I could know Nova Ren Suma, the author of Dani Noir, a little bit better than I do, considering that, in college, we lived practically next door to each other for several semesters, in the “hall of relatively laid-back couples in long-term heterosexual relationships.” Our boyfriends ran with the same crowd. We both love writing. But I never knew her as well as I could have.

Let me tell you a few things I do know about Nova. She earned her stripes in the publishing industry. She worked to get where she is. And, if she wasn’t such a nice person, I would have to hate her for meeting the love of her life as a teenager. And still being with him—happily married, no less—sixteen years or something later. Not to mention for writing this awesome novel about truth, lies, divorce, love, and really old movies. Did I mention that she’s younger than I am? But I decided to swallow my jealousy and interview her about her novel, the writing process, the nature of duplicity, and Yellow Springs, Ohio, instead. Enjoy.

Monica Friedman: What happened after you finished the first draft of Dani Noir? Who were your first readers and what kind of feedback did they give you? What was your editing process? How did you find a publisher?

Nova Ren Suma: The story of how DANI NOIR came to be is a little bit magical and a lot atypical. It caught me by surprise at a point when I was very close to giving up on my dream of publishing novels—and I still look back and wonder how it even came to be.

As you know, the usual way to go about publishing a novel is to write it all the way through—obviously. Then you get readers and address their feedback. Maybe you join a workshop or a writers group to help you. You revise, you revise again, who knows maybe you revise once more. Then you start querying agents, and if you find an agent who wants to represent your manuscript there might be another round of revision in there. At that point, once your manuscript is sparkling and polished and as good as you can get it, your agent sends out a round of submissions to publishing houses. Then you cross toes and fingers and hope one of those houses says yes.

I tried that route with my novels for adults. I started off writing literary fiction, as that was what was being written in my MFA program at Columbia, which I went to straight after graduating Antioch College when I was 22. Sure, my stories were most often about teen or tween girls, but I never thought about targeting them to that audience. I wasn't thinking. I wrote a novel, tried to get an agent, couldn't. I pretty much stalled out there. My last adult manuscript was about astronauts, incest, kidnapping, runaways, and had cameo appearances from my imaginary friends from childhood, and there's a reason I couldn't find an agent with it. I'm glad I didn't, because I wouldn't have the agent I have now. And I'm glad the novel was never published, because every time I think of it I cringe.

I say that now and sound very sensible, but it hurt a lot at the time. It was devastating, actually. I was very close to giving up on ever trying to get an agent or even a book published. At the same time, though, I was doing work-for-hire writing and ghostwriting for younger readers, really just to pay the bills.

Proving myself as a writer that way opened a door for me I didn't expect—the chance to pitch an editor at Simon & Schuster an idea for my first original tween novel. I'll be honest: I was so hurt from all the near misses with agents on my adult manuscript that I almost didn't do it. I can't, I told myself, I'll just get rejected again.

But I decided to try one last time.

Which brings me to DANI NOIR. I should answer your questions backwards, because that's how it happened. I developed the book specifically for a certain editor at a certain tween imprint at Simon & Schuster, so DANI NOIR actually had a publisher before it was ever finished. It was acquired based on sample chapters and an outline, so the full manuscript never had a first round of readers before my editor saw it, except for my husband, who reads every draft of everything I write, even my outlines, the poor guy. And to answer your question about what I did when I finished the first draft? I was so relieved I'd made the deadline, and had been pushing myself so hard all while working a full-time day job, that I think the first thing I did after finishing was crash out and sleep for days!

I didn't get an agent until after DANI NOIR was done—my agent signed me for my next book, a YA novel that I'm in the midst of writing now—so when I look back on this it seems like I did everything upside down. And maybe I did, a little, but I guess this shows that there is no right way to go about publishing your first novel. You never know how it will happen, so when a door opens that you don't expect? Walk through it.

MF: Do you know any real life femme fatales? What do you think are the positive and negative effects of this image on young girls?

NRS: I don't. The femmes fatales are all in my imagination.

The way Dani imagines a femme fatale is as someone who "does what she wants, and no sorrys after." And there's a strength in being aware of what you want and going after it, no matter what others think. That's positive to me. The negative is how others might view a femme fatale: as cold-hearted and untrustworthy, the "bad" one. A strong woman who does what she wants is called many things—femme fatale is just one name for it. I think the negatives can be turned into a positive if you look at it a certain way.

MF: In her own mind, Dani is always righteous, even as the adult reader can see her spiraling deeper and deeper into the behavior she condemns, but how do you think young readers view her journey? Do you think they will recognize or condemn her hypocrisy?

NRS: I hope they'll see her conflicting behavior as honest to who she is. Dani says things maybe she shouldn't, she judges before knowing the truth, and can't see at first when she's in the wrong. She has flaws, just as I did when I was thirteen, and does things she will later regret, as I did. I expect that tween readers will have many different reactions to Dani, but I hope they feel like she comes across as a real girl.

