Jonathon, Author at Laurell K. Hamilton

What Polyamory is, and What Polyamory isn’t

Since I came out as polyamorous I have been getting a lot of questions, so here’s an attempt to answer some of them.

What exactly is polyamory?

Ans: It means to love more; to love more people at the same time. The only rule that all poly people agree on is this: you tell the truth to everyone involved. That means that everyone involved in the relationship, or relationships, knows about everyone else. I’ve negotiated with several wives about relationship parameters with their husbands before certain boundaries were crossed because to do any less than be totally upfront beforehand isn’t poly, it’s cheating, and true poly doesn’t cheat. If anyone is telling you they’re poly but they’re sneaking around behind someone’s back, then it’s not polyamory.

Some people allow sexual partners outside of their main relationship but no other emotional ties, others see all relationships as serious only, no just sex allowed. Some close their poly at three, or four, or however many. Closed poly is also referred to as poly monogamy which is just like regular monogamy except it includes more than two people. Some people who are part of the BDSM community will include long time play partners as part of their polyamory, even if that play partner is strictly kinky dungeon time with no actual sex involved. Others see play partners as more casual. Many poly people are not part of the bondage community and many in the community aren’t poly.

How do you bring up the topic of poly to your spouse or special person?

Ans: I’ve never had to do this, so I honestly don’t know. I can tell you how Jonathon and I brought up the topic to each other. Jonathon and I married with the idea that we would not be monogamous as a married couple. Since we’re celebrating our fifteenth wedding anniversary this year, it’s worked for us. We’ve managed to raise a great kid who’s now in college. Our empty nest turned into a decidedly full one when our girlfriend of four & a half years moved in with us and brought her husband along, so that our couple became a fourple. Again, it’s working for the four of us but your mileage may vary. Here’s a little bit of how we got to this happy multiple arrangement.

More than fifteen years ago when Jonathon and I realized we wanted to marry each other, we both had reservations; not about our love for each other, but what the next step was in that love. He’d never been married before and I’d just gotten out of a sixteen year marriage. That had convinced me marriage wasn’t for me and monogamy was definitely not something I wanted to try again, but I was in love with Jonathon and he was in love with me.

One day he said, “I’m not sure I want to tie myself down to just one person forever.”

I replied, “I’m not sure I want to be monogamous with anybody ever again.”

We sort of looked at each other, and if we’d gone the traditional route the relationship would have been over right there, because we were both so not ready for a monogamous relationship like traditional American marriage. I suggested that we marry with the possibility of adding other people to our sex life down the road. We didn’t have a plan for how to do it, and we didn’t know there was a word for what we were trying to accomplish. It was a fan at a signing that first introduced the word, polyamory, to us. We knew monogamy was not what we wanted, so we set out to find something else, something that worked for us as a couple.

I really can’t tell you how to bring up the idea of polyamory into an already existing monogamous relationship, because I’ve never done it.

One thing I do know is that polyamory isn’t a fix for a marriage that is already in trouble. If you’re relationship is in trouble, go to a marriage counselor, or to your local clergy. Go to someone that can help you work on your issues both as individuals and as a couple, because what I’ve found is that a couple’s issues are usually a mix of individual issues that have never been addressed and problems within the couple itself. This holds true whether it’s two, four, or more, involved in the relationship.

Poly is not a cure all for failing marriages, in fact, if the base relationship isn’t strong enough, poly can be the death knell because often the couple isn’t poly at all, they’re just unhappy. Poly won’t fix what’s wrong in the initial couple’s relationship, that has to be strong to begin with to add other people into the mix. Strength builds on top of strength; a weak foundation will bring down the house that’s built upon it, so first your foundation needs to be solid. Only then can you add more weight, and extra people, extra relationships, are more “weight”. You have to be ready for that weight, or it will crush you.

I’m being so adamant in the above because I get far too many people asking me about poly as a “cure” for a marriage that isn’t working. People say, they’re bored and want to bring up poly to their spouse so they can add spice to their marriage. Poly isn’t about adding spice to your relationship, poly is a lifestyle choice. It is a way of dating, forming a domestic partnership, making a family. It is not just an addition to add to your life like date nights, or lingerie.

