX DORMIENDA--will be published by Thomas Dunne/Minotaur in early 2011.
Kelli is currently working on the sequel to CITY OF DRAGONS. She is a member of Mystery Writers of American, International Thriller Writers, Private Eye Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and the International Association of Crime Writers.
For rights queries, please contact Kimberley Cameron.
For CITY OF DRAGONS publicity, please contact Sarah Melnyk, Senior Publicist at Minotaur.
Photo of Kelli was taken outside Anchorage, Alaska, during Bouchercon 2007. Photo by friend and author Bill Cameron.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many books and stories have you written?
NOX DORMIENDA was the first novel I ever tried to write. CITY OF DRAGONS is the third book I wrote and the second to be published. I’m currently completing my fourth novel, the sequel to CITY OF DRAGONS (tentative title: CITY OF SPIDERS), which will be published in 2011.
My Roman Noir series comprises NOX (published July, 2008) and the forthcoming THE CURSE-MAKER (publishing date early 2011).
Miranda Corbie—the protagonist of CITY OF DRAGONS—also stars in “Children’s Day”, a short story in the upcoming International Thriller Writer’s anthology FIRST THRILLS (June 22, 2010, Tor/Forge).
I wrote “Convivium”, a short story prequel to NOX in 2008, which was web published on the respected e-zine Hardluck Stories and nominated for a Spinetingler Award.
Do you write series only, or are you interested in stand-alones?
While I’m extraordinarily lucky to have two series launching with Thomas Dunne/Minotaur Books—and hope to continue both for a long, long time to come!—I’m also interested in writing non-series books … including a stand-alone thriller set in Humboldt County, and a graphic novel mini-series.
How long have you been writing? How long did it take you to get published?
I started writing seriously—meaning with an eye to pursue publication—while I was in graduate school for a Master’s Degree in Classics. I wrote NOX DORMIENDA in about a year. It took me about a year after I finished it and acquired an agent to find a publisher. But I’ve written all kinds of things—limericks, sonnets, screenplays, translations, essays, scholarly articles, etc.—throughout my life.
Will you ever write a contemporary-set novel or story?
The answer to that is hopefully! While I definitely have a passion for history—particularly the eras I write about, in addition to the English Renaissance and certain other places and times—I’d like to set a thriller in the contemporary world (albeit in the unique environment of rural northern California).
Do you use real people in your books and stories?
Because I’ve thus far written books based in history—Roman Britain in the first century AD and 1940 San Francisco—I both mention and use historical personages from the period I write in, as well as real places and locales. In CITY OF DRAGONS, most of the businesses mentioned were real … as are the phone numbers mentioned in the novel.
I like to layer authenticity in my research, really transport readers to a place and time, and this level of detail—and use of actual places, events and people—both helps me to achieve my goals and inspires me while I’m writing.
Your first book was called the first “Roman Noir” … and CITY OF DRAGONS is set in the classic noir era and San Francisco, a city made noirishly famous by Dashiell Hammett. What draws you to this sort of style? Do you consider yourself a noir author?
No simple answer to that one. I was born with a noir gene, I guess—I’ve loved both the era of American culture (1920s-40s) and the style and genre since I was literally a kid. Part of the attraction is due to the fact that I’m a Romantic—and essentially, that’s what hardboiled and noir writing is … a Romantic distillation of and reaction to urban and cultural angst, distilled into a style that varied from Hammett’s terse declarative statements to more florid and lyrical styles.
And with film noir, of course, the idea of seeing poetry in a rainy, neon-drenched street … quintessentially Romantic. I adore film as a communication medium—it’s an enormous influence on both what I write and the visual style of my writing.
Also, some of the greatest American writers of the twentieth century wrote within the hardboiled/noir genres, and I think you are still accorded more room for both literary scope and social commentary if you write in these subgenres.
Noir has been a supreme creative influence on me … though my writing doesn’t fit the common paradigm of noir as being either hopeless or even fatalistic. Noir is both a content and a style—in literature as in film.
Who are your specific influences?
I read constantly growing up. Everything from comic books to Chaucer. And I’ve watched too many good and great films to count. My opinion is that everything you read or absorb influences you in ways you can’t and don’t realize … writing is such an act of the subconscious, that you really don’t know how the poem you read in the sixth grade is going to bubble up and effect you!
