"SOMETIMES A PLACE CAN HAVE MANA...": HONOLULU NOIR'S CHRIS MCKINNEY

Honolulu Noir isone of the more unique additions to the Akashic Noir series. The Hawaiian capital serves as a unique city with a rich history and people to serve up a range of different tales. We talked to editor and contributor Chris McKinney about the city and its stories.

SCOTT MONTGOMERY: What made you think Honolulu should be a part of the Akashic Noir series?

 CHRIS MCKINNEY: I’m always surprised when people are surprised that Honolulu is a noir setting rich with potential. It’s an American city with roughly 350,000 people (about a million people if you count the entire county/island). There’s corruption, crime, and poverty. It’s in the middle of the Pacific, far from the prying eyes of Fed HQ. It’s also been around longer than cities like Memphis, Indianapolis, Houston, and Miami. I had no doubt that not only could Honolulu fit right in with the other books in Akashic’s wonderful series, but it could offer something a bit different. Places as isolated as this one often develop rather unique characteristics.     

S.M.: What was the biggest challenge in editing it and how did you deal with it?

C.M.: The biggest challenge was juggling twelve other different personalities and work processes. It felt like middle management, which I’d never really done before. I just tried my best to be nice and supportive without resorting to corporatespeak. I helped the contributors who sought or needed help, and I left the ones who didn’t want my hands all over their work to their own devices. It got a little scary when the deadline began to loom, but I’m neurotic about time, so I just had to remind myself to chill out and trust the writers.  

S.M.: Family plays an important factor in many of the stories. Is their something about that makes that idea unique to the city or the islands as opposed to the rest of the U.S.?

 C.M.: It might be in the Asian/Hawaiian roots of this place. I had this friend who I grew up with who went to med school in Nebraska. He met his future wife and was surprised by two things when he was introduced to her family. First, they actually ate together at a dinner table. He thought that was only a TV sitcom thing because most of us don’t really do that here. Second, his future wife had told him it was expected that she go off on her own once she graduated from high school. Here, it’s normal for kids to live with their parents years and years after graduating. Part of the reason is financial, sure, but I don’t know—it does feel like culturally parents are more tolerant of their adult children and vice versa in Hawaii. It’s more okay to be dependent here I think.

S.M.: What do you think lead to a chunk of stories that lead into horror and the supernatural?

C.M.: I’m guessing that was a result of generational difference more than anything else. Anyone around my age or older was taught the merits of literary fiction, and the result is that older writers tend to write more realistic fiction. It seems to me that fiction workshops are far more welcoming of genre fiction now. The two youngest contributors went with horror and the supernatural, which I suspected would be the case. When the world one grows up in is kind of unreal, I think it’s naturally reflected in one’s fiction.   

S.M.: How did the idea for your story "The Gaijin" come about?

C.M.: I’d been reading nonfiction about the Yakuza at the time. It has always had a presence here, and I’ve always found it interesting. I remember when I was in my early 20’s and a doorman at the Pacific Beach Hotel in Waikiki, I’d see them around. Compound that with the burst of billionaires buying up property here (Oprah, Zuckerburg, Larry Ellison, who owns the entire island of Lanai, etc.) over recent years—it got me thinking. Wouldn’t Honolulu be a good place for people with power to indulge in outrageous and illegal fetishes? It’s certainly not a suggestion, but it would kind of make sense because it’s so far away from the rest of the US.

S.M.: What is the biggest misconception about the islands?

C.M.: That’s a tough one. I’d say it’s a dead heat between we’re all Hawaiian or that Hawaii is a lazy paradise. We’re not all Hawaiian. The majority of us are descendants of Asians who came here to work as indentured servants as far back as the mid 1800’s while the actual Hawaiian population was decimated by disease, which is why labor was desperately needed in the first place. Also, this is not a lazy paradise. If one judges the toughness of a place based on the amount of professional fighters it produces (MMA, boxing, even sumo), then Hawaii is up there. Paradise does not produce people who get punched in the face for a living. The opposite of paradise produces that. 

S.M.: "Mana" is a term that pops up in many of the stories. How would you describe it?

C.M.: It’s a word with Hawaiian and, more broadly, Polynesian roots. Sometimes it can mean inner power or strength. Sometimes a place can have mana, the sense that magic flows through it, like Mauna Kea on the Big Island. When I was a kid, I feel like the word was thrown around in the context of the first definition more. “Mana” was the amount of potential violent energy that flowed through an individual. The first time I played a video game and saw the word in reference to a blue bar of a finite amount magic points, I remember cracking up. It wasn’t a terrible interpretation. Now, I hear the word used with the second definition more. I think it’s because the more we lose that’s sacred, the more the word means.