Interview with Brian Thornton

Never met a friendlier and more helpful fellow at a conference. I'd like to introduce to you Brian Thornton. And if you are a presence at all at conferences of the mystery variety or associated with mystery writing out there, you've probably already met him. I met him first online and we spotted each other at Bouchercon.

Brian Thornton's short fiction has appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Shred of Evidence, and (the sadly now-defunct) Bullet Uk. He's also the author of several full-length works of non-fiction, including 101 Things You Didn't Know About Lincoln (Adams Media 2005). He has a Master's degree in history, and his historical articles and book reviews have appeared in Columbia: The Magazine Of Northwest History And The Pacific Northwest Forum. Brian is currently at work on a new historical mystery set in 19th century Washington, DC. He is an unabashed fan of both noir fiction and film noir, has the honor to serve as the current chapter president for the Northwest Chapter of the Mystery Writers of America, and makes his home in the Seattle area. He can be reached at: http://crimespace.ning.com/profile/BrianThornton

THE INTERVIEW

Let's hear about 101 Things You Didn't Know About Lincoln? What interested you about the subject? Are you a history buff or do you consider yourself an historian?

Thornton: Both. I've got the training and the advanced degree (MA) to hang on the wall. But "historians" are a funny lot: they self-segregate to such an interesting degree. When I was in grad school, academic historians (usually people with PhDs and tenure teaching at some university) used to look down on people like Barbara W. Tuchman (no advanced degree, Pulitzer prizes, off-the-chart book sales) and dismiss them as "popularizers" of history. I found that maddening. My advisor in grad school used to joke that the definition of "historian" was "someone who bones up on a tiny segment of the historical record and then writes lengthy tomes in fusty prose that no one reads." Imagine my surprise when I began my course of study and quickly realized that while the remark was funny, she wasn't joking, she was just referring to academic historians. As for me, I'm a history geek. I'm trained to do historical analysis, but my interests run wide and occasionally deep, and you're never going to see anything I've written published in THE WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY or THE JOURNAL OF AMERICAN HISTORY.

As for the Lincoln book, I'm an unabashed, life-long admirer of the man, and this book was a joy to write (It's still my favorite among all of the books on which I've worked). One of my grandmothers was a southerner who was proud to have been born on Lincoln's birthday, and I think that speaks volumes about how far this country has come since 1865. I dedicated the book to this grandmother and to my other one, a life-long Democrat who allowed that Lincoln was the only Republican for whom she would have ever voted.

I noticed you have also authored The Everything Kid's States Book and The Everything Kid's Presidents Book as well as Teacher Miracles: Inspirational True Stories From the Classroom. Brian. What gives? These are not mysteries. Yet you are visible at mystery writer conferences and in MWA. What's your secret?

Thornton: It's a bit like when I first got my teaching credential. Although I have an MA in history, I had to get a secondary endorsement in English in order to score my first three teaching jobs, because there was more demand for English teachers than there was for history teachers (still the case today, I might add).

With my writing, I have a track record of producing marketable nonfiction, and that means that I get my share of offers to write nonfiction stuff at a pretty nice salary rate. I made more money with my first book than most first-time fiction writers earn with theirs.

Since I'm a teacher (and get paid like one), that sort of scratch is tough to pass up. This is why I've juggled nonfiction and fiction for the past few years. Also, for the record, TEACHER MIRACLES is an anthology. I wrote one story and edited the rest. Note that I didn't say that I "only edited" the rest. That job involves a ton of work, and my hat is off to every editor who is good at their job.

Let's hear about the short stories. Do you have a long-term love with writing short?

Thornton: Not especially. I wrote a novel before I ever even attempted a short story. In fact, my story featured in last year's Bouchercon issue of ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE was only the fifth story I'd ever written. I began writing short stories on the advice of friend and uberwriter (Edgar award nominee) Al Guthrie, as a way of getting my name out there.

That said, I really enjoy *reading* short stories. I agree with Twain though that they're tough as hell to write.

Brian and I had an email tête-à-tête about what is noir. Tell us your definition of noir and why has this become your cause célèbre?

Thornton: Well, "noir" is the new black. Seriously, though, it's a hip phrase that has been beaten to death by both the New York publishing and Hollywood-based hype machines, in attempts to get their product marketed as "edgier." Want to be seen as "edgy"? Then you didn't just write a "thriller," or a "dark thriller," you wrote a "noirish thriller," or a "hard-boiled thriller with noirish undertones."

