Author: Jonathon

Happy Imbolc!

It’s Imbolc, the first holiday of the year for those of us who are Wiccan. Today we celebrate the Goddess Brid, Saint Bridget. It was traditionally the beginning of lambing season, and the first growth after the long, cold winter. In some mild parts of Ireland, and the rest of the British Isles early wild greens and other wild eatables were in the fields if you knew where to look. It was a sign of spring, or almost, in that part of the world. Though, often you deliver lambs with snow and ice on the ground, or actually coming down around you. Imbolc is the promise of life’s return, not exactly spring, but a measure of hope that spring, and summer, will come, and winter does not last forever. As part of my Imbolc celebration today I’ve tried my hand at writing a prayer to Brid. I’m sharing it below. If it inspires anyone, great, but if it does nothing but let you share in some of my beliefs, than that’s great, too. Happy Imbolc everyone! Blessed be.

Dear Goddess Brid, Saint Bridget, be with me now as I put my foot on my path and seek to create reality out of thin air. Guide my hand as I craft this work of imagination made solid, and real enough to share with others. Help me find the inspiration of your forge burning in the night and in the day for your light never goes out, the gentle fierceness of your hand as it heals, and rocks the cradle of all of our endeavors, for fertility is not just about flesh and blood, but about taking that spark of heat, the idea, forging it into something solid, because ideas can be as real as a sword, or a ring. Let me be wise in my creation, let me be fierce in it’s defense, let me be true to my message and my vision.

So mote it be.

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Sensuality and the Writer

I’m working on the edits for Kiss the Dead, my latest novel. It is also number twenty-one in the Anita Blake series. Once upon a time small decisions didn’t make me pause much, I’d make the change and move on, but now smaller things can give me pause. For instance, does Cynric the young weretiger from Vegas have straight hair, or a slight wave, that’s only straight if he puts it in a tight pony tail while it’s wet? It’s such a small thing, really, but it will forever dictate what Cynric’s hair is like. It’s like deciding whether my imaginary friend has straight hair, wavy hair, something in between. Since hair texture is damn near a kink with me, it’s more important than it might be, but more than that I now know that small decisions that are almost throwaway bits of detail can seriously come back and bite me on the ass, because unless the character is on stage a lot, which Cynric isn’t, I may forget what I decided about his hair. Main characters, I remember, and minor characters, are well, minor, but it’s the major-minor characters that are always the problem for me. I coined the term major-minor, or minor-major, for characters that aren’t major in every book, but when they are on stage they’re obviously more important than the minor characters sharing the screen. In fact, some of the major-minor characters will move to major characters without much notice to me, the writer. Jason Schulyer was one of those minor characters that just kept hanging around after his introduction in book four, The Lunatic Cafe, and just persisted in being more on stage than I had planned. I love Jason and he’s fun to write, and a fan favorite, so not a problem, and I guess I’ve never had a problem with remembering what he looked like, but there were fewer characters to keep track of in the early books. Now, at book twenty-one, there is a much bigger cast of characters. I find that I have particular trouble remembering characters individual characteristics if they were introduced with a bunch of other new imaginary people. Cynric was a very minor character introduced in a large group with other new characters that had a lot more on stage time. His hair was cut short when we met him, so that could mean it was straight, or that he’d cut it short enough that he’d taken all the wave out. Now, four books later I need to decide, because he’s let his hair grow out just enough that it would show, one way or the other.

