Risa Aratyr

Darkdays - Author's Notes

I am a huge fan of . . . wait. Let me rephrase. I am a HUGE fan of noir.

I have an early memory of sitting glued to the TV screen watching Richard Widmark run through The Asphalt Jungle. The old black-and-white set was in our house in Baltimore, so those synaptic pathways were formed when I was between 5 and 7 years old. Since then, noir, post-noir or neo-noir, literature or film--I love it all, especially the great American crime novels and writers of the ‘30s and ‘40s --Thieves Like Us, The Big Clock, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Nightmare Alley, Chandler, Hammett, Cain. My all-time fave? Mickey Spillane and his quintessential tough-guy, Mike Hammer.

Darkdays was intended to be a quick-and-easy intergalactic take on the classic noir model. My first draft was maybe too brief and definitely too sleazy, but its real problem was, I never finished it. Way into the process, I had to stop dead and take a real job in the real world. With day-work and a home to run at night, I had zero time to write. But my brain was still plotting, my critical faculties were still working. I was still world-building in my mind. By the time I got back to the story (6 months later), I’d lost the thread. Who were these characters? What did they want? Where had I been going with them? I had to start over from the top.

Second try was moving right along, until reality reared its ugly head again. I stopped and started a third time. A fourth.

After 5 major interruptions in as many years, I was feeling pressure to get something--anything--out before my agent dumped me, my fans forgot me, and the narrow publishing window Hunter of the Light had opened for me slammed shut. I raced to the end of the story, turned a deaf ear to sage advice that would have made me hesitate, and rushed the ms. to my agent.

It didn’t sell--though not for the reasons I would have expected. I thought it wasn’t ready. The editors either thought the language too challenging for their readers or the style too challenging for their marketing departments. A pulp-style noir, they told me, should be an easy read.

Darkdays’s “tough guy” is an alien werewolf bitch fighting for survival in a corrupt and mendacious universe. A first-person narrative told from an alien P.O.V. --damn straight, it’s challenging! But I think publishers tend to underestimate their readership. I think most of us prefer books that demand our full attention, as long as we get a decent payback for our time and energy in the end. As for the other objection . . well, marketing is not my forte. But my style is my style, and I’m not dumbing it down just to make a sale.

I’m currently giving Darkdays the polishing draft I should’ve given it long ago. But if you can’t wait--if your craving for “space-noir” requires immediate gratification--check out my friend James' site and give Dark Underbelly and its sequel, Blood Relations, a read.

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