Author: Jonathon

I am trying to write something pertinent to THE HARLEQUIN for each day until the fifth of June when it’s released into the stores. But, frankly, all I can think about is getting on the plane tomorrow.
Therapist wisdom is that if I would fly more frequently the phobia would lessen. So, I just need to come up with some place and reason to fly about once a month. If this logic is sound then by the end of July I should be fine. Why? Because I will have done about six to eight flights under my belt by then.
The trouble with this reasoning is that I remember the last time I did one of the really long tours. One of the like 26 cities in 28 days tour that the last plane to the last event was the hardest one to get on. By that time I had taken twenty-five flights in nearly the same amount of days, yet, Jon almost didn’t get me on that last flight. I almost just said, screw it, can’t do it.
I did it, of course, but that was the flight that I came closest to a full blown panic attack.
I’m not sure the therapist logic works for me. I mean, how often would I have to fly for this phobia to lessen?
I love my books. I love that people love them enough to want me to fly all over the country to promote the newest one. I love that you guys want to stand in line and get me to sign them. I love that you guys love the question and answer session that kicks off the signings. I just wish I could blink my eyes, or do some sort of magic or psychic ability and simply teleport to each location. Wouldn’t that be lovely?

MEDIA ADVISORY
May 29, 2007
LAURELL K. HAMILTON TO VISIT SCIENCE CENTER
Best Selling Author of Marvel’s “Guilty Pleasures” at Marvel? Super
Heroes? : The Exhibition
St. Louisan Laurell K. Hamilton, the New York Times bestselling author will be at the Saint Louis Science Center’s Montgomery Bank Exploradome? on Friday, June 8, 2007. Ms. Hamilton will visit Marvel? Super Heroes?: The Exhibition for an autograph and book signing as part of her release of the 15th edition in the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series entitled “The Harlequin.” Marvel publishes Hamilton’s wildly popular “Guilty Pleasures” comic book series.
Ms. Hamilton will be at the Saint Louis Science Center’s CenterStage from 6:00 ? 7:00 pm for a Q&A session with fans and will then move on to the Exploradome for the signings beginning at 7:30 pm.
Line tickets will be available on the “Dinosaur Overlook” inside the Science Center starting at 10:00 am on June 8.
Eight hundred tickets are available for this event. They will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis.
? Ms. Hamilton will sign from 7:30 pm until finished with all ticketholders.
? An area in the Exploradome will be set aside for signing items.
? Only two items per line ticket. Each person must have a line ticket in order to have items signed.
? There will be special pricing for entry into Marvel? Super Heroes? : The Exhibition for June 8. Tickets will be $8 from 5:30 pm -11:00 pm only. The last paid session will enter the exhibition at 11:00 pm.
? As part of this event, attendees will also be able to purchase tickets to the OMNIMAX Theater at a $2 discount.
? Beer, wine, soft drinks, water, snacks, and sandwiches will be available for sale in the Exploradome lobby until 11pm.
? Laurell’s newest book will be released on June 5 and Border’s Books will be at the Science Center selling copies of “The Harlequin.” during this event.
? The Laurell K. Hamilton fan club will be on hand with t-shirts and logo merchandise for sale.
###
Trademarks:
Thank you for your interest in covering the Saint Louis Science Center. We ask that you include the full names of our institution: Saint Louis Science Center, Montgomery Bank EXPLORADOME? and OMNIMAX? Theater when writing your story.
Saint Louis Science Center
The Saint Louis Science Center is one of the top five science centers in the United States, serving 1.2 million visitors annually. The complex includes a four-story OMNIMAX? Theater, the air-supported Montgomery Bank EXPLORADOME?, the James S. McDonnell Planetarium, and the state-of-the-art Taylor Community Science Resource Center. The goals of the Saint Louis Science Center are to educate, inspire and motivate visitors of all ages and engage the community in public dialogue about science-related issues of the day. For more information about the Saint Louis Science Center and its programs, visit slsc.org