I know that some writers make little note cards about hair, eyes, etc . . . and I keep meaning to do that, but I never quite do. I finally realized why I may not want to reduce my characters to notations in a list of “characters”. I don’t have a list of characteristics for my real, flesh and blood, friends. I remember what they look like because I see them, touch them, have dinner sitting across and look at their faces as we talk. I know the way they use their hands to talk, or how they cut their food, because I can see them in real life. My major characters are like that. You don’t forget the face of your best friend, just because you haven’t seen them in awhile, so it is with major characters for me. But minor-majors are like that person I see once a year at a convention, or a few times a year at group get togethers. But there the analogy falls apart, because I don’t forget these kinds of details about real people that I’ve sat across a table from, or met several times at some event. But imaginary people that I only see every once in awhile, they aren’t so concrete in my memory. Yet, I want them to be that real to me. I think I feel that if I could reduce them to a set of 3 by 5 cards, or a computer list, then somehow I’ve failed. I’ve failed to make them as real to me as they need to be. It sounds silly when I write it out like that, because they are imaginary. They are not real enough for me to sit across a table and have dinner with them and they never will be, they are figments of my imagination, bits of inspiration that walks and talks on paper for me, but they are not flesh and blood people.

But . . . if they aren’t real enough for me to know the texture of their hair, then how can they be real to you, the readers? If I can’t close my eyes and recall the way their skin feels under my fingertips, or how their hair slips through my hands, then how can I ask you to feel it? Height doesn’t bother me as much, because it’s not something I’m as aware of, which is probably why minor-major characters can grow, or shrink, by inches between books, but hair, eyes, skin tone, that is more important to me. Though height does become important if I’m writing a sex scene, but even there it’s where do they get their height from? Do they have long legs? A long torso? Depending on where they get those extra inches makes a lot of difference once they’re up close and personal with my main characters.

Its not that Cynric has straight, or wavy hair, it’s that the answer will change the texture of his hair. I am a very sensual writer, and incredibly visual and tactile in my orientation. Since we seem to be keeping Cynric around for awhile our odds of having Anita run her hands through his hair are pretty high since Anita reflects my interest in hair. Yes, I do have a thing for men with long hair, though I have been cured of wanting it long and longer, since I find that mid-back is doable, longer is harder to take care of, and anything past the waist is just a comedy of errors getting caught in car doors, and all sorts of inconvenient places. But I don’t want to just be able to say his hair is straight, or wavy, I want to know the texture of it if I touched it. I guess anyone that my main characters may have sex with are the ones that make me sweat the small details, because I need to do more than just see them. I need to see, touch, taste, know them in a way that goes beyond what a list of characteristics could give me. I want even the minor-major characters to be so real to me that if I close my eyes I know what it feels like to touch them, I want to know that kissing Jean-Claude tastes different than kissing Richard, and it’s not about what they’ve eaten. There is literally a taste to someone’s skin, and that spills over to their lips, their mouths if you break the boundary of their lips, and taste deeper; they taste different. It is a faint flavor, this taste of kisses, but subtle things are what good sex is all about, especially on paper, and though I may never try to describe this real taste difference, because it is just too subtle usually, I need to know it to do my job to the best of my ability. Sometimes when I write I’m all nerve endings and sensory input, other times logic and a cold distance pervades, but I need to be able to do both; one without the other would make me only half the writer I am.

December Fan Club Winner

Congratulations to Anna Dewey from Denver Colorado. Anna was our December Random Drawing winner. We sent Anna a Prowling Leopard Pin from our online store inventory. Congratulations again, Anna.

