Author: Jonathon

Dragon Con is next week! Sorry that so many of you have said you won’t be able to get off work for my 4:00 Interview with me, because you, the audience, the fans, are the ones that get to ask the questions. There’ll be a microphone set up so you’ll be able to be heard and so we won’t waste time with someone trying to move through the crowd with a microphone. You can just ask your questions. You’ve got me to yourselves for an hour. This is your chance to ask all those questions you’ve been thinking about. You know the moment when you’re reading Anita, or Merry, and you think, “What did, Laurell, mean by that?” Now you can ask.

The tour in June for “Bullet” the latest Anita Blake novel I did the question and answer session for two hours across the country. There were some pretty interesting questions. If you want to see one of the Q & A’s here’s the youtube address http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjAyTaKBeEs. It’ll give you some idea of what I’ll be doing in Atlanta, Georgia at Dragon Con in the Hyatt Regency VI-VII. And yes, some of the questions on tour were pretty racy, but I don’t get offended by questions about sex. First, the shock has worn off over the years, and second, I know what I write and I’m okay with it. If talking about sex bothered me I think I’d be a different kind of writer.

Yes, my husband Jonathon will be there, and maybe another friend, or two.

The new technology just keeps racing ahead of us all. The title for the new Anita book hit the Internet before I announced it. It was apparently an automatic bit of technology that neither my editor nor I understood; now we do. It won’t happen again. But since it did, here’s the title: Hit List.

That’s right, the new Anita Blake novel is, “Hit List”. My editor, publisher, et al, had agreed they liked my title months ago. I held off announcing it, because I’ve had novels change drastically during the writing process, so much so that the original title no longer worked. I wanted to be absolutely certain that, Hit List, was THE title for this book. Lucky for me, it does, indeed work as the title for the next Anita novel. What would we have done if it hadn’t? My editor would have had them change the title late in the game. Sometimes titles are not certain until almost the last second as they go to print. I believe one famous example is, “Jaws” they were still debating on titles as they set the graphics for the cover.

So, you have the new title, and I’m secure that it makes sense with the book I’m writing, so next summer, you’ll get to read it, well, after I finishing writing it. That pesky writing part that makes all the covers and titles have something to wrap themselves around.

My Dragon Con schedule: I may try for a second signing, but right now this is it. I will be at the kilt blowings on Saturday and Sunday night that Jennie Breeden of “The Devil’s Panties” is hosting, but that will be for fun and frolic. It’s D*Con there should be fun and frolic. We will have a booth where there will merchanidize and signed books, and contests for giveaways, and all sorts of good stuff. Neither Jon, nor I, will be manning, or womaning, the booth. @thechickenchic will be our head salesman and lovely booth babe. She will have assistance, but I’m not sure how much who will be working. I’ll post updates as I have them for the booth and if we do a second signing.

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Title: Interview With Laurell K. Hamilton

Description: An hour with the author of the “Anita Blake” and “Merry Gentry” series.

Time: Fri 04:00 pm Location: Regency VI – VII – Hyatt (Length: 1 Hour)

This is an hour of the question and answer we do on tour. Me with a microphone, microphones set up in the audience and you get to ask your questions while I prowl the stage.

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Title: Dragon*Autographs

Description:

Time: Sat 04:00 pm Location: M301 – M304 – Marriott (Length: 1 Hour)

Title: Dragon*Con Awards Banquet

Description: We honor our 2010 Guests of Honor and present the Julie Award and Hank Reinhardt Fandom Award.

Time: Sat 07:00 pm Location: Regency VI – VII – Hyatt (Length: 2.5 Hours)

If you want to attend the banquet you will need banquet tickets.

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Title: NYT Bestsellers Tell All

Description: Here’s how to help boost your book to the NYT Bestsellers list. The panelists are all bestselling authors.

Time: Sun 01:00 pm Location: Centennial II – III – Hyatt (Length: 1 Hour)

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Title: A Taste For The Forbidden

Description: BDSM themes in vampire pop culture. Adults only.

Time: Sun 10:00 pm Location: Montreal / Vancouver – Hyatt (Length: 1 Hour)

An on-line discussion prompted me to say that I don’t read or watch paranormal genre. I don’t, as a rule, but years back when the paranormal genre went from being me almost alone, the lone voice crying in the wilderness, to being more like a suburb with all sorts of neighbors, I did read some of the writers.

