Dang, Nick! That story was something else. Had me on the edge of my seat. And you really nailed the noir tone throughout the piece. Do you remember the first time you encountered the noir style? How did it affect you as a writer?

From a couple of unlikely places, actually.  My father listened to a lot of Prairie Home Companion, and my mother was an avid watcher of Who's Line is it Anyway? so the noir examples I got were either long satirical pieces with Guy Noir or short skits featuring Ryan Stiles and Colin Mochrie making fun of the style.  In a way though, I got the essence of what the style drives at.

I think the first piece of real Noir I ran into was the first Max Payne game, and it blew my socks off.  As a kid, I loved the hard narrative, ominous mood and hard boiled story with a character that was far from perfect.  It was my first encounter with an anti-hero.  I found myself confused, clearly seeing this guy for all of his blatant flaws, but loving  his character anyway.  Since then I've loved the genre, but, unfortunately, haven't really found myself picking up too many noir books.  That's probably going change soon, so if anyone has any Noir suggestions I'm open.

In terms of how it affected me as a genre, it affected my story in that it opened me up to describe the setting.  I love that aspect of Noir, it's a free pass to get creative and give loads of inner monologue and opinion that doesn't fit with other styles, or styles I have written in the past.  I felt like a kid in a candy store.

Funny, that's the second time Max Payne has been mentioned. It really was something the gaming world had never seen when it released. And I really appreciated the classic tone your story had. It was a bit reminiscent of works like Se7en and Red Dragon. Speaking of pieces with interesting villains, your villain was truly memorable. Does he have a name? Where did you get the inspiration for him?

Not at the moment.  I waxed and waned between a few, all of them being some sort of singular letter or call sign, but in the end I went with nothing. I couldn't decide if he would have a name, creating art for the sake of name recognition would be against his M.O., but at the same time he wanted to show the public something.   I think if I made the piece longer, I'd have to flesh out something better than what I have.

The inspiration really built on itself.  I had the idea for a piece like this months ago, before the anthology, and wrote a short about a guy that kills for the Greek gods (hence Charon and the coin in mouth).  Each element of him built on another, and before I knew it I had a masked villain obsessed with the arts and reclaiming the creativity of the human race one corpse at a time.

How did you go about choosing the works of art that would influence his killings?

It was a bit like the villain, it just happened, for the most part.  The piece of music I shared in Part II is one of my favorite Vivaldi pieces, and the one I imagined blasting through the speakers in the house while Cooper is walking around.  In this short, all the art killings (save for Part I) are pieces from the Baroque period, like the music.  I chose my favorite pieces from that time period, and wrote them into the story.  I imagined the villain moving from period to period, recreating famous works with his brutal work.  In a longer story, this would be part of how Reyes and Coop could figure out his game, his style always follows a time period and therefore a trend.

I got a little bit written about his Picasso period.  It's not pretty. :|

Haha, and maybe then he could move on to Pollock. Well, should you decide to continue this piece, I for one would most definitely pick it up. Which elements of noir do you find the most satisfying to weave into your stories? (i.e. dialogue, characters, narrative, etc.)

Characters, first and foremost.  Characters are the tools that provide buy-in for readers, they're the reason we read the stories and the reason we fall in love with a story's universe.  I love creating them, especially the minor details, the types of food they hate, do they use their blinker in traffic, etc.  I have almost as many pages on Cooper and Reyes and the rest of the characters as I did the story.  I loved creating the two of them and would love to expand their story.

A close second is of course the narrative, having free reign to describe every damn thing the character sees is liberating.  And having their voice appear in the writing is fun too, it's a nice change a pace from the usual omnipotent, third person narrator.  Gives the story more umph, more depth.

Do you see yourself coming back to the noir/hard-boiled style in future works? And speaking of future works, what projects have you got on deck for your readers?

I think so, yeah.  This is the first real Noir piece I wrote, so I've only just whet my palate, so to speak.  Maybe even this piece, we'll see!

In terms of projects, not too many.  I'll be expanding my Solace collection in the coming weeks, and probably some other small things.  I'm in the process of writing/revising some pieces for external publications/competitions, so when I inevitably get denied there, I'll probably post what I have here. :)

I keep my website (writingbynick.com) up to date with my most recent work, currently I'm only doing about a piece a month there, but I'd love for people to go check it out!  

Other than that, not too much!  This Noir piece swallowed up the last four months for me, and it was an absolute blast to write.

Best of luck to you, bud! The odds may be slim, but you would surely deserve getting picked up. And I'll just say that your dedication to Mimesis really shows through. Thanks for being a part of this anthology with us!

Check out more of Nick Blakeslee's powerful work in his literary fiction collection of short stories, Solace.