MF: Are we really supposed to believe Nichole is upset about Dani deleting her from Facebook?

NRS: Haha, I sure don't think Dani does!

MF: I remember the real Little Art as a place to get good lemon squares and see a movie with a real sound system, but it may have had a more profound effect on you. How did the presence of the original Little Art Theater in Yellow Springs, OH affect your experience as an undergrad? What kept it percolating in your subconscious until you set it down in a novel?

NRS: I unabashedly borrowed the name of the theater from the Little Art theater we both know and remember from Yellow Springs, Ohio, but the theater in my story is really one from my imagination. I see parts of the Tinker Street Cinema in Woodstock, New York, which is the town where I went to high school, and the town that also contains the actual Taco Juan's that appears in the story. And there's also a little bit of the Quad Cinema and the Film Forum in Manhattan, where I live now, in the Little Art that lives in this novel. I tend to do that when I write fiction: I steal and borrow bits from real life and reshape and distort them as I write. Can't help it.

As for the actual Little Art in Yellow Springs, I do have a clear memory of the night I saw one of the most memorable femmes fatales ever in the movies, Patricia Arquette in Lost Highway, playing the dual roles of Renee and Alice. Perhaps that's how the Little Art found its way into this book...

MF: Let’s talk about more about duplicity. In your book, as in real life, kids see adults lying and getting away with it. How does the society we live in affect our acceptance of certain kinds of lies? Which lies are OK?

NRS: This idea is certainly something that inspired the novel. When I was a kid, I saw adults getting away with a whole lot of things I never could have done myself, and nothing was ever explained in a way that made sense to me or that seemed truly fair. Even now I don't think I know the full truth about a lot of events in the past. It's impossible to live life without lying at least a little—I see that now, in my stodgy adulthood—but when I was younger everything seemed much more black-and-white. I wanted to tell a story from that perspective and show the fallout and impossibility of it.

As for which lies are OK, I do believe it's better to be positive than negative with people, and sometimes lying and saying you're all right is a far better answer to an innocent question than the dirty truth. So if I'm having a horrific day and you see me on the elevator and ask how I am, I'll say I'm good. It's better for everyone, believe me.

MF: You worked as a ghostwriter for a while. How did this affect your self-confidence as a writer? Do you see this as a kind of lying?

NRS: Yes, I've "ghostwritten" middle-grade novels and written various work-for-hire books for young readers under multiple pseudonyms, one of which I made up out of the letters of my name. I can't say anything bad about ghostwriting or work-for-hire writing: It teaches you discipline; it forces you to reach deadlines and make no excuses in between; and it takes away that sense of entitlement over having your name on the cover of a book. It's humbling and rewarding at the same time. I gained confidence as a writer from doing it and I'm a better writer for it. In fact, as I said before, it's thanks to all the work I did on books that don't carry my name that I got the opportunity to write DANI NOIR, which led me to later signing with the best possible agent for me... which led to the selling of my new YA novel... which made my dreams come true. So, wow, looking at it like that, you could say ghostwriting made my dreams come true. I never would have guessed when I was doing it!

As for lying, I think if I'd ghostwritten for an actual living person maybe it would have felt more like lying. Ghostwriting under a house pseudonym for a person who doesn't even exist felt plain amusing. It's like being in on a secret, and I love secrets.

MF: On the subject of lies, what’s the worst one you ever told, and why? Did you get away with it?

NRS: No way am I revealing that here! I wouldn't be getting away with it then, would I?

MF: Let’s go back to Yellow Springs for a moment. Does the world need Antioch College? Why? How did your college experience shape your adult life?

NRS: Antioch College did shape me in my early stages as a writer, but more than that it shaped me as a person. It taught me to ask questions and to find my own answers to those questions. It taught me to design my own life and be brave about the risks and choices I make—which is something I'm about to be doing once again shortly.

Not to mention, my very first quarter on campus, I met my partner, Erik, and we've been together ever since, so talk about life-changing.

Students need alternatives, and Antioch College is a college like no other, or at least it was. I hope that the new incarnation of the college keeps the vision of the Antioch I remember. For that weird, quiet girl who landed in Ohio way back all those years ago, there was no other place where she could have come into her own in the way she did there. I will always love Antioch College for giving me the guts to actually become who I wanted to be.

MF: How do you feed your muse?

NRS: My muse loves the subway, so it's been really quite happy living with me in New York City. It loves riding the trains through the dark tunnels, and it adores wandering the city streets and finding unwalked alleys and discovering new graffiti messages as if they were written just for us to find. I take my muse on walks and subway rides often. But, more than anything, it needs attention. It gets upset if I ignore it and decide not to write one morning, so I try to write every day. When I don't, it gives me the most awful guilt trips. Speaking of... gotta go. I have a new chapter to write!

Thanks so much, Monica, for interviewing me about DANI NOIR and everything else! What great, thought-provoking questions...