Consciously, though, Raymond Chandler, Hammett, Cornell Woolrich, Ross McDonald—and John Steinbeck, Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tennessee Williams, Ray Bradbury—are some of the heaviest American influences on my work. I grew up with British literature—Shakespeare, Thomas Hardy, Jane Austen, Dickens—and also read a lot of poetry, which has been a huge influence.
What did you do before you became a published author?
I was in college for a long time … changed my major from Drama (I intended to become an actress after high school) to Film to English to Classics. I lived and studied in Florence and Rome during the 1980s. I worked as a trail guide for my parents (they owned a riding stable), an employment counselor and an advertising sales person (my biggest sale was to an escort service). I was co-owner of a comic book/pop culture store with my family. And I still work part-time at a university.
Where did you grow up?
Washington State, Florida, Colorado, San Jose, California, and Humboldt County, California. I attended college in Dallas, Texas, and also lived in Florence and Rome.
How did it feel to win an award for your first book?
I felt like I was going to faint. Or at least, how I imagine that feels … friends thought I’d keel over on the spot! I was and am truly humbled by being nominated for the Bruce Alexander Award for my first book, and was incredibly shocked to actually win.
What is your favorite thing about being a writer?
The community. The crime-fiction community is an amazing, brilliant, generous, and supportive group of people, and the sense of belonging I feel is one I’ve never had anywhere before. Writing itself is completely exhilarating, but it’s a solitary act … and for me, comes alive when I’m able to share the experience with friends, colleagues and readers.
What organizations are you a member of?
Mystery Writers of America, International Thriller Writers, Sisters in Crime, Private Eye Writers of America, International Association of Crime Writers, Historical Novel Society.
Why do you wear a hat? How many fedoras do you own?
For my first book, my author’s photo was shot in a film noir style, and I wanted to dress for the part. I collect fedoras—and have always loved vintage hats—and wore a 1940s grey Paramount wide brim for the photo. At my first major conference (Bouchercon 2007 in Anchorage), I was getting together with friends I’d met only online, so I decided to wear a fedora—making it easier for them to find me in a crowded room. From then on, it became a trademark!
As for how many fedoras … I don’t know exactly! Most of them are vintage. Past twenty, I lost count.
How did you learn to write? Any advice for pre-published writers?
The best advice I could give anyone who wants to learn to do anything is to keep at it. Don’t judge your progress according to anyone else … everyone has their own path. Believe in yourself! For writers in particular, I think reading truly great books is the only school you truly need.
And join an organization like Sisters in Crime or MWA or ITW—every writer needs a support system, and all the collective wisdom and knowledge about the publishing industry is found in these wonderful organizations. Invest the time in yourself—you can do it!
More of the Story
She laughs easily, is a double Gemini, a Dragon in the Chinese calendar, and her favorite colors are blue and green. And Kelli Stanley has been writing a long time.
Her first noir (a play) was produced at the tender age of seven. She played the starring role in the crime melodrama for her third-grade class, precociously breaking gender boundaries as a Jimmy Cagney-like gangster. “No grapefruits were used in the production!” she laughs. “From what I remember, it involved a French love interest named Madeline and ended with the anti-hero’s death in a dark alley.”
In the many years since her precocious literary experiment, Kelli’s done a variety of things: the list includes acting, the start-up and operation of a successful retail business with her mom (a comic book/pop culture store), screenplay writing, living in Italy and traveling through Europe, learning Latin and Greek, and earning a B.A. in Art History and Classics and a Master’s Degree in Classics. Eventually, she decided—at long last—to embrace the life inside her … to become a crime fiction writer.
Where she grew up might have something to do with her eclectic nature and Renaissance woman background. An only child, she moved with her parents from her native Washington State to northern Florida, the Colorado Rocky Mountains to San Jose, California (early Silicon Valley), and finally settled on forty acres in the rugged, rural north—northern Mendocino county.
