Life on Mars (Take Away the Saints Anthology)

Interview

Ok, wow Robyn, that was some trip! I want to make a comparison of styles here, but we'll do that in a second, because I love hearing about everyone's background in noir. So, do you remember the first time you encountered the noir style? What was your initial reaction?

Let me think. To be completely honest with you, my noir experience is strictly cinematic. Movies like: Taxi Driver, Don't Bother to Knock, The Asphalt Jungle, Blade Runner...Mercury Plains. I only know noir by the movies. What little I did read, belonged to Elmore Leonard. (That man's a writing genius.) The visuals of noir in film is stark and stunning. I love shadowplay and silhouettes. A good old black and white melodrama.

The style of Life on Mars reminds me of the hardcore, cut-up, stream-of-conscious that William Burroughs and J.G. Ballard were known for. What was your inspiration for the piece? Any tips on writing the unreliable narrator?

Wow, thank you. The outline for Life on Mars came from the song of the same name by David Bowie. If you listen, you'll hear the bullet points. I love that song. One of my favorites. I'd say the tone of it was a primary inspiration. I'd also just read Susanna Kaysen's memoir, Girl, Interrupted, and was taken with her nonlinear storytelling. For me, when writing the unreliable character—I have to believe what my MC is saying. Writing the real ending actually felt cheap to me, like a lie. I one hundred percent believe Fiona. Everyone in her eyes is a little bit grandiose. I think that helps as well, to cement the idea that what our MC is seeing is almost too fantastic. Which in turn, pokes holes in the fabric of the world they are constructing. Makes it unsettling.

Which elements of noir did you find the most satisfying to weave into your stories? (i.e. dialogue, characters, narrative, etc.)

I liked trying to recreate the visuals that imprinted on me from the big screen. Solitary spaces. Slices of hard light. Loneliness. The tropes: Law enforcement and the canteen. The hot nights and a femme fatale, who, in this case, was actually our guy, Lucky.

That was fun.

Do you see yourself coming back to the noir/hard-boiled style in future works? And speaking of future works, what projects have you got on deck for your readers?

Oddly enough, I feel like every character I write has a touch of the noir. They aren't heroes. They're not supposed to be. And I'd like to drag the psychological intrigue along with me. I went for the sub-genre psycho-noir for LOM. Because horror is my nook. It's the sandbox I bury people in. Maybe I'll try my hand at it again, it's not off the table. For now, I've got one or two projects churning. A gothic vampire novella and a supernatural western. I'll also be looking to complete some open projects in the near future, including my zombie/dinosaur novel Bonedead and the fairytale Politest Little Thing.

But that's all hush hush.

A/N: Thanks again to Ian for the above interview. That was really cool. And thank you all for reading!!!!