Charlaine Harris was one of those exceptions. Her background was mystery and the books reflected that making the plots and characters richer and stand out from a lot of the writers who jumped on the paranormal bandwagon. The Sookie Stackhouse series was a cozy mystery with vampires and telepaths. Charlaine told me she had been inspired to write her series after reading my Anita Blake series, but she made her vision new, fresh, different in the early books that I read. I have no problem if people use what I’ve done as a true jumping off point for their own unique world. And yes, it has now been made into the wildly successful HBO series, True Blood.

Mary-Janice Davidson writes a series as funny as she is in person, and she is a hoot. Her background is more chick-lit, and the books show that. Who else would create a vampire queen that had a shoe fetish to rival Imelda Marcos?

Sherilyn Kenyon found a way to explain her vampires that is, to my knowledge, completely unique to her. That’s pretty rare in a form of literature that dates back to the 1800s, and if you count stories about lamia and folk tales of vampires then thousands of years. That is pretty nifty.

Kathy Clamp & C.T. Adams created a take on werewolves that made me wish I’d thought of one or two of the small details that they created. I can’t remember reading anyone else that made me think, gosh, I wish I’d thought of that.

L.A. Banks combined hip-hop/rap culture, music, and the paranormal. To my knowledge no one else has done it as well.

If I’ve left people out, my apologies, but there are too many of them now. The genre is still one of the fastest growing in publishing. Some, were left out because reading them is like reading watered down me. Some of them make me feel like I should be charging a franchise fee. Some are not on this list because I simply have not read them, and cannot give an opinion. When I’m done at the end of the day, I don’t want to read anything similar to what I write. It’s not relaxing to me. Someone on line asked, “Doesn’t that mean you aren’t up on your genre?”

I don’t need to be “up” on my genre. My research and ideas come from nonfiction, folklore, mythology, real life interviews, true crime. I don’t get ideas from other people’s fiction. At best, decades ago I would read something and think I wish the writer had done this instead. I wrote both Anita and her world of preternatural creatues and Merry and her world of faries and myth because no one was writing vampries and shapeshifters the way I wanted to read them, and no one was writing Celtic myth the way I wanted to read it either. I wrote the first Anita short story in the late 80’s. The Merry Gentry series was begun over ten years ago. My world, my characters were pretty set long before paranormal was even a phrase in publishing. I was originally sold as mixed genre. Meredith Gentry and her Celtic band of characters owe their world to archeology, folklorists, and mythology. Oh, and pain. Anita Blake is still fueled by my own early tragedies, I’ve come to accept that. I didn’t know until books into it that Merry was fueled from the pain of my first marriage and divorce. Books come from places of deep emotion for me, so far, I’d write lighter if I could, but apparently if it doesn’t hurt somewhere I don’t feel the need to write it down. Most of us write because we are readers first, but there comes a point with most of the professional writers I know that we cease to read most fiction. It becomes a bus-man’s holiday. You know how the trick is done, and it’s hard to be fooled by the slight of hand, because you know where the magician hid the rabbit, and when it’s coming out of the hat. Hard to enjoy the show when you’re in the business.

As some of you know I’ve been sick for over a week. First a cold virus hit Jon and myself, then on top of that I became anemic again. The combination has laid me very low. I haven’t spent that much time on the couch, or napping at odd hours in the bed, in months, maybe a couple of years. My constitution score has gone up thanks to exercise, better nutrition, and allergy shots, but at heart I am not the most robust of people. This has reminded me of that.

Saturday I put on two of my “doze and watch” movies while I did just that on the couch. What movies? David Suchet as Agatha Christie’s Poirot in “Sad Cypress” and “Five Little Pigs”. I love all the Suchet Poirot stuff, but these are two of my favorites. I have seen them often enough that I can doze, watch, doze, and still enjoy them. I live in hope that someday my books will be made as true to the books and the characters as these programs. Agatha Christie never lived to see Suchet as her Belgian detective, but I think she would have approved. Yes, I know that some of the movies give Poiroit a bigger part on screen than he had in his books, but then Christie hated Poiroit almost since his inception, and would often write most of a book without him on stage. Her essay about her dissatisfaction with both Poiroit and Miss Jane Marple profoundly effected me as a writer. You can thank that essay for Anita and Merry both being young, Anita especially in her early 20’s, and Merry early 30’s, and for them both being people I enjoy spending time with. Christie actually based Poiroit on someone she found annoying in a restaurant. It was a recipe for hatred between the two of them from the beginning. She also bemoaned that they were both too old at the beginning of their literary careers.