Kelli lived in Mendocino and attended school in Southern Humboldt, riding thirty miles to school every morning, in addition to helping her parents with a business venture … a horse-back riding stable. “[Humboldt County is] one of the last bastions of wilderness in California—there’s actually a stretch of coast line called ‘The Lost Coast’—when we operated a riding stable with the State Park system, my father took people on horseback tours through the country, and he had to blaze his own trails.”
During Kelli’s adolescence, animals outnumbered people in her everyday environment. She grew up with redwood trees, which she credits with giving her a sense of perspective. And she grew up without a telephone or the PG&E grid. “There was none of the technology we take for granted—light switches, heater controls. Even the water had to be pumped from a spring, about a quarter mile down a steep hillside. I know it sounds like some sort of fable, but I really did study by a kerosene lamp. Our heat was a wood stove. It’s not that we abandoned the modern world—we had a gas generator and a color television. We just didn’t rely on the technology. We were independent of it, which is a great feeling.”
Kelli claims the experience gave her a sense of focus, creativity and a sympathetic ear to the rhythm of nature, which she’s never lost. But she’s also never lost the rhythm of the city, which she’s heard since her first play.
By the time she graduated from high school, she’d read “everything from Defoe to Dickens.” She’d done some acting, and chose to major in Drama at the University of Dallas. UD offered a large, competitive scholarship, and a semester in Italy program, which decided her. She spent a semester in Italy before concluding that she missed California, and returned closer to home.
She moved to San Francisco, where she attended San Francisco State, discovered Classics—which had always been a strong interest—“since reading D’Aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths when I was in second grade”—and is where she now lives, happily ensconced in writing and a long-time relationship.
She spent several years in the retail business of comic books, writing for trade magazines, appearing in Entrepreneur magazine, and earning a coveted spot on the DC National Retailer’s Board. “And I still love comic books!” she adds. “Batman was always my particular totem. Those were happy years. I’m always really touched when someone I knew when they were twelve recognizes me from the store. I have to do instant age progression! It’s a great thing to be a good part of someone’s childhood … or any happy memory.”
Kelli never lost her love of acting, and credits a few years writing screenplays with honing her dialog abilities. She decided to take the plunge into novel-writing while still in graduate school, and soon found representation and publication for her first novel, a combination of classical education and abiding love for hardboiled and noir. In the acknowledgements to NOX DORMIENDA, Kelli credits reading Raymond Chandler with teaching her how to write, and cites Hammett, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Woolrich, Hardy, and Steinbeck as other strong influences.
Since then, NOX DORMIENDA has enjoyed outstanding success, particularly for a debut small press book. It won the prestigious Bruce Alexander Memorial Historical Mystery Award in 2009, is a finalist for a Macavity (Sue Feder Memorial Historical Mystery Award), and San Francisco awarded Kelli a Certificate of Honor for her creation of “Roman noir.”
Kelli has realized a dream by her move to a major publisher—Thomas Dunne/Minotaur—for her second series. CITY OF DRAGONS is the first title. "Children's Day," a short story prequel to CITY OF DRAGONS, will be published in June, in a highly anticipated anthology ... more details soon.
CURSED (Maledictus), the sequel to NOX DORMIENDA, is finished ... and will be published by Thomas Dunne/Minotaur Books. Kelli is currently working on the sequel to CITY OF DRAGONS and you can email her at kelli (at) kellistanley.com. Kelli is a member of Mystery Writers of America, International Thriller Writers, Private Eye Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and the International Association of Crime Writers.
For rights queries, please contact Kimberley Cameron.
For CITY OF DRAGONS publicity, please contact Sarah Melnyk, Senior Publicist at Minotaur.
Q & A (City of Dragons)
***
Your first book was set in 83 AD, in Roman Britain. Your second book—which moved you to a major publisher in a poor economy—takes place in 1940 San Francisco, a literary move chronologically, geographically, culturally miles apart. Why did you decide to do this?
Well, I’ve already made a case for Rome as a noir-type culture, so let me throw that back out there. But specifically why I moved forward with the Miranda novels … there are a lot of reasons.
First, I knew it would be very difficult to get my first series picked up by a major publisher after the first novel came out through Five Star. And my goal is and always has been to write for a living … my dreams are not centered around wealth, but independence from a day job. So I approach my writing partly from a sense of acknowledgement that this is a business, that I, as an author, am a business, and that I need to invest my time and energy wisely.
