You can find out all you might want to know about Christa AT HER WEBSITE - except for the answers to the questions below… You can read my review of SINS OF THE SIRENS HERE - and you can buy the anthology by clicking the cover image below.

DNW: You have some beautiful tattoo work, possibly even more than I have, which I don’t get to say all that often. I’m particularly taken by the large piece on your back. I know (because I get the same thing) that people must ask you the Ray Bradbury question - do the tattoos tell a story, are they all unique stories. I’m not going to ask that, exactly. I’m going to ask you to tell me what they mean to you. What you feel when you get them and how you choose what art to spend your life with. I want to know when you go to bed at night dressed in the tattoos (and likely not much else) if you feel them. In other words, forget questions and tell me about why tattoos move you.

CF: My tattoos are very personal. They are for me and no one else. Because
tattoos are forever, I wanted to create an overall theme that was both beautiful and timeless, totally unrelated to any kind of trend or pop-culture imagery. In ten years, the obligatory faux-tribal tramp stamp above the butt crack that seems so popular now will be as laughably passé as a unicorn in the bikini zone. My art is mostly taken from turn of the century natural history prints. I love birds, especially hummingbirds, who are little and feisty like me. Hummingbirds will attack a bird ten times
their size to defend their territory. If I had to pick a totem animal it would definitely be the hummingbird.

The winged typewriter on my belly is particularly significant. I got that when I decided to have my tubes tied. It was a way of celebrating my choice to make books instead of babies.

I do not like pain and can’t say that I particularly enjoy the tattooing process, but I think it’s a good thing that tattooing hurts because it means you have to earn your ink. There are already have far too many lame, poorly chosen tattoos out there. Imagine how much worse it would be if the process
didn’t hurt.

DNW: After Anne Rice brought them so far forward in the world of fiction, vampires shifted roles in fiction and became just characters – and the stories went their merry way with the vamps in tow, there- but incidental. Your fiction deals with roles of dominance and submission in much that same way. The stories aren’t about dominance, or submission – or not JUST about those
things, but are about people who very believably live and breathe within that world. I think this makes a great segment of your audience uncomfortable, and yet drags them back for more. What I see in this is absolute familiarity and comfort with a level of life and experience most folks would see as out on the edge. That all said (a mouthful, huh?) what freedom do you think the diversified life and experience you’ve managed to string together has given you to push even farther? Does the level of
gritty reality you can bring to most people’s edge give you a new horizon - somewhere further out? Feel free to talk about any of this …I’m sort of fishing for the right question.

CF: I’m not exactly sure what you are asking here, but it is true that my standards of what is extreme are pretty different than what obscenity laws refer to as “community standards.” Things that seem edgy and extreme to most people seem completely normal and ordinary to me. I’ve had problems in the past with editors asking me to “go extreme” and “push the boundaries” only
to discover later that what they really meant was push their boundaries, not my own. I push most normal people’s boundaries just by existing.

DNW: You are the first woman to be published by Hard Case Crime. Your novelization of Snakes on a Plane is award-winning. I’ve read others of your works, and they cover a lot of ground. Is there one genre you feel more comfortable in, or that you’d enjoy embracing more fully? What makes you happiest when you’re working on it - why?

CF: I have been gradually moving away from the supernatural for years in my writing, working more and more in that gray zone between horror and crime fiction. Eventually and without really planning to defect, I found myself fully grounded on the side of real-world crime fiction. I’m currently loving reading and writing hardboiled pulp and noir. The darker sensibility is still there in my work and always will be, but I’m much more interested in exploring concrete human darkness than imaginary evil. The stories in SINS are all older reprints (plus an older unpublished SF piece) and not really indicative of my current body of work. For anyone interested in what I’m doing now, check out an anthology called A HELL OF A WOMAN edited by Megan Abbott or my new novel MONEY SHOT.

DNW: This isn’t the first all woman anthology or collection I’ve seen over the years (Sins of the Sirens, I mean). In this volume, as in others, there is a level of raw tension on an emotional level that seems unique to the ladies. It’s not a difference you could put your finger on and hold it still to point it out, but its there. Even when stories have little or no erotic content, there are sensual undertones, and even when communication in a story seems simple, there are levels of complexity running beneath the surface. The question, I guess, is do you see that? Do you have thoughts on whether men and women have fundamental differences in their approach to art and life? Is the difference real, or is it something that seems real because of the theme of this book, and the particular voices chosen to speak through it? For me, the difference is seems tangible and pronounced…and it has nothing to do with quality and everything to do with focus and emotion.
Simply put…do you see a difference between the writings of men, in general, and those of women - if so, is it a problem, or a strength, and how do you deal with that difference in your own work?

CF: The fact is, the type of fiction that I like to read is written primarily by men. You see, Mystery/Crime fiction tends to be divided into “cozy” (meaning more traditional mysteries in which there is little or no sex, swearing or on-screen violence) and “noir” (meaning all of the above and plenty of it.) This split is not unlike the splatterpunk vs. traditional horror battle that raged through the eighties and early nineties. There is an implied gender dichotomy underlying this division. In other words noir is seen as male while cozy is female.

There are female authors that are starting to challenge that gender bias, like Megan Abbott and Vicki Hendricks, but hardboiled and noir fiction is still very much a boys club, much more so than horror. The fact that I’m the first woman to be published by Hard Case Crime tells you that female noir authors still have a long way to go before we will be seen not as some kind of novelty act but simply as legitimate equal voices in the genre.

When I wrote MONEY SHOT I really wanted to challenge those traditional gender biases. I wanted to write a classic hardboiled pulp novel, but with a female protagonist who is genuinely female, not just a tough-guy with tits. Far too many so called “strong female characters” I’ve encountered come off
as way too sexy and bad-ass to be real. They are cool foxy superheroes in heels, nothing but male sex fantasies with guns. I wanted to write about a real woman who isn’t just automatically bad ass just because I, the author, say so. Angel Dare is flawed and physically realistic, a normal 115 pound
woman with no idea how to kick ass. She has to go through hell and make dumb mistakes and lose everything in order to eventually find her own way to a place where she is able to do what needs to be done.

DNW: Standard question. You have one day to come up with the inspiration for a new story, or novel. You can spend that day in a library with access to all the world’s books, in a studio with access to all the world’s music - or in a car that can take you anywhere you want for the day. What do you choose, and why?

CF: The car. No question. I love to read but I never get inspiration from books. I enjoy music but don’t listen while I write. I get my inspiration from the real world and the people in it. I love listening to people talk, the rhythms of their voices, their gestures and body language. I wonder who they are and what they are really up to. Plus when I’m out in the real world I get these weird indescribable moments that make me feel all hot to write in a way I can’t really explain. I can’t create that feeling on purpose and there’s no way to make it happen deliberately. It just happens, and it never happens at home. That being said, I’m a big believer in writing every single day no matter what. Anyone can write when they are inspired. A professional does the job even when it feels like pulling teeth. Inspiration is nice and nothing beats that feeling when the words are really flowing, but I couldn’t make a living as a writer if I sat around waiting for that feeling to happen.

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