First Bird of the Year

Birders have a tradition that the first bird they see on New Year’s day will be their bird for the year. It’s a sort of theme for the year. Some serious birders will travel to exotic locales to try and make sure their first bird of the year is something spectacular, or at least something that they’ll be proud to knock off their life list (the list of birds they’ve seen). It’s part bragging rights for the hardcore listers, birders that seem to live for marking checks off their life list of birds. I’ve been a birdwatcher since college, but I’m not a serious lister. I’m not actually a serious birder, truth be told, but the tradition of first bird of the year is something I’ve kept, because I’ve added it to our path of faith.
We’re Wiccan, a nature based religion so it seemed a natural to use the idea of the first bird, or animal, of the year you see being a theme for the year. When I say, animal, I don’t mean your dog, cat, etc . . . unless it’s the only animal you see for hours. If you manage to not see any birds at all when there should be birds everywhere, then maybe the animal in question is your theme for the year. Two years running I saw nothing but squirrels for hours. One of the meanings of squirrel is to balance work and play, and for me I’d been doing too much work and not enough play. I’ve since fixed that imbalance with a vow last year to play as hard as I work. I’m doing it again this year, with a plan to play even more! I ended up finishing the newest Anita book earlier than I have in years, and I ended more energized and in better spirits than ever before, rather than exhausted.
So, what was my first bird of the year? It was a yellow-bellied sapsucker. Yes, it’s a real bird, not just a punchline for cartoons, or movies. I’ve only seen one of these birds ever, and it was in our backyard in the summer. It’s not a common bird here in Missouri, or at least not that I’ve seen. I’m always willing to believe that someone else’s bird viewing may vary from mine. It was a female, because of the lack of red on it’s head and neck, but even female yellow-bellied sapsuckers have some red on them, this bird had none at all. I looked up pictures of the bird and found that the juveniles can look like the females, but without red, so I thought, well than that’s it, but it wasn’t. The longer I looked at the bird, the more it’s colors looked crisp, and not dull, like the juveniles. I did some research and found that some females can have no color on their heads, and that the color is due, in part, to the bird’s diet. Western Tanager males get their amazingly bright colors from their diet, too, as other birds, as well. Cedar Waxwings’ diet can change whether they have yellow, or red, tipped feathers. Sometimes if we don’t eat enough of what’s good for us, we lose some of the color in our lives.
The above explanation is because not only did I see a yellow-bellied sapsucker, but it had to be the same female, because she had the same markings, or lack thereof. I get on the Cornell site for birds, which is always my first stop on the internet, once I’ve used my bird guides to identify the bird. Peterson’s guide is still my favorite, but I also have the Audubon guide, as well. The Cornell site has interesting facts about the birds, and I find them helpful for possible insights into what the bird might mean. Though, I go to the Ted Andrews’ books Animal-Speak, and Animal-Wise first, but if it’s a bird that’s not in the books, or I just want more possible insights from the natural behavior of the bird.
So, what does it mean that yellow-bellied sapsucker was my first bird of the year? Ted Andrews talks about it meaning that you need to pay attention to the sweetness in your life, the hidden sweetness, since sapsuckers have to drill holes in trees to get to the sap. Though unsightly the holes aren’t supposed to be harmful to the tree. Deep holes, the bird uses it’s long tongue to reach the sweetness, but they also make rectangular holes near the surface of the tree where they just remove the first layers of bark so that sap fills the hole and they lap it up, and they also eat the cambium layer of the bark, and will come back and check the holes to eat insects that come to eat the sap and are trapped in it, sort of insects in amber, when they’re still fresh and yummy. They also drill holes in very orderly patterns. Other woodpeckers will drill here and there and are attracted to dead, or insect riddled trees. Woodpeckers don’t cause insects to attack trees, they actually will eat them out of the injured bark, and help keep the tree healthy for longer, but sapsuckers feed on living trees. Dead wood has no sap, so they need living, growing trees for their food.
What I’ve taken from the above is that I need to work for the sweetness in my life. Sometimes it’s just below the surface, and sometimes it’s deeper and harder to find, but it’s worth the work, and I need it to survive. I need the sweetness and joy in my life to thrive and be happy. I know that seems self-evident, but in years past I have lost sight of that. All work and no play meets some deadlines, but eventually it uses up the writer until the very well of creativity that you counted on dries up from lack of being refilled. You can’t just take water out of the creative well, you have to either put some in, or allow the well time to fill up on its own either through rain, or water seeping up from below. Like the sapsucker there are different ways for the creative imagination to fill up; either dig deep and get the sweetness near the center, or shallow and eat the living “bark”, sweet sap, and more protein (substantive) food will be attracted to the sweetness you’ve made in the tree. I’m taking that the more I work to bring creativity and the fun things into my life, near the surface of my life so its visible and not as hidden deep in the tree, the more food I will I have, and the better I will feel, do, be. Also, that there should be more than one way for me to get sweetness into my life and my work. I need to be flexible enough to do what works, deep round holes, or shallow rectangular ones, but I still have a pattern, a rhythm, an orderliness that works for writing, and for having fun in my life. Flexible orderliness is what I’m calling it. Years ago I would be too wedded to a schedule, and anything that disrupted it threw me horribly out of my writing schedule, but I’ve learned to be more flexible, in this last year, especially, I’ve learned to go with the flow of whatever wonderful, exciting, craziness is happening in my life. This year is going to be more of the same, I think, and that’s a good thing. Also, it is significant that sapsuckers feed on living, growing trees, unlike other woodpeckers. My sweetness and creativity come from things that grow, change, and are not static. I need to embrace that and not be afraid of the growth that will come in this next twelve months. Change used to really throw me, but I’m getting better at it, and this was a message that more is coming, but it’s all good.
Now, here’s the trick to all this animal message, or totem, guide stuff. You could have seen a yellow-bellied sapsucker and taken a completely different message from it. It’s all about what feels right for you, what your inner sense of rightness tells you. Some scholars over the centuries have called it our conscience, or even the voice of God telling us what is right, what is wrong. You have to be still enough, quiet enough in your head to listen, to truly listen. If you are too busy moving around, bustling, talking, lost in activity, the message can get garbled or lost all together. As a Wiccan I believe that the power and beauty of God and Goddess is all around us, that nature is that physical manifestation of Deity. We walk through the power of creation every day. We are surrounded by miracles, but most of us hurry past and never see them. It’s the old idea that there are angels walking amongst us, but you have to be open to the possibility that they exist and are present to have any chance of seeing them. The same goes for any message from Deity, you have to listen, you have to be aware that Deity really does talk to us, not in a flare of trumpets, or a angel in white robes and huge wings, that is possible, but God isn’t so flashy most of the time, I think. I didn’t need something that spectacular, just a little black and white bird, to be reminded that I need to work for sweetness in my life in the coming year, to be flexible in my orderliness and schedule, and that some creativity would come from deep inside, but some of it would be closer to the surface, and that it would have different shapes and sizes, but it was all about keeping it organized, though to others it may look like I’m just hitting my head against a tree.
I hope everyone had fun seeing their first bird, or animal, of the year, and that whatever comes our way we see the lessons we need to learn, do the work we need to do, and walk our path this year in the most positive and productive way possible.