That said, I also want to write precisely what I want to write—otherwise, it wouldn’t be any fun for me. And so I thought I should pursue the idea I had of a 1939 World’s Fair-set novel—such a key year in history, and the year both my parents were born—and do it sooner rather than later. Plus, the first draft of CURSED [sequel to NOX] was finished. So I took the plunge.
But CITY OF DRAGONS isn’t set in 1939 or at the San Francisco World’s Fair—or, more properly, the Golden Gate International Exposition. What happened?
Alaska. Bouchercon 2007, my first big conference. That’s why the book is dedicated to that event and the friends and colleagues I met there. I came back home inspired to dig deeper than ever before, to not be afraid to bare my soul and write like there was no tomorrow. And in the course of research, I came upon the Rice Bowl Party … these huge events that were like three day city-wide carnivals and parties rolled into one. The World’s Fair still plays a major role in Miranda’s back story … and I hope to write two prequel novels to CITY OF DRAGONS that are set during ’39.
“Children’s Day”—a Miranda short story I wrote for FIRST THRILLS, the next International Thriller Writer’s anthology—is set fully on Treasure Island [location of the San Francisco World’s Fair] and does take place in ’39.
So “Children’s Day” is a prequel to CITY OF DRAGONS.
Yeah. It’s set in April, 1939, and CITY OF DRAGONS opens in February of 1940, during the date of the actual Rice Bowl Party that year.
Did the book turn out darker than you’d planned? And why the switch to the Rice Bowl Party? What made that event so compelling for you?
It did turn out darker than I’d originally anticipated. Not slasher-gore dark. I’m not tough enough to write that stuff! [laughs]. More psychologically dark. Miranda is a very complex person, with an awful lot of hurt going on. Her back story is very rich. I mean, I cried when I wrote some of the scenes. Not necessarily Miranda’s, actually, and I don’t want to say anymore or I’d spoil the plot.
When I read about the Rice Bowl Party … it just grabbed me. Because, you know, there were quite a number of Japanese businesses in Chinatown at the time, and it struck me how high the tensions must have been after 1937 and the Rape of Nanking. And I thought … what must it have been like, to be a Japanese-American living there, with all that hatred and resentment around you? I mean, Nanking was a Holocaust of its own. And on Sacramento Street and Grant—the very block where Eddie Takahashi was murdered in CITY OF DRAGONS—there is in Chinatown today an office dedicated to getting the truth out about Nanking in the face of revisionists.
Wow. You must have done a lot of research.
I did. I owe it to readers to get even the details right. Plus, the research itself inspires me. I can get a bit carried away, sometimes … even the phone numbers used for the actual businesses were the real phone numbers.
Did you write the book with the initial idea of wanting to make a social statement?
Not really. I wanted to bring out the humanity in an era that is often glossed over in a nostalgic way, and wanted to call people’s attention to a war that too many don’t know about [the Sino-Japanese War]. Any message you perceive in the book I hope arises naturally … I can’t help but think in political terms, sometimes, because I was raised in a very political and socially-conscious family. But my primary goal was to write a damn good book, one that makes you turn the pages, and hopefully one that leaves you thinking when you’re done with it. I like to write books that can be re-read … that’s always a goal.
You stepped into some pretty big footprints with CITY OF DRAGONS … Dashiell Hammett’s San Francisco. How does it feel to be breathing the same air as Hammett and Chandler—that is, delving not only into the city of the Maltese Falcon, but writing about the classic noir era?
Well, every writer needs to tilt at windmills! [laughs] For me, I really feel like I’ve found my own style with CITY OF DRAGONS. February 14th, 2010, is not only Valentine’s Day, but Chinese New Year and the 80th anniversary of the publication of The Maltese Falcon—in book form. I’ll be on tour, celebrating with a party at Poisoned Pen Bookstore in Scottsdale.
I wanted to tackle this era because I love it. I wanted to pay homage to the men who created it. And I also wanted to write about a “real” femme fatale, a woman who could use sex as a tool but who wasn’t evil incarnate, not the eternally tempting, eternally bad woman of a lot of noir, both film and literary. So Miranda is both a reaction to a misogynistic tradition and a tip of the fedora to her predecessors. A femme fatale in a shamus suit, as it were.