Hey guys,
I am three fact checks away from being done with the rewrite of A LICK OF FROST. Yea!
We are about two weeks away from the release of THE HARLEQUIN, Anita number 15.
I can’t wait for you guys to read it and finally be able to talk about it. I think one of the hardest things about writing as fast as I do is that by the time I’m out doing publicity for a book, that it feels like I’ve been wanting to talk about it forever.
But I thought I might talk about some stuff from the newest book, and also answer one of my most asked questions. I would hazard that it’s one of the most commonly asked questions of any writer. Right behind, where do you get your ideas, is; how do you come up with your characters. Frankly, I get the character question almost even with the idea question.
I can’t answer it in a way that will magically allow another writer to use the same process and get great characters. Writing isn’t hard science, it truly is an art, and as with all of the arts it’s not easily dissected into a plan. There are always those moments of inspiration that come out of the most unlikely places. You can’t plan for inspiration, but you can plan to be able to catch it when it comes by.
What do I mean by that?
When I was writing GUILTY PLEASURES, the very first Anita novel, I was struggling. I’d never read anything like what I was trying to do. It was hard-boiled detective fiction, yes, but it was also fantasy, and horror. I was afraid it wouldn’t sell. I’d just had my second novel in my first series rejected. If this next book didn’t work I was worried that my dream of being a writer would go down with one published book and nothing else. It happens more than you think. Check out the new novels in a given year, and then try to find a second book by that same author within a four year period. You’ll find the numbers pretty depressing.
I’d finally managed to get Anita talking to me. My police had come on stage, and Dolph was a great character and a good cop. Very cool. But I was trying to add a new character. A character that had started life as a normal assassin (though the words normal and assassin sound like an oxymoron, don’t they?), but he had found that killing humans was too easy. So, he began to specialize in killing only monsters, or humans so dangerous they were considered dangerous targets in their own right. Not dangerous because they would have security, but literally targets that could kill you first if you messed up. That was where this character lived. Who he was, but I was a small town girl from the mid-west. I was having fits getting inside this character’s head. Why don’t I give him his name, because at that point he didn’t have one. I couldn’t find a name that worked. I often find with characters that I’m having trouble with that I can’t find a name. Once I name a character they just work better for me.
I had a frustrating morning writing session. Either after lunch, or just before, I went to the living room, and turned on the television. I never do that in the middle of a work day, unless I’m done or have a video or something I can pause to go back to work. I, like most writers, am easily distracted. It speaks to how high my frustration had gotten that I flopped down in front of the telly.
I was skipping through the channels when I came upon a movie I’d never seen. It was the original DAY OF THE JACKAL, from 1973, based on the Fredrick Forsyth book. The main character, or one of them, of the movie is an assassin who has agreed to a nearly impossible target. He goes about it very methodically, very coldly. He is part spy, part chameleon, and part stone, cold, killer. Oh, and charming, mustn’t forget charming.
The assassin was played by Edward Fox. I gave Edward, my character, the same first name in tribute to that day when I should have been working, but instead watched a movie.
My Edward, doesn’t really look that much like Mr. Fox in the movie. They are both blond, and charming, but there is something very English about Mr. Fox. My Edward is very American in his appearance. I would find it interesting to watch Edward in one of his more spylike assassination attempts, where he is pretending not to be American. I’m sure he pulls it off perfectly, but there is something about your nationality that stamps itself on you, somehow, unless you are an actor and can slip the skin of your background.
Notice that nothing changed about the character I was trying to write. Not his background. Not his job. Not even the way he does his job. In fact, if my Edward had been playing the character in DAY OF THE JACKAL he would have aborted the mission and driven to safety. Most real assassins will not risk themselves. I’m sure there is a reason, or character motivator that the book has, the movie did not have time to explore. I did not copy the character, but seeing the wonderful job that someone else had done with a similar character made me think I could do it.
I think part of my concern had been that no one would find Edward believable or sympathetic. I mean how sympathetic can a world-class assassin be? He threatens to torture Anita for information in the first book. Again, not very sympathetic. But watching the movie, let me see that I did sympathize with the assassin. I didn’t want him to win. I never wanted him to kill his target, but I was caught up in both his attempt to do it, and the attempts of the authorities to catch him. It was thrilling, and I wasn’t judging the assassin character so harshly that it ruined it for me.
It gave me the courage to think that I, too, could create an assassin character that people would believe in and maybe even like, at least a little.
Well, that was over a decade ago. Edward has become one of the most popular characters in the Anita Blake series. He’s grown and changed since his inception, become much more than I envisioned. He was supposed to be a bit player, but Edward doesn’t do anything small. He’s either a major player or nothing.
I have been amazed at how much you guys love him. He’s an assassin for heaven’s sakes, but he is one of the characters most often requested for another guest appearance. He’s actually only been in GUILTY PLEASURES, CIRCUS OF THE DAMNED, THE KILLING DANCE, and OBSIDIAN BUTTERFLY. Out of the fourteen books so far he’s only been in four of them. He hasn’t been on screen, as it were, since book nine which is OBSIDIAN BUTTERFLY. Yet, his popularity never seems to wain among you guys. In my head he is so vivid that I didn’t realize it had been so very long since he had stepped on stage.
In THE HARLEQUIN Edward is back. He’s back, and he brings back-up, and we get some answers to exactly what are his domestic arrangements. How is one of the most dangerous men in the world coping with fatherhood, or is he? One of the questions most often asked from you guys is has Edward dumped Donna, or are they married now? I’ve managed to keep my mouth shut so far, so I have to manage to keep mum until early June. The book is almost out, I need to not over share. I am sooo bad at not over sharing. So I’ll just stop now before it’s too late. I’ve rewritten this paragraph three or four times taking out bits of information.
But this book is Edward coming to help get Anita out of a something dangerous enough that only he can help. I guess it says something about just who and what Edward is, that with a master vampire, a werewolf Ulfric, a wereleopard Nimir-raj, and an assortment of other vampires, wereanimals, and bodyguards at her disposal, Anita still calls Edward when things get truly bad. It says a great deal about what a badass he is, and maybe, that we need some more professionals in our bodyguard. Supernatural strength and speed doesn’t make you faster than a speeding bullet. Edward’s made a career out of that little truth.