As a result, nearly none of what is currently marketed as "noir" these days is actually recognizable under the classic definition of noir (as I first heard it related by that High Priest of Classic Noir fiction, Eddie Muller: "You're f*cked on page one, and things go downhill from there.").

Of course words (and their definitions) are like anything else; they either change with time or they become colloquial as a prelude to disappearing from the collective lexicon altogether. That's one of the hallmarks of being a linguistic culture carrier in today's intellectual marketplace.

I heard that David Corbett once defined the differences between "noir" and "hard-boiled" thusly: if it didn't sell much (but was critically acclaimed), it was "noir." If it sold well, then it was "hard-boiled."

That sounds like the best modern version I can come up with.

"The New Noir" was a great panel at Alaska's Bouchercon. Can you recount some of the high points for us?

Thornton: Sure. We got very lucky in that we had a cracker-jack crew of authors willing to delve into the question of what noir is and is not, in the modern literary marketplace. Good authors make any moderator's job that much easier. We had two authors (Vicki Hendricks and Bill Cameron) who consider their own work noir, one author who doesn't consider his work to be particularly noirish (Sean Doolittle), although many of his readers might disagree, and one author whose work has dark elements, but whose writing might best be termed "traditional mystery" (Julia Spencer-Fleming).

The main point on which all of our authors seemed to agree was one initially made by Julia: that as our world has gotten darker (post 9/11, for example), our literature has taken on a duskier hue in order to reflect that. This as much as any other reason seems to be partly responsible for the over-use of the word "noir" as a literary descriptor.

So what is the difference between noir and hard-boiled?

Thornton: Here's the short answer: think DOUBLE INDEMNITY or PSYCHO, both terrific noir films. In each of them you have a protagonist (Fred MacMurray in the first one, and Janet Lee in the second) who leads a pretty unobjectionable life, right up until the moment they each make a decision that is completely out of character for them: he sets about committing murder and she steals her employer's payroll. Each of these acts sets in motion a chain of events that leads to the character's downfall, and as such, they are both, in the classic sense, "noir."

Hard-boiled is easier. It's tough, colloquial, usually either private eye or town-tamer fiction.

Some classic examples:

James M. Cain: noir

Raymond Chandler: hard-boiled

Cornell Woolrich: noir

Dashiell Hammett: hard-boiled.

There are other examples of great noir writing out there, from one-shot treatments such as Horace McCoy's THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON'T THEY? To Geoffery Holmes' wonderfully titled BUILD MY GALLOWS HIGH (which Hollywood adapted for the screen with the far more innocuous title of OUT OF THE PAST), to writers who developed quite a canon, such as David Goodis (SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER, and CASSIDY'S GIRL) Jim Thompson (THE KILLER INSIDE ME, THE GETAWAY), and Chester Himes (COTTON COMES TO HARLEM, THE REAL COOL KILLERS).

Lastly, in classic "noir" the protagonist is usually (although not always) in a pretty hopeless situation (after all, many of these books, such as Edward Anderson's terrific THIEVES LIKE US and William Lindsay Gresham's NIGHTMARE ALLEY have rural settings with the grinding poverty and utter hopelessness of the Great Depression as their back-drop).

And that's the short answer. Imagine how involved the "long" one could be!

It seems that noir is the new black. :) Is it authors who are redefining (or misdefining) noir, or is it all marketing?

Thornton: I think it's a bit of both, although the marketing machine certainly seems to bear most of the responsibility for the shift. What would have once been termed "gothic" these days is invariably cast as "noir" for marketing purposes.

Just think about all of the times you've read a blurb on either a film or a book and saw the following words in some sort of combination: "taut," "edgy" "stylish" "noir" "thriller."

"Thrillers" are not noir. They are by definition and in organization and structure very different sorts of books.

And then there are authors who term their work "noir," when, in the strictest sense, it isn't. This seems to be happening far more among writers of historicals. Writers such as yourself and Kelli Stanley (author of NOX DORMIENDA), who is marketing her book with the claim that she's "invented" a sub-genre dubbed "Roman Noir" (a play on the French phrase that means "black novel,: and was originally intended to differentiate that sort of book from something like a "Roman Policier," which would be a Police Procedural.). Kelli's play on it (and it could well turn out to be an effective one) is that she's setting a traditionally "noir" story in the mean (and unpaved) streets of the Roman colonial city of Londinium, sometime during the first century AD. Her protagonist is a physician named Arcturus.

