Shanghai Noir

Tag: The Dancing Girl and the Turtle

  • Shanghai Noir

    Today I lay my claim to Shanghai Noir. You could use the term for a film genre, a literary tradition or a thriller set in Old Shanghai. Sounds like my debut novel The Dancing Girl and the Turtle. My novel tells the story of Song Anyi. She’s a rebellious young woman. Soldiers rape and leave…

  • Ghost Month

    Throughout Asia, Ghost Month is the moment to commemorate the dead. A good reason to think about ghosts and why they appear in my novel, The Dancing Girl and the Turtle. Ancestor worship My novel takes place in Shanghai 1937. Think big band and the foxtrot, opium dens and ballroom dancing. All that jazz as China…

  • Genesis of a Quartet

    Since the publication of The Dancing Girl and the Turtle, people keep asking me: what’s next? They’re astonished to hear that I’ve got 3 more novels in the works. It’s all part of my master plan to complete The Shanghai Quartet. Was that the idea all along? Far from it. plotters and pantsers In 2011,…

  • Book Club Questions

    Since the publication of The Dancing Girl and the Turtle, I’ve visited book clubs throughout California and across Amsterdam, too. I’ve started to notice a pattern in the questions a book club will ask. I thought I’d share them with you, though you’ll have to come up with your own answers. history Do you see…

  • A Book Blog Tour

    Writers hate to market their books. To stand at a book fair and watch people scurry by. To pour your heart and soul into a blog post that only your mother ever reads. (Thanks, Mom.) But here I am anyway on a book blog tour. Getting ready When my publisher first suggested the blog tour,…

  • Qipao

    When I was writing The Dancing Girl and the Turtle, I thought I knew the difference between a qipao and a cheongsam. Both, to be sure, were dresses for women. But in my mind, the former was figure-hugging while the latter was loose. I wanted to use that distinction to show how my main character…

  • California Dreaming

    In the aftermath of the wildly successful launch of The Dancing Girl and the Turtle, I thought I might run a serious risk of post-partum depression. What better antidote than to embark on a book tour? Or, as The Mamas and the Papas would say: I’d be safe and warm, if I was in LA. And…

  • All That Jazz

    My father has many gifts but dancing is not one of them. My mother taught me to dance: the two step, the waltz, the cha cha cha. She played the jazz tunes of Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman. We danced in the living room. She wore house slippers; I was in bare feet. My mother…

  • Amah

    Nian is a servant in my novel, The Dancing Girl and the Turtle. She’s new to the Song household, the lowest in rank among the servants. Song Anyi arrives at the family home – more dead than alive following a vicious rape – and Nian becomes her amah. I never had an amah although both my…

  • Old House

    My father called it the Old House. Every week he would go there to visit his grandparents. My father described the Old House as a mixed-up design. It had a courtyard and a main hall like a proper Chinese house, but also two stories. The first time I visited Shanghai in 1984, Grandaunt Ta-An was still…