New software installed. Computer blew up. Twice.
I love technology, when it works.
When it doesn’t work, well, let’s just say that it’s awfully pricey paper weight.
Deep into the edits. Tedious stuff. Though it’s always good when it’s tedious. It means that it’s only small fixes and the actually book stuff is fine. It means though tedious, the edit will go faster. It’s like the difference between minor surgery and major. You get cut up either way, but one is just a lot quicker.
I’m going to post this before the new software makes off with us again.

You guys seem to like the podcast. We’ll try to do more of them later. And I’ve heard before that my voice doesn’t match what people think it will sound like. I can do sultry, but it’s effort and it’s not my normal voice. I figure you guys would rather hear what I actually sound like for the questions and answers.
One question that someone asked on the board was that Boone was Chimera’s alter ego, so he couldn’t do plumbing in a latter book. True. I read the question as asked, and it said Boone. Like I said, new tech makes me nervous. I’m willing to believe I goofed and used the name Boone for the werebear plumber, when he should have been nameless. If I did, sorry.
Why have I not read through the book where we talk about the plumbing in Anita’s bathroom so I can check? Because I finished the read through of A LICK OF FROST yesterday. Tomorrow I just go through the sticky notes, answer the queries on them, and it’s done. If I go back and read an Anita book even to just look up something, I’m afraid I might loose the flow of FROST. There are surprisingly few sticky note queries, so I need to stay in Merry’s world, and not go visiting.
May I say that leaving the Jason piece when I had to leave it, was hard. So if I left Jason and Anita in mid-adventure so I would be able to concentrate fully on Merry, then I’m not going to risk getting distracted to check a note. Sorry.
When Merry and Frost are safely sent off to New York, I’ll check on werebear plumbers.

We did something different today. We did a a podcast. For those of you who need a definition like I did; podcast is to computers what radio is to the real world. Blogging is newspaper. Videoblog is television. Or that’s how Jon and Darla have carefully explained it to me. Technophobe that I am, I was a little reluctant to do the podcast. More tech, ah!
But Jon coaxed me into it by saying, just try it. If it doesn’t work then we don’t have to do it again. Reasonable, very reasonable. So, off we went to try and do the podcast.
First, let me say that I have a new appreciation for sound booths, and things that muffle ambient noise. Second, the doorbell rang at inconvenient moments. Third, lots of things made noise that you never really notice make noise when you’re using a mic sensitive enough to do a good podcast. Okay, I don’t know if it’s good, but it’s done. We’ll get smoother at it as we go, but it’s done, it’s up, our first ever podcast.
What did we talk about? We answered questions from the forum. Let me say that I add a bit at the end about how we didn’t answer any Merry questions, when as I listened to it after it was recorded, there was a Merry question. So, sorry about that bit at the end I was a little overwhelmed by the whole new tech thing. New tech always makes me nervous.
If the podcast works for you guys, the fans, and for us, then we’ll do more of them. It wasn’t terribly hard to do, I guess. Just nerve wracking finding a quiet place to do it.
Okay, so here’s the address so you can download the podcast. I let Jon type now, you sooo don’t want me trying to explain how to get to the right place for downloading anything.
https://www.laurellkhamilton.com/Podcasts/lkhpod17052007.mp3