Robert B. Parker called CITY OF DRAGONS “a stunning recreation of time and place that I greatly enjoyed . . . as will everyone who reads it." What is it about this time and place that compels you so much?
I don’t know. I’ve always been pulled toward this era. My house is full of dishware, clothes, matchbooks, furniture, all kinds of stuff from the ‘30s and ‘40s. I love the design. I’ve always loved the films. Even as a little kid—when I was seven, eight years old—I ran around doing Jimmy Cagney impressions. I mean, how weird is that? I had this nostalgia for an era that was over long before I was born. So I feel very at home, when I write about the time and place … though I fiercely guard against dressing it up with the kind of rose-colored glasses we usually do, when it comes to our past—particularly a part that we’re proud of.
This was an era of great ugliness – segregation, bigotry, ignorance, poverty, sexism, illiteracy—you name it. Most of the great social advances after the war came on the back of the New Deal platform. I mean, before FDR, we didn’t have Social Security. We didn’t have unemployment insurance. We didn’t have the concept that the government should help support the citizens who comprise it. That fundamental thought helped give rise to the civil rights movement after WWII.
So I try to capture both the beauty—the Art Deco architecture, the dresses and hats and gloves, the slower pace, the romantic dances to Moonlight Serenade—and the ugliness.
What’s next for Miranda and for you?
The same thing for both of right now. I’m hard at work on the sequel to CITY OF DRAGONS, as well as preparing for the launch in February. CITY OF SPIDERS—tentative title—takes place three months later in 1940 … when the “phoney war” has become the World War, and New York and San Francisco decide to resurrect the bankrupt World’s Fairs from 1939 … a last-ditch effort to pretend we could live in isolation.
What do you want readers to take away from CITY OF DRAGONS?
A book to enjoy, to savor, to read. Entertainment, first and foremost. And hopefully, it will leave them with some other things to think about, whether it’s the history or a unique look at the period, or a complex and complicated heroine in Miranda. I’d like to continue writing her for a long, long time to come … through World War II and into the ‘50s. So I hope my poor Miranda is warmly embraced!Q & A (Nox Dormienda)
***
OK, let’s start with the obvious. What exactly is ‘Roman noir’?
Kelli (laughs): Good question. Here’s a quick description: Roman noir begins with the premise that noir is an atmosphere. It’s specifically an angst-ridden urban atmosphere, and I consider Rome the first real urban culture—they defined it for everyone else. I think Eddie Muller [author and founder of the Film Noir Foundation] mentions ancient Rome in his book Dark City in those terms. It’s also a play on the French literary term for classic hardboiled noir fiction—Hammett, Chandler, Cain, etc.—roman noir. I decided to capitalize the ‘r’ and lift the expression into English.
So Roman Noir is ‘roman noir’ in an ancient Roman setting.
Kelli: Exactly.
You can guess the next question: how do you define noir?
Kelli (shakes her head): That’s tough. For me, noir was born in the stress—and exhilaration—of a city environment—crime, overpopulation, corruption, economic desperation, obsession, speed, neon signs blinking ‘open 24 hours’ against a rainy, sooty backdrop. The city, in a vastly different and mostly rural America of the ‘20s and early ‘30s, promised opportunity and instant gratification to a lot of people. It signified sophistication, experience, a chance to shed your identity and start over … look how many films exploit that idea, like the pre-code masterpiece Baby Face. A brilliant Barbara Stanwyck film. Anyway, the simple country life was usually held up as an innocent ideal and the city is seen as a corrupting influence. Think Mr. Deeds Goes to Town as an archetypal example. But the Black Mask pulp writers started writing about a tough breed of hero who thrived on the speed of the city and didn’t flinch from its ugliness. In fact, they tried to remake it into something aesthetically beautiful—especially Chandler, who was a poet and a Romantic—and a classicist, too.