All this made me plan more fun and frolic for my own series characters. But, actually, I digress, a lot. My point was actually that Trinity was able to come in, talk to me, then bounce out to do her own thing. She talked to Jon and I about a lot of things this weekend: computer games (mostly Jon), fantasy literature and elves in particular, and gobs of other topics. When I got too tired I’d go nap in the bedroom and Trinity was able to play on the big flat-screen. Then when I came down, the games went off, and we watched something else. I felt that I was particularly uninteresting this weekend, but late on Sunday Trinity told me something completely different.

She said, “This was the best week ever.” When asked for details she had been able to play as much computer games as she wanted, allowed to stay up late by herself, because Jon and I went to bed early for first both of us being sick, then just me. The last few days Jon has stayed up, too, because I’ve been going to bed pitifully early some nights. Trinity enjoyed the long talks about elves and fantasy literature. We also watched the new “Alice in Wonderland” movie with Johnny Depp. I liked it much better than I thought I would, and many of the touches were brilliant. Depp was perfect as the Mad Hatter, and the Queens, both white and red, delightfully creepy. Anne Hathaway and Helen Bohmom Carter respectively, were very fun. Anne Hathaway’s white queen’s line, “I don’t owe you a kindness.” Was strangely chilling for such mild words. There were glimpses, such as that moment that hinted that the White Queen could have been more terrible than her sister if it wasn’t for her vows and a squeamish stomach. Everyone was nearly perfect casting. The young girl who played Alice had a wonderful fragility to her, and I loved the Hatter saying to her, “You’ve lost your muchness.” Don’t we all sometimes?

Trinity was interested enough that when Jon recommended the book series, “The Looking Glass Wars” by Fank Beddor, she happily absconded with the first hardback book to her room to read.

Being sick allowed me to be more available to my daughter. It allowed her to play video games, and be up late with the house all too herself, which she loved. She liked my naps because she could watch and do what she wanted with the big screen. She also slept in until 1:00 PM one day. Teenagers actually need more sleep than toddlers according to studies. They’re growing more.

I’ve hated last week and the weekend was a chore in impatience and illness for me. Trinity loved it. I asked her, “Better than Disney World?” Yes, was the answer. “Better than swimming with dolphins in the Keys?”

Her answer, “Dad didn’t do that with us. I got to talk to both of you this weekend.”

There you have it. It’s not about big trips, or amusement parks, or even swimming in the ocean. It’s about spending time together, talking, and just being a family. Quality time for our daughter is just spending time with both her parents, playing video games, reading good books, and talking. Since I never had a family vacation anywhere fun, and that’s what I wanted, it’s what I’d counted as more fun for Trinity. Just goes to show that you have to let go of your own childhood and find out what kind of childhood your actual child wants. You maybe as surprised as I was what means “quality time” for your kid.

I woke to the singing of a yellow-throated warbler. Musical, lilting, trilling up and then down; I’ve been hearing it for a few days now. It’s one of the few birds that seems to call in the August heat undeterred by temperatures over a 100, and a heat index that has become simply ridiculous. The yellow-throat is singing as I type this, over and over, in the bright morning light. Maybe it’s singing hard now so it can rest at the heat of the day.

I saw a yellow-throated warbler in the spring; a glimpse of bright yellow on throat and upper chest and all that black and white like formal attire with a bright yellow bib. But I see a lot of warblers pass through our area in the spring I don’t count on them staying near the house, but this one apparently liked our place enough that he’s nested somewhere nearby and is singing for us as summer raises the heat.

