In Kiona Bluff, Miray took on the role of the narrator, and Dian missed out. I promised to make amends.
I always wanted to write a story that leans atmospherically towards film noir. However, this short novel isn’t exactly typical for the genre and deliberately breaks with as many clichés as possible.
The narrative desperately wants to sound like Raymond Chandler, and Dian desperately wants to be a second Philip Marlowe.
But the spark just doesn’t ignite, because there’s always something that doesn’t quite fit. The femme fatale is a man. Dian’s cool moment is thwarted by a bloke in his underpants on the balcony opposite. The contact in Istanbul doesn’t even want to hear the important passphrase. And Dian’s cigarette substitute makes his fingers, clothes, and the furniture sticky.
It’s only when Dian meets Miray that he starts to find his own voice again. His final attempt to imitate Marlowe ends abruptly when, after a lavish meal, he offers Miray that cigarette substitute and she promptly refuses. “Whatever that is,” she says, “you should quit it.”
The Plot
Dian wakes up in a detective agency. Two lines on his wrist, but no sign of Miray.
Instead, a client stands in the doorway, a secret agent who hires Dian to bring a suitcase from Turkey to València.
How hard can that be, Dian thinks to himself. He plunges into the adventure alone and brings the suitcase into the country. Without any problems, or so it seems at first. He only realises there’s more to it when the handcuffs click.
The Setting
I needed a city with Mediterranean flair, an international airport, and a port district. A city that – entirely contrary to the film noir cliché – isn’t ugly, dreary, and constantly raining, but quite the opposite.
My choice initially fell on Barcelona. But there was a problem: in film noir, people smoke. They have to smoke. Nobody would take a detective without a fag in his mouth seriously.
However, Dian doesn’t smoke. He needs another vice. That’s where Turrón de Jijona comes into play, a sticky bar made of almonds, honey, and sugar. And those are more popular in Valencia. I hope you’ll forgive me that it’s actually a typical Christmas treat.
And so the episode moved to Valencia. Originally, I even planned a showdown in the Museu de les Ciències, but the plot didn’t allow for it without too much contortion.
The Characters
As is typical for film noir, I’ve presented a colourful and very diverse bunch of characters.
Dian is the typical hard-boiled detective this time. Only he is anything but hard-boiled. Whenever he tries to take control, he fails because of himself or the circumstances.
His secretary is Clara Torbellina Montserrat. The person in the background who holds the place together.
The client? This time it’s not the obligatory femme fatale, but the opposite: an alpha male who tells Dian what to do.
And of course, there needs to be a cop. The role is tailor-made for Miray, isn’t it? She also finds her feet in it surprisingly quickly.
I really enjoyed Señor Civera. A conspiracy theorist who can claim to be the first to have ruffled the feathers of the otherwise self-controlled Miray.
The Dream World
There isn’t much new here regarding the mechanics of the dream worlds.
At most: Except perhaps for Tear of the Desert, Dian and Miray have so far found each other relatively easily in their dream journeys. In Tapas in València, they had to actively go searching for the first time. Would the dating agency have actually helped there?
What have I learned?
Less about writing style, more about plotting. Tapas in València was actually the first story that didn’t crystallise from individual scenes.
Instead, this time I drafted a complete plot first before I started telling the story itself. One difficulty with a controlled narrative style is that it offers the characters less room for improvisation and “stifles” their personality if you overdo it. The key here is to guide them along the plot, but to give them enough freedom within the scenes.
Sounds weird? As if the characters were alive, refusing to shoot certain scenes like an overpaid film star?
I’ve heard that this happens to many authors. That the characters develop a life of their own and sometimes just do their own thing. Well, it’s actually true.
I learned the hard way that they can even boycott entire episodes. More on that in the next making-of.