Grief for Christmas

I was remembering a Christmas long ago, when I was five. I’d gotten a child’s record player and a kid’s record as a gift from my mother, or Santa, I no longer remember which, but it had two songs on it, just two. One side was, “All I want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth,” and the other side was, “Silent Night.” My mother had turned out all the lights in our small living room except the tree. It shone out in the dark in multi-color splendor. I remember the red bulbs most, I don’t remember if the tree had more red, or if it was simply the color that stood out to me. “Silent Night” was playing on my little record player and my mother and I were singing. I don’t remember my mother’s voice anymore, I do not know if she was a soprano, or an alto, though somewhere is a recording she made when she was a teenager of a country song she recorded on one of those places where you could pay to record yourself, long before the internet and YouTube made it so easy. I remember her voice as a teenager and it seemed lower than mine, so maybe an alto? It’s funny that I can’t bring the sound of her voice to mind, but I remember sitting in her lap, on the floor, looking up at the tree, and singing with her. I sang “Silent Night” with her in my childish soprano, I would grow up to have a pretty good vocal range from high tenor to medium high soprano, but at five I couldn’t hit the high notes. I don’t think she tried, so we sang it lower than the record, but we sang it, in the dark, with the colored lights, and her arms around me. I was so small, I fit in her lap with room to spare. She seemed tall to me then, but I know she was my height, or shorter. I’m not sure anymore, if she was 5′ 3″ like me, or 5’4″, or even 5′ 2″. I just don’t remember. I remember being small enough to fit in her lap, to be held, to feel safe, and to sing.