Warblers are small to tiny birds, only a hummingbird is consistently smaller. But unlike hummingbirds they are often not that brightly colored, and fall warblers are the doctoral thesis of any serious bird watcher, a challenge and a head-scratching quandary of misidentification. Spring is easier because they’re in their breeding plumage which is brighter, more distinctive. Some of the brightest warblers turn pale tans and olive greens in the fall like movie actors stripped of their makeup and costume so they look like everybody else. They are small, quick moving birds that seem to have a special fondness for never showing themselves in more than a flick of wings, a sense of movement in the underbrush, a bright song falling around you from some undisclosed location. I have chased warblers through the spring woods lured on by a bright glimpse of yellow, or that hopping movement of some small bird from bush to bush. I knew it was a warbler but whether I’d ever get close enough to confirm more was anyone’s guest. I’ve had mystery warblers in the Florida Everglades, the mid-west woods, the California mountains, and the Eastern seaboard. Then you’ll have the moments when a warbler just decides to stop being coy. When a warbler finally throws caution to the wind it’s like having stalked this shy, young, starlet, only to find that she’s parked outside your window the next morning, follows you as you do errands, and just wants to be everywhere you happen to be. The stalker becomes the stalked.

We had a palm warbler do this at Disney World in Florida. Not only did the warbler not hide when I first spotted it in a lovely planted area that Disney World is famous for, but it then got onto the sidewalk and hopped around for us. I thought, great, and watched it to my heart’s content until with a flick of wings it vanished into the undergrowth. I thought, what a wonderful moment in this busy place to have such a shy bird be so social, then my husband, daughter, and I went about our business of fun and frolic in the Mouselands. Except that there was a palm warbler on the back of a bench by the walkway. There was a palm warbler hopping around like some tiny, better dressed sparrow after invisible crumbs by a food stand. There was palm warbler in the trees overhead, in the bushes beside us as we walked. But weirdly, there was always only one bird at a time. Now maybe we were walking from one nesting territory to another, but why only one bird at a time? Shouldn’t the odds have begun to go in the favor of seeing two at once, just for a moment? A glimpse of two yellowish warblers with their neat chestnut cap, just once? But there was always just one warbler. So either Disney World was lousy with palm warblers, but they are incredibly anti-social to other warblers, and very social, for a warbler, to people, or there was just this one warbler following us everywhere. One little bird that just happened to be everywhere we went.

What had begun as a wonderful encounter with nature, began to bug me. I began to try and catch sight of another warbler before the first was out of sight. I began to get ever closer to the one we had near us to see how comfortable with people it was; very. It let me get closer than any healthy warbler had ever let me get, and then would only fly into a nearby tree just high enough to be out of reach, but not far enough to be out of sight. Did it know I was looking at it? I think so. Did it care? Apparently, not. Years of chasing warblers through the underbrush for just one solid glimpse so I’d know what species it was, and this guy flaunts himself like some kind of birdie exhibitionist. Why? I still have no idea. Apparently, palm warblers are more social than most of their near kin, but this was a little too social even for them. Was it a message? Maybe, if so I never figured it out, but today waking up to the yellow-throated warbler singing in the beginning of another hot, hot, August day, made me think of the palm warbler that followed us all that day. It made me smile. A summer cold has me in it’s throes, a work deadline is barreling down, and this week is the anniversary of my mother’s death, so not my best week.

Warblers are that surprise that you don’t expect. They’re that little glimpse of joy in the underbrush, or the forest canopy, they often find us when the light is filtered through leaves, trees, things that can be beautiful in their own right, but block the light. Warblers remind me that there is also something to smile about, something to chase after, to keep moving for, even if it’s something very small. Small doesn’t mean it’s not important, it just means you have to pay attention, and be willing to notice things that most people never see at all. Whatever is happening in your life I hope you find your warbler to bring a smile to your face, to make you remember a happy memory, or just to be reminded that even in the killing heat there is still song and a bird no bigger than my three fingers put together singing joyfully, courageously, who doesn’t know that there is such a thing as hopelessness.

Happy Lammas everyone! It’s also known as Loaf Mass if you’re old school Catholic. For those of us who are Wiccan it’s a celebration of the summer harvest. Most of our holidays are either a celebration of the bounty of the earth, or the return of the light: earth and sun, female and male, Goddess and God. Our religion, at it’s best, is about balance.

Few of us live in contact with the earth now, growing our own food, or having livestock. Sometimes it’s hard to remember that not that many generations ago having plentiful food all year long wasn’t possible, and still isn’t in many parts of the world. We always remember to give thanks for the bounty of food and shelter and all the basic necessities that much of the world still struggles to find. But I wanted to add something different this year for the holiday, and in all my reading one idea stood out. Lammas is also a celebration of the Green Man, or the Barley King, Jack or John Barleycorn, the male principle that must be harvested/die so that food can be eaten and seeds saved for next year’s harvest. It’s the idea that the seeds are male and placed into the warm, dark, womb of the earth so they can be reborn.

