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Interview with Norman Kelley,author of A Phat Death by Raul Deznermio 1. Nina Halligan has endured much personal suffering throughout the trilogy of books that she stars in (Black Heat, The Big Mango, and now A Phat Death). Do you think she has a tendency to pull the trigger too quickly due to her own suffering, like Clint Eastwood in The Unforgiven? Or do you think Nina has a strong control on her own emotions so that she only employs violence when absolutely necessary? I think she employs violence only when absolutely necessary. She has gotten physically angry only once and lashed out at a person close at hand, with Donna in Black Heat. She basically tries to stay away from violence. However, that is kind of problematic when you're a private investigator in a violent world. She's an emotional person who is there for people, but she ain't been right since she came home and found her family massacred. One editor wanted her to have a relationship with a cop because he would understand her world, but as a former prosecutor she wouldn't be interested in police officers. Cops are tainted and so is she. Nina is not like James Bond who has a license to kill. And Sean Connery as 007 -- my favorite actor in that franchise -- was very ruthless in dispatching his enemies. Generally, I think Nina has a strong control over her emotions, but she does break down just like a woman. She is flawed, as are we all, but she's intrepid. 2. Did you have any specific inspiration for the character "The Pasha"? Ahmet Ertegun, the grand old man of Atlantic Records; he's a Turk of a wealthy background and started Atlantic with his brother, Neshui, because they loved black music. 3. I was surprised to see that your name does not appear on the cover of the book, and that you are merely credited on the back cover as the "producer." What inspired this stylistic twist? Since the book is about the music industry -- not really about hip-hop per se -- I thought the cover ought to look like a CD. The original publisher, Amistad/HarperCollins, didn't understand the concept and had a photograph of a CD on the cover. It was a classic neo-racist shtick: a black woman with an Afro -- despite the fact Nina doesn't wear one! And poorly executed! It was embarrassing and I asked them not to put my name on the cover. They cancelled the contract and I zoomed to Akashic. Johnny Temple liked the idea of turning the book into a CD cover. Hey, he's a musician! And since it was CD cover, an author's name wouldn't go on the cover. Hence, my name only appears on the back as the Executive Producer. It's the best NH cover to date, and I used my good friend Fernando Sandoval's photography. Voila! Also, my name not appearing on the cover is metaphorical (See question 7.) 4. Are you afraid of alienating any of your readers by having major characters that are straight, gay, bisexual, and hermaphrodite? Do you fear that readers will be frustrated by not being able to easily categorize the book? My rule of thumb is don't be predictable. That alienates people. My characters all come with a set of different issues and dynamics and it makes the stories interesting, at least for moi, to have them bump and collide against one another. Fiction is about drama, and drama is based on tension, conflicts, interest, values and issues clashing, resolving, or left unresolved. If you think the mish-mash of sexuality is confusing, you're lucky that you won't have to read about Nina becoming pregnant by Esperanza, the well-hung hermaphrodite who looks like a muy caliente mature version of J. Lo! (See Question 7.) 5. Can you tell us a little more about the theme of the book's subtitle, "The Last Days of Noir Soul"? It's my take on the emptying out of black culture and politics. Black culture, due to integration, has been effectively hollowed out of any of the values that sustained blacks through slavery and segregation. The blacks in A Phat Death, Big Poppa Insane, mr. niggacool, within the music industry and those in marketing, have basically used aspects of the culture to sell products by pimping off the pleasure principles. Also, it's my take on how black political culture and black leadership, which is a major theme of the novels more so than who's schtupping whom, is bankrupt and corrupt. There's a lot of posturing -- Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton. Louis Farrakhan -- but no real leadership, because the black elite -- NAACP and the Black Congressional Caucus and others -- have been incorporated into the Democratic Party. Conservative black intellectuals -- Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, Armstrong Williams and others -- shill for the GOP or work for conservative think tanks like the Hoover Institute or Manhattan Institute that rationalize policies going against the interests of most working-class or poor blacks. The so-called oppositional intellectuals -- Henry Louis Gates. Jr., bell hooks, Cornel West, Michael Eric Dyson -- are really market intellectuals who sell themselves as interpreters of black culture to whites. 6. There seems to be some sort of connection between A Phat Death and a nonfiction book that you recently edited, Rhythm and Business. Is there a relationship between the two books? Both are about the music industry. APD is a fictional take on it, using the trope of conspiracy, while R&B is more of a scholarly or fact-oriented analysis of the eternal question: Why is it that blacks have developed various genres of music, yet have no control over the music industry? I'm of the belief that if black America had taken black music seriously as a platform to use and build businesses from, which means having a political base (for not to have money in a capitalist society means you're a political prisoner), African-Americans would be less economically and politically vulnerable. Blacks don't have much control in the US economy except as consumers, not as producers or owners. 7. I heard a rumor that Nina may retire from private investigation for good after A Phat Death. Is there any truth to this rumor? Yes. This is the last go-round for that immaculate bitch in a major text format. If she appears at all it will be in a new format, a graphic novel, BulletProof Soul: A Kink Tale of Survival. Nina is baited by Candace Winthrop, an old high school adversary, who has her bound and gagged as a member of software magnate Ferris Exley's stable of sex slaves. When Nina defeats Candace in a psychological showdown of exquisite pain, Exley decides to brand her as a slave and knights her as :"Lady Nina, First Warriorix of the House of Exley." Banished to a harem of Exley's hottest bitches, "the Cuntresses," Nina is given Tabu, a gorgeous male slave, a former samurai and ninja, who teaches her the ways of the sword. The project is supposed to be a tale of hot, nasty, erotic sex, politics (busting an international sex slave ring), and Nina discovering that although she defeated her enemies, she has discovered a taste for the extreme side of sex. To see how she resolves those issues, you may have to wait for a movie that'll probably never be made (Carmen: In Love and in Trouble).
I'm looking for an artist who can draw as well as Michael Manning (The Spider Garden, In a Metal Web 1 & 2, Transceptor, Cathexis). If not, she could appear in an erotic collection of short stories ("Sensible Sluts"). The point is, however, that I'm trying to get out of fiction-writing or I'm trying to do as little as possible, which is one reason why my name doesn't appear on the cover: I'm trying to get out of writing and disappear into something else. Writing is too much of an expenditure of time and effort for so little return. I'm waiting to see if I'll be offered a contract for a project I proposed to Nation Books, Disappearing Act: The Decline of Black Leadership and the Political Demobilization of Black America. (Refer to Question 5.) That's the only book I'm looking forward to writing. If that doesn't happen, then in the immortal words of Homer Simpson, "So, loooong suckers!"
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