I am more than a decade older than my mother was when she died. By that next Christmas she would be gone, dead in August of that year. She died in a car crash, suddenly, no warning at the age of twenty-nine. Gods, twenty-nine, she never even made thirty. My next birthday I will be two decades older than she was when she died. People ask me what kind of person my mother was, but I can’t answer that question. I was six, and that means I didn’t know her as a person. She was my mother, mommy, I never even grew old enough to say, mom. I thought twenty years was enough time to get over this loss, but today I realized that I’m still angry about it. I’m still angry that I lost her. I’m still angry that she died so young. I’m still angry that she died so unhappy, because that I do remember. I have few memories of her smiling, or happy. She hated her job, but worked to support me and my grandmother. She had hopes of better things, different things, but they all vanished in the summer heat with one stop sign that another woman didn’t obey.

Does this kind of grief ever truly heal? I still dislike hearing “Silent Night”, though it took me years to remember why, and more years to acknowledge that I had the right to the sadness that came with that beautiful carol. It’s a great a song, and I had to sing it for years in choir. I never understood why it bothered me. Some day I hope to be able to raise my voice in song, and sing, “Silent Night” with all my heart, and get those high notes that I can do now, but you can’t catch the high notes when you’re crying, and I can’t hear the song without tearing up, so the highs will have to wait, until I finish working the lows.

Kiss the Dead Done; Writer Restless

I’ve been working on deadlines through December, or on tour, and working on a deadline, for the last ten years. This year I worked my ass off and finished the latest book, Kiss the Dead, the day before Winter Solstice. It took two weeks of working all day and into the night. 10PM was early, 1 to 2AM was more routine. I wrote ‘The End” at 4AM, and the book was done. I had Solstice, Christmas, and Yule, off for the first time in a decade. I was thrilled, my family was delighted. Jon, who had stayed in his office most of the nights I stayed up, in case I needed something, got to sleep in with me. I was beyond beat, and sleeping was a wonderful thing. It happened to coincide with Trinity, our daughter, being off school, so for the first time in years I was going to be able to take time off when she was off; yay!

The next day when I woke I was energized. I cleaned off two of my desks and begin to organize my office. There’s always debris from a book, and the office is trashed like a crime scene, if you substitute paper, and sticky notes, for blood and bodies. I felt great!

What I didn’t realize is that I’d spent the last decade training my family to be happy hermits. Trinity is playing on her new DS; Jon played WOW, World of Warcraft in his office; Chica, my sister of choice, went to see her birth family. I tried to get them all interested in going out and seeing a movie, but they’d had enough of people and out, they wanted hermit time and in. I’d asked Chica before she left, and she wanted to come home and just relax, so no one wanted to go out of the house to do anything. So, I was in a house of happy hermits, and I wanted to DO-SOMETHING!

I went to my office with the dogs, Sasquatch and Keiko with me. The dogs had gotten into the routine of being in the office constantly, so they loved it. Keiko is a rescue from a puppy mill, and this is her first Christmas in a house, so she thinks the world is all about being in my office with me into the wee hours. I meditated, and that helped. I texted some friends, and it helped some. I didn’t want to call, because I wanted to give people time with their families, but honestly talking was not what I wanted. I was beyond restless. I read in one of the many books that had been waiting for me to have the time to read, rather than just write. I drank tea, read, cuddled in the big leather chair in my office with the dogs; it was good. But I was still so restless I couldn’t stand it. If my gym had been open I’d have gone, but barring that I got on the treadmill for an hour. I have missed a lot of gym time due to the book deadline eating the world. The treadmill was good, very good, and took the edge off, then it was time to join Chica, Jon, and Trinity, for dinner, and conversation, oh, and presents. Trinity had been with her father over Christmas Eve and part of today, and we’d waited presents for her. Honestly, I had the major present that I’d wanted, the book done, and time off with my family while we were all off from school and work. I just hadn’t understood that going from a schedule like that to down time would be such an adjustment. It’s always an adjustment, but never this bad, and I hadn’t realized that everyone else would be wanting to be quiet and alone-ish, though I should have figured that. It was logical for them to want to de-stress from being out with so many people all the time. I’ve been in my office, alone for weeks, so out was what I needed. It was interesting and perfectly logical, but I so didn’t see it coming. Oh, no, Jon, hadn’t been out with too many people, he’s just naturally more solitary than I am by nature.