Your biography lists him as one of your favorite authors. And I hear you have a Chandler artifact …
Kelli: He’s my favorite of all noir writers, and one of my favorite writers, period. He’s also been my biggest influence. Nox Dormienda (A Long Night for Sleeping) is titled as a direct homage to The Big Sleep, his first novel. And I’m pretty sure, given his classical background, that he took the metaphor from the same place I do: Catullus [first century BC Roman poet]. Chandler inserted some psychological uncertainty and a crisis of identity into Marlowe—he’s an emotional writer, and so am I. That tension, that imperfection and sense of torment prefigures the post-war paradigmatic film noir—the movies that led to the genre’s naming. Now, as for my ‘holy grail’ … well, yes. I own a hardcover copy of the works of Henry James—Chandler’s own favorite writer—that was given to him by John Houseman. The inscription says “For Ray, in the Year of the Dahlia. J.H.”
Wow! That’s special.
Kelli: You’re telling me. It’s probably my most precious material possession. And of course, there’s the black bird …
Any relation to the one that used to be at John’s Grill [restaurant in San Francisco]?
Kelli: (fake growl): You’d better say that with a smile on your face. (laughs). No relation at all. I hope that particular bird gets returned to its home. Although in a way it’s kind of touching that even in the 21st century it would inspire a theft! I’m happy with my own, thanks.
So getting back to noir … are there different kinds? And is noir always urban, or always bleak?
Kelli: (chuckles) I’m sorry, I was just thinking about the fact that I always call It’s A Wonderful Life ‘Christmas Noir.’ Because it is, really. I think you can carve up noir in a lot of tiny pieces, and some historians do—but it remains hard to define because it’s more about atmosphere than plot. Can a P.I. be in a noir? Of course—the literary genre began with the Continental Op and Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, and the film genre arguably began with The Maltese Falcon. Does that mean any P.I. story is a noir? No. There are “corrupt cop” noirs, “amnesiac veteran” noirs, “procedural” noirs, even “soap opera” noirs like Mildred Pierce—and I’ve just got to mention, in the same breath, how great an actress Joan Crawford was.
There is noir fiction and film noir, and films made from noir fiction. Some people priviledge one form over the other, say this or that is noir or isn't noir. I'm more French in my approach: I think all hard-boiled crime is noir, but not all noir is hard-boiled crime. There are noirs for every occasion. There are even a few movies I’d consider noirs despite the lack of an urban setting: Robert Wise’s Blood on the Moon is a western, but I think stylistically you could easily call it a noir. Same with It’s A Wonderful Life—sure, it’s a great film about friendship and family, but the guts of the movie is about desperation.
No, noir transcends content, and even form. The seeds of literary noir were planted, at times, in non-urban environments: think of Hammett’s “Afraid of a Gun”, for example—it’s basically a western. And “The Man Who Killed Dan Odams” is close to it. Chandler’s “No Crime in the Mountains” and “The Lady in the Lake” [short stories on which the novel The Lady in the Lake were based] are also situated in the country. So noir has never been limited by physical setting. It’s about style and emotion, and usually the sorts of emotions—like desperation, obsession, sexual arousal, ambition, envy, jealousy, uncertainty, insecurity, doubt—that most American entertainment tries to avoid a serious look at. You can see those emotions a little easier in the city, but you find them everywhere.
As for pessimism … noir is generally pessimistic, but small dents can be made in the bleakness of the world. That’s what Marlowe, the tarnished, tired knight-errant, was all about. And that’s what the best of P.I. writing is about.
Why is noir so popular, as both film and literary medium?
Kelli: I think because it allows us to examine those universal, problematic emotions in a heightened, stylized manner. Noir is beautiful, in the same way that urban decay is beautiful. If you’re in it, it’s not beautiful at all—far from it. But—safe from your car, your bus seat, or inside a movie house—it’s aesthetically compelling. We enjoy the ride, are titillated by it. Even the grotesques are fascinating … look at how many grotesque characters there are in noir. That’s why it’s a genre that loves its character actors. In the ‘40s and ‘50s, I think noir allowed people to vent post-war doubts and dilemmas. America, as we know it today, was created in the ‘50s. Suburbia was born, the love affair with the car, the materialism. And the pressures to maintain that materialism exerted itself.