I haven't read her novel yet (it won't be published till next year), but I've read a short she wrote involving Arcturus, and although I'd agree that the writing is "hard-boiled," it doesn't strike me as particularly noirish. This is not to say that I don't think it's good, or that I don't commend her for thinking about marketing and building up a buzz about her work before it hits the shelves. For me, it's just not "noir."

Others would doubtless disagree.

How about that novel? What are you working on? Is it noir?

Thornton: Since I've finally cleared my desk of pending non-fiction commitments, I'm hard at work on an historical mystery/thriller (see? I'm guilty of mixing my metaphors the same as everyone else!) set in and around Washington, DC during one climactic week in 1844. As for whether or not it's "noir," I wouldn't say so, but I'll leave that for the critics and my publisher's marketing team to decide.

What can you recommend to newbies (like me) who are learning the ropes of networking and promotion?

Thornton: I'm hardly an expert. I guess that for starters, any way (aside from being drunk and/or obnoxious) you can raise your visibility is a good one. Also, things like Bouchercon, Left Coast Crime, the LA TIMES Festival of Books, Book Expo, ThrillerFest, Malice Domestic, Love is Murder, or any other events where authors and other publishing professionals congregate are good places for you to be. I've found the mystery community to be incredibly welcoming, and most published authors to be very free with their advice and their time.

After all, most people don't go to these things because they're NOT interested in seeing and meeting other people, including budding authors and fans.

Speaking of schmoozing, what are the dos and don'ts?

Thornton: Let's keep it simple:

Be polite. There is no substitute for it, and it speaks well of your professionalism. There's nothing wrong with bum-rushing an author you've been interested in getting to know, but it's probably not going to get you the result you're seeking.

Don't lie about having read someone's stuff if you haven't.

Be interesting as well as interested. It's astonishing how many people out there only know how to talk about themselves in situations like this. For example: I know someone who walked up to an Edgar-nominated author and told him that they LOVED a book written by someone else. It was a book with a similar title. They didn't catch that and he didn't correct them. If you DO foul up because you're nervous, you can turn that into an opportunity for all concerned to laugh about it then and later. After all, the only thing more rewarding for an author is hearing from someone who obviously HAS read their book and liked it, is someone who can demonstrate that they have a sense of humor about this business.

HAVE a sense of humor.

Cultivate positive relationships with booksellers wherever and whenever possible. They're your advance marketing team.

The rest sort of just flows from those five maxims.

In your travels, what town has the best bar to schmooze in?

Thornton: How long have you got? I guess if I had to pick just one, I'm pretty partial to the Overdraught in Toronto. Irish, basement place, dark, right across the street from the convention center. What's not to love?

Getting back to books, who are you reading?

Thornton: I've always got about five things going, in various stages of completion, and I'm working hard on a manuscript of my own right now, so it's taking me forever to get through them. Rhodi Hawk's A TWISTED LADDER (what imagery!); Megan Abbott's QUEENPIN (the best all-around writer in the field today, bar none); Michael Gruber's THE BOOK OF AIR AND SHADOWS (Lost Shakespeare manuscript, mystery, a writer of vision and skill, what's not to like?), and Jason Goodwin's THE SNAKE STONE (even better than THE JANISSARY TREE, his first novel, and all that one did was win the Edgar. Goodwin's non-fiction is terrific, too, especially LORDS OF THE HORIZONS), and Jean-Claude Izzo's TOTAL CHAOS (A recommendation from a friend, and a good read). QUESTION: Which authors have informed your own writing? Thornton: Hemingway, Austen, Fitzgerald, Shakespeare, Ambrose Bierce, Twain, historians like Tuchman and poets like Yeats and Hart Crane. Mystery writers would include the so-called "Big Three" (although they're very different writers in their own rights); Hammett, Chandler and Ross MacDonald. I'm a big fan of all three. Robert B. Parker, Carl Hiassen, Jason Goodwin, Megan Abbott, Ken Bruen, early Lehane, and Jess Walter, who won the Edgar by writing a great novel about my home-town of Spokane, Washington in CITIZEN VINCE. I wish I wrote half as well as these folks, and I feel indebted to them all, and in many ways, to every other author I've ever met, whether or not I liked their work, because I am always looking to steal another step, find a different way to say something, and these folks got chops.

Anything you'd like to add that I didn't ask?

Thornton: Yes, when can I get an advance copy of your new book? Dying to read it.

And I'm dying for everyone to. Thank you, Brian, for chatting with us. Again, Brian can be hailed at  http://crimespace.ning.com/profile/BrianThornton

Comments

[Cara]

Great interview, Jeri. Well, we always knew Brian's the brainy one.