I know this doesn’t answer all the questions we’ve been getting about polyamory, but I hope it at least answers some of the basic ones. I also hope that it puts to rest this idea that people have that poly is an easy fix for a flagging relationship, or that poly is some fancy word for cheating on your spouse, because it is the opposite of cheating and it is far from easy. Think about the time, effort, and work it requires everyday in any marriage, now think about multiplying that by a factor of two, or more, and that’s what polyamory is. Its totally worth it for those of us who are wired this way, but it’s not a choice to be made lightly and there’s nothing easy about adding extra people to any relationship. Good, solid relationships whether monogamous or polyamorous, are not for wimps.

The picture is of the joined hands of our foursome; Jonathon, Genevieve, Spike, and me.

Yes, Amanda, You Can be an Artist and a Mother

Motherhood does not define me. There, I’ve said it. I love my daughter dearly. She brought new worlds and concepts into my life that I would never have discovered without being a parent; but it was not a natural role for me. I never came to a point where I thought it was easy because every time I got the hang of it, she got bigger, older, changed, so that it was like learning the rules all over again. Parenting is like dating someone who changes every few months, but you’ve already married them, so you just have to figure it out as you go. You can buy all the parenting books you want, nothing prepares you for the reality of having a tiny human-being dependent on you twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty five days a year. It was, and is, the most overwhelming and challenging task I have ever attempted. My daughter is in college now, in the dorms. Other mothers I know bemoaned their empty nest but I was ready for less hands on parenting. She’s twenty, and I’m thrilled that she is starting her own adventures out in the larger world. I’m a little terrified at the thought of her being out there on her own, but mostly I’m just excited that we raised her to legal adulthood.

I know I would be a different person if I had not had a child, and since I like who I am, I’m happy with what I discovered of myself and learned along the way. But I’m here today to strike a blow against this ideal: that women are defined by motherhood and that not having a child makes any woman one bit less a woman. That’s bullshit. If a woman chooses not to have a child, that is her choice, let her make it, leave her alone about it. Stop asking women in their twenties, thirties, or Gods forbid, forties, when they are going to have children. First of all, unless that’s your uterus walking around in that woman’s body, it’s none of your business. Second, why should you care if this other woman has a child? Because it’s almost always women who do this type of bullying. Yes, I said it, bullying. I saw it as bullying when I was in my twenties and early thirties, married for years and had no children but was constantly being asked, when, why not, why don’t I have children yet? Strangers would ask me this – constantly.

I finally started answering, “I’m concentrating on my career.”

They said, “What if you wait too long and then you can’t have children?”

I said, “Then I won’t have children.”

They never seemed to like that answer.

My first husband and I were married for ten years before we had the house with a room for a nursery. I felt that I had had enough therapy so that I had dealt with the worst of my childhood demons and wouldn’t share them with our daughter. I stopped using birth control and within three months of trying we were pregnant. Let me add that I had a terrible pregnancy, like my mother before me, and was very ill. I was in and out of the hospital trying to keep our baby inside long enough to be born and survive. I did not glow. I did not enjoy the process of producing an entire human being inside my body. There were very few Hallmark moments during my pregnancy. If you decide to get pregnant, please do not go into it thinking that it will all be cute booties and wonderful moments of ever growing closeness with your spouse or domestic partner. Check out how well your own mother handled pregnancy and that may give you an idea if it’s going to be “normal” or exciting like mine was, trust me, an exciting pregnancy is not what you want.

Was it worth it to get our daughter? Yes, hell yes. Do I regret having her? Not for a minute. But I did not make being a mother the end all, be all, of my life. Her father helped make her, so I made sure he helped me take care of her. At one point in my pregnancy when he’d done something that made me doubt he was understanding that I saw parenting as a shared event, I told him this, “If you make me raise this baby as if I’m a single parent, I will be.” Never argue with the pregnant woman who is puking her guts up trying to bring your child into the world. I stood my ground and made him help me as much as possible. One, because that seemed fair to me, and two, because I had books to write, stories to tell. I’d wanted to be a writer since I was fourteen-years-old. I’d only wanted to be a mother since my early twenties. I was never one of those people who defined myself by marriage and children. I’d never planned on marrying. I was a writer. By the time our daughter was born I had six novels and numerous short stories published. She’ll turn twenty-one this year and I am planning the tour for my thirty-eighth novel.

My editor at that time worried when she found out I was pregnant. She thought it would make me soft, lose me my edge. My first novