DeMarco-Barrett is the editor of the upcoming “Palm Springs Noir” anthology, which includes contributions from 14 Southern California authors including Janet Fitch, Alex Espinoza and T.
“If you read Chandler, he’s going from high to low,” she says.
While the range of noir protagonists has expanded greatly since Chandler’s day, its central tenets remain.
“Noir, as I understand it, is about the relationship we have walking the fine line between life and death, between light and shadow,” he says.
Fitch has been a fan of noir, including classic authors like Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, since her early years.
In wartime, the messiness of life is visible, but following the return to the quotidian, “everything is tamped down and stuck back in a room,” she says.
“I love the sound of the cicadas and the way the San Jacinto mountains rise out of the desert with their knife-sharp peaks.
After getting the green light, she began contacting area writers.
Fitch says she was thrilled to have the opportunity to contribute to another Akashic noir collection, following her publication in “Los Angeles Noir.” She says she likes noir because “there’s a certain kind of mythological feel to it that I don’t find so much in the things that I generally write.
When Espinoza lived in the Inland Empire, he says, “I often caught myself driving out there, strangely fascinated by the almost alien-like landscape – the paved roads leading to nowhere, the dried fish bones along the shoreline, the brine scented air – and I still am.
There’s a sense of belonging in a fiction – it’s a place built on dreams. It’s a sort of liminal space.
You know how things come together when you’re writing, and you end up seeing something very much like what you’d imagined.
“I happened to be staying at a resort spa in the Coachella Valley when I decided I would take on the challenge of writing a story for the anthology,” he says.
“There’s something especially interesting about that because bright light creates very dark shadows.
“I know there are solid builders and city fathers and so forth, but there’s a lot of flim-flam that goes on when you’re building something out of nothing like that,” she adds.
Although we do not pre-screen comments, we reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request.
If you see comments that you find offensive, please use the “Flag as Inappropriate” feature by hovering over the right side of the post, and pulling down on the arrow that appears.