Event Recap: Kelli Stanley Reads from "City of Dragons" at Murder by the Book

We passed around souvenirs from the 1939 San Francisco World’s Fair, feeling the softness of a silk scarf, prying open a 70-year old compact to smell the face powder inside. Kelli Stanley, research maniac, had brought her beloved ephemera along on her book tour.

A small group was privileged to meet the brilliant and outgoing Stanley Thursday night at Murder by the Book. In town to promote City of Dragons (Minotaur), she shared her love of research and her hopes for this and future books.

“I do the research more for myself than anyone else,” said Stanley, who haunts the San Francisco public library and the city’s old buildings. “I’ve got to feel it’s real.”

For City of Dragons, a detective story set in 1940 Chinatown, she got a 1940 phone book so she could use real numbers and addresses. She rewrote a scene when she learned it had actually rained that day in February of 1940. And to keep her protagonist, private investigator Miranda Corbie, au courant, she bought 1939 law enforcement manuals and books on forensics.

Stanley is devoted to Miranda. Although she has many ideas for books, she said she’d be happy writing about her femme fatale detective for the rest of her life.

City of Dragons opens place during Rice Bowl, an annual festival held in Chinatowns across the country to raise money for China during the Sino-Japanese War. In San Francisco, Chinese and Japanese people lived side by side. Many Chinese boycotted Japanese businesses.

“I wondered how would you feel if you were a Japanese-American living in Chinatown with all this hatred,” Stanley said. This was the seed of her novel.

She read the opening scene to her Portland audience. In the midst of the Rice Bowl celebration, Miranda sees a young Japanese man fall to the pavement. Miranda, an ex-nurse, rushes to help him. But she discovers he has been shot. He dies in her arms.

Stanley’s writing is very noir—all the right details, and not a word wasted.

“I wanted to write noir from a female perspective,” Stanley said, adding that she is interested in the misogyny inherent in the time. She said that Miranda’s constant feeling of being prey, of it being open season, is something women identify with when they read the book.

Music plays an important role in City of Dragons. To immerse herself in the time, Stanley listened to lots of 1940s music. She even has a suggested soundtrack on her website. The excessively romantic and beautiful songs provide an ironic counterpoint to Miranda’s life.

If City of Dragons proves popular, Stanley wants to write some prequels as well as sequels. Already she has written a prequel story about Miranda which will be in First Thrills, an anthology featuring members of the International Thriller Writers Association. Bestselling thriller authors like Jeffrey Deaver and Lee Child will appear in the book, as well as up-and-comers like Stanley, and Portland’s own crime writer Bill Cameron.

City of Dragons has been picked up as a Mystery Guild selection, and all the major book clubs will put out their own special editions. Stanley fervently hopes for a movie. Originally a drama major, she said she approaches writing from an actress’ standpoint.

While she graciously assured the writers in Thursday’s gathering that publishing requires luck, her own success is obviously due to talent, commitment and hard work. She is director of publications at San Francisco State University. Then she goes home and writes until late at night. When you’re a writer with a day job, she said, “you have to cut out something.” For her it’s entertainment, socializing and keeping her house as clean as she’d like.

Nox Dormienda (Five Star), her first novel, came out on a small press. City of Dragons is on Thomas Dunne/Minotar, an imprint of MacMillan. “You can’t be a full time writer on a small press,” she said. But even the bigger presses spend all the promotional money on more famous writers. Stanley’s publicity materials and book tour are all on her own dime. “My goal is to leave my day job so I can clean my house,” she said, laughing.

What’s next for Stanley? In her immediate future are two sequels – one for Nox Dormienda, a noir set in ancient Rome, and one for City of Dragons. Both are slated to come out on Thomas Dunne/Minotaur. She will probably remain in the psychologically dark world of crime for a while. “Crime fiction writers write about pain,” she said. “The significance of violence is it causes victims. Victims are the ones I resonate with.”

Image credits IndieBound and Kelli Stanley.