So tomorrow, I will make plans to do something, go somewhere, because things will be open. People can come with, or I can go by myself, but either way, I’ll be better prepared for this sense of restlessness that always comes in some form, just never quite this bad. I blame the gym, I think I’ve gotten used to moving my body when I’m restless. Sitting and reading alone, no longer refreshes me. Or maybe sitting and reading is just too close to sitting and writing, and I need something else over this short break.

Laurell K Hamilton Fan Club

Hello Everyone,

                The fan club puzzled me from the beginning. Years ago when my assistant wanted to start one, I just didn’t understand why there needed to be one for me. I was a writer. Writers don’t have fan clubs. But I try to listen to the advice of the people around me, and so we started the fan club. Quite a few writers had fan clubs with newsletters, some merchandise.  It was a way of keeping in touch with you guys between books. You all seemed to enjoy the free stuff that you could only get through the club, and you loved the newsletter. That seemed to be everyone’s favorite part, almost. But me doing a piece a month for the newsletter began to be harder and harder to meet as a deadline. My book deadlines became more stringent, and the short piece for the newsletter just got harder and harder to do. Far from being inspired to write the piece, I was actively not inspired month after month. I wanted to keep in touch with all of you, but the newsletter just didn’t feel like the right way to do it. Then a funny thing happened, it was called the internet, and suddenly I had a blog. I had a place that when I was inspired to write and share with you guys, I could. It wasn’t an artificial deadline every month, but more when I had something worth sharing, I could. It was great. You all seemed to really enjoy hearing from me more often. I was a true technophobe for many years, but first the blog lured me on line, then web comics, and then Twitter. I’d had a FaceBook account for awhile, but I let someone else run that. That same person set up the Twitter account, but I decided to try and do this one. It was only 140 character each message, so I could get in, out, and be done. It was a nearly perfect way to lure me into sharing more of my daily, even hourly writing progress with all of you. I then took over my FaceBook account, and started posting myself. There was a time when the account was first set up that someone else posted as me, but when I discovered that was happening I put a stop to it. If you see a post from me, that is on my account, then it’s me. No games, just me. 

Between Twitter and FaceBook there seemed nothing left to say at the end of the month for the newsletter. I was even more stymied about it, and honestly people were getting a lot more of my daily life and writing process through the two accounts, plus the blog. The newsletter had become outdated, so we stopped doing it. Many of you in the fan club were upset. Some of you weren’t on line, at all, and others felt the newsletter was something special and collectible, or something. We have heard more people say that without the newsletter there’s less reason to be in the fan club. I agree with that. The fan club like the newsletter, itself, seems to have out lived its usefulness.  Most of the writers that had fan clubs back when we started this one have dropped their club already, on line is just more immediate, simpler, and more fans say that they prefer it. The fan club was supposed to keep me in touch with all of you between books, but it never did that job as well as the on-line presence does. It’s time for the fan club to be retired, so that we can turn the energy of everyone here at LKH headquarters to other things. I appreciate all of you that signed up for the fan club, and have been members over the years.  Thank you so much for your support, and interest in my books, my characters, and me.  Most of you are on line and will continue to get all my updates that way. I am sorry for the handful of people who are still not on line. You have been the most vocal about missing the newsletter, because it was all that you were getting. My apologies, but it’s time for the fan club to hang up its hat, and for us to turn to other things.  We had fun while it lasted, but it’s time.  Thanks everyone.     -Laurell