Robert Mitchum—one of the ideal noir actors—has a line in another Christmas movie called Holiday Affair where he discusses how he doesn’t want to be President of the First National Bank. In 1949, this made him a rebel. Noir let people look at issues other movies ignored. What’s the more effective film: Crossfire or Gentleman’s Agreement? Both are excellent, both dealt with post-war anti-Semitism. But I’d still argue for Crossfire. The best moment in Gentleman’s Agreement is John Garfield’s scene, and he made every scene he ever played feel like a noir.
You’ve obviously watched a lot of films.
Kelli (laughs): I’m a student of popular culture. I majored in film, once upon a time. I think it’s through the popular, as opposed to the so-called ‘high’ culture, that real history is evoked. That’s why I collect comic books, and DVDs, and magazines, and why I have no room in my house. (laughs) But don’t get me started on the ‘50s. I can talk about McCarthyism and American hysteria for hours. (laughs).
OK. Let’s talk about writing. How did Nox Dormienda come about?
Kelli: Well, it germinated in a Classics class. I’d written three screenplays before coming back to school to finish my education. I’d had an agent, but in my experience, anyway, you couldn’t get anywhere with a film script unless you were willing to knock on doors in LA. At least with my agent, you couldn’t! (laughs). So I ditched it, and plunged into Classics, and in this class I saw that other writers—notably Steven Saylor and Lindsey Davis—had made great successes writing Roman mysteries. I’ve always loved mysteries. So I figured I’d give it a try.
How long did it take?
Kelli: I ignored it for a few years after my initial plot was drawn up. Then about three years ago, I said to myself, ‘Either do it or quit thinking about it.’ So I did it. And I found my ‘hook’, as it were, when I was at a Noir City festival in San Francisco, and I realized that what I really wanted to write was a historical noir. So I finished the book in a few months, found an agent on my first query letter, finished my graduate degree and secured a publisher.
Three years is pretty fast!
Kelli: I’ve been lucky. The test, of course, will be in the sales. I want Arcturus to live to a ripe old age!
Did you always plan for the character to continue?
Kelli: Absolutely. The books are about him as much as they are about anything. One of my philosophies as a writer is to make the characters as real and believable as possible. People will buy into fantastic plots—not that my mysteries are supernatural, at all, but one of my screenplays was—as long as the characters are recognizable.
Did Arcturus—or any of your other characters—develop according to your expectations?
Kelli: Not exactly. That’s part of the exhilaration of writing. Sometimes characters force themselves into bigger roles than I’d planned for. Sometimes a character will come in that I’d never planned on at all.
Other than Chandler, who are your other influences?
Kelli: Catullus, for one. I love poetry, and he’s my favorite Latin poet. Not for the squeamish … he can be very explicit and very funny and very raw and touching, all at once. Hammett. Lots of film noir scripts, from Double Indemnity—a Chandler script—to Out of the Past. I hope this doesn’t sound pretentious, but Shakespeare is always an influence, because his writing is, to me, the single greatest output in English. His metaphors—I mean, think about “sleep, that knits up the ravel'd sleeve of care.” Is that great, or what? And Thomas Hardy is another favorite writer—also another poet. I’m very influenced by poetry, by the lyrical. I write and translate poetry in what used to be my spare time, which is why I haven’t done anything lately! (laughs)
If Nox Dormienda was a film, it would be rated what?
Kelli: Probably PG-13. Maybe R. The Romans, like most people, were very profane. History was not polite.
Speaking of Rome and profanity, what did you think of the HBO series?
Kelli (laughs): Well, I was teaching a Latin class at the time it debuted, and I told them I called it “X-treme Rome.” They took the most sensational elements of the culture and made them seem ubiquitous. But it was very entertaining television, and anything that calls attention to history is serving a good purpose.
Any ideas for a film of Nox Dormienda?
Kelli: The film rights haven’t been optioned as of this conversation, but the frustrated director in me definitely sees one thing: Arcturus would have to be voiced as an American. I’d love to see the natives with British accents and the Romans with American accents.
That would be a switch on the typical convention! So what do you want the reader to get from Nox Dormienda?
Kelli: Ideally, a damn good read. I have a very high respect for entertainment. I’d be happy if he or she felt some reaffirmation, and maybe thought about Rome a little differently. And maybe thought about life a little differently. And of course, if they liked it well enough to demand the sequel I’d be very happy! (laughs).