The good news is that Jason is getting his own novel. Not a novellite, but a novel.
The bad news is that Jason is getting his own novel. Not a novellite, but a novel.
How can this be both good news and bad news?
If a novellite I’d be about forty pages from the end. Like four days or so from done. Yea!
If a novel then I’m about two hundred and forty pages from the end. Like four months or so from done. Damn.
The great news is that Jason is finally getting a whole big book where he and Anita go out of town just the two of them. There’s so much neat stuff that’s already happened.
But if it’s a novel, then I can’t keep putting it at the top of the to-do list. I have to move the rewrite of FROST to the top, where it actually belonged. But if I could have finished in a few more days, I was willing to follow that rush of pages to the end. The rewrite is due at the end of this month, so I don’t have time for another full novel to derail me. A first draft is a not a book, it’s a baby book. The rewrite is where you raise the baby to adulthood.
I’ve neglected the current baby to work on the embryonic stage of the next one. Blast.
So, tomorrow, back to the hard work of getting the baby closer to being finished, and I’ll have to leave the Jason book to those dreaming times when I have a few minutes. Which is where this novel began when I had a spare hour here or there. Some books are so pushy that they don’t wait their turns very politely. It figures that Jason’s book, when it came, would be one of the pushy ones.

I hope everyone out there is having the Mother’s day they wanted most.
We did our celebrating last weekend because Trinity is with her father this weekend.
I am probably getting the rarest gift of all for Mother’s day. Time to myself.
Jon and I are going to get dinner, then more alone time. We talked about a movie in a theatre with other people and everything, but, in the end, we decided a crowd was over rated. So, dinner, and if a movie, then one here at home. I’m sure we can think of something to do here at home.

Okay, I just did twenty-seven pages today. Twenty-seven pages on the Jason novel/novellite. I went back over my calender and found when I started the project. I have done 147 pages in ten days. Ten non-consecutive days, which for me is even more impressive. I usually have a fits if a project is interrupted even a little bit. But my muse is hitting me heavy on this one.
I keep thinking it will be a novellite because this is how MICAH wrote; so fast. But at 147 pages if it was going to be a novellite it would need to end at about 200 pages. I don’t see the plot wrapping up that quickly. So, I still don’t know if it’s a novel or a novellite. By the way 200 pages is long enough to qualify as a novel. It’s just that my usual books run between six hundred and a nine hundred pages. So two hundred is a novel-lite for me. If the book goes to four hundred that it’s just a novel, a little shorter than normal, but a novel. If the book hits three I’m screwed because it will be short for a novel, but too long for a novellite.
I admit to a little anxiety about the page count at this point. And it’s tempting for it to be two hundred. I could, theoretically, be done in a few days. That is like sooo appealing.
I’m going to go take some aspirin, Tylenol, whatever. Get some hot tea and sit down for a second. Got a writing group tonight, but it’s social so it’s more like a low key party. Which will be fun, if I can shake this headache.
I’d probably have been better off getting on the treadmill, but I did thirteen pages in about two hours. After doing fourteen earlier today. It’s hard to argue when the muse is so very happy.

This is the list of some of things we did today.
I did twenty-two pages on the newest Anita novel/novellite.
Jon and I went over the colors for the hardback six in one collection of the first six Anita comics.
We also saw colors on the bonus story, which is an original short piece that we did especially for added value for those of you who have actually bought the comics as they’ve come out.
(What does going over the colors mean? It means you look at the colored comic and see if the eye color, hair color, etc . . . is correct. There were some boo-boos in the original comics. To meet deadlines there comes a choice between perfection or small mistakes getting through. We’re getting a chance to try and fix those small mistakes in this second go around.)
Looked over cover copy for A LICK OF FROST. Talked to my agent about it. Left message for editor about it.
Got the video outline for the commercial for THE HARLEQUIN. Discussed it with my agent.
Charles came over for lunch. A relaxing visit in the middle of a busy day.
This is beginning to be a pretty typical day, except for the relaxing lunch part. I’ll try to add exercise to tomorrow’s agenda. Though the mile walk with the dogs probably counts for something.