This year, we’re thinking what parts of our personality, habits, job, relationships, need to die because they are no longer growing. They are old and it’s time to cut them free so the new habits, new job, new relationships, can grow straight and tall and green. What part am I willing to let go, so that I can move on? Example: Fear, I’ve let go of my fear. It doesn’t mean I’m not still phobic about flying, but as I decide to simply not let the phobia limit me I have been easier on a plane. In fact, I’ve been flying so much that I’m almost not afraid now. It was a good thing to let go of, and I was ready. But it’s not like lent, where you give something up for a while then you take it back up, nope, this needs to be something that you are willing to give up forever. This is my year of no fear, and saying, yes. This attitude has led to us going to Paris for the first time about four months ago, white water rafting just a week ago, and other wonderful experiences that I once would have passed by because I would have said, no. I am saying no to some things, business is business, and some personal stuff will always be, um, no, but overall it’s a yes-year. Not only am I enjoying it, but so are my family and friends, because part of the yes is traveling to and with them.

So, happy Lammas. What part of yourself is limiting you right now? Are you ready to let it go?

“One ought only to write when one leaves a piece of one’s own flesh in the inkpot, each time one dips one’s pen.” Leo Tolstoy

If the above quote is correct than I’m doing something very right with this latest Anita Blake novel, because it’s tearing me apart. At the end of the day I feel like the office should be a battlefield with my blood splashed across the keyboard, dripping from the monitor. There should be bits of skin and hair and flesh at the scene of the horror like a C.S.I. episode. Why is this book so hard?

I guess there are a lot of reasons, but the main one is that the last book was hard for both my main character and me. Anita got the emotional shit kicked out of her, and because of the kind of writer I am, so did I. Some writers seem to be able to write the most horrible things and remain untouched. They’re like actors that can cry on command, then turn it off like a faucet, and it seems to mean just about as much to them as turning a handle. Then you have the actors that have to descend into the depths to bring the pain up for the camera, but it’s real pain they show on film, their own pain. I’m the second kind of artist. I’ve cried with and for, my characters. I’ve screamed at my computer, cursed other characters, fought and lost to them. But I feel when I write, it is not a cold process to me.

Some very successful writers don’t seem to feel that emotional connection to their work, or at least not to the degree I do. I used to envy them until I realized the price of that cool distance. They write like they feel with less depth, less of themselves on the page. It is a safer way to write, less frightening, less hurtful, less pain for the writer, but the writing shows that. I can read most other writers and tell you within a few pages which of them “feels” strongly when they write and which do not. Now, some can fake it better than others, but in the end it is a fake. They don’t believe in their own work, their own world, their own characters. They know that the skin of let’s pretend is there, always, they never let themselves sink past a certain point, or perhaps their world, their muse, their imagination is more shallow than mine. Maybe there are no painful depths to explore and they just spend their careers wading through the shallows because no matter how wide the water looks, it’s just a wading pool with no unexpected holes to swallow the writer up, and drown them in the dark water of their own minds.

I’m one of the few writers that routinely calls my characters, imaginary friends. Like any good friend when they hurt, a little bit of you hurts, but when you’re there for the tragedy, to see it, feel it, smell it, taste it, wipe the tears away, hold them while they scream, well, you don’t forget days like that. I don’t forget them when the person I’m holding is flesh and blood, and I don’t forget when there’s no real body to hold, but my own imagination made so real that I reach out to comfort someone I can never touch, because they aren’t really there. But sometimes the feel of them is so real, so close, that it seems wrong that I cannot breech that last barrier.

For me, as a writer, if I do not feel than I’m doing something wrong. If my character’s sorrow does not make me cry, if their pain does not make me hurt, if their terror does not make me jump, if their lust does not make me shiver with delight, if their laughter does not make me smile, or even laugh out loud, then I’m not doing my job.

The way I write is not for everyone, God knows, but for me it’s the only way I know. It’s the way I’ve always written. It is not a safe way to do this job, but when I dance with the muse it is always a thing of battles, and violence; shared pain and joy. Right now Anita is hurting and so am I, the only thing I can try to do is to keep her pain off of my “real” life, and my pain off of hers. Her problems are not mine, and mine are not hers. Some separation must remain or we will both go mad. Or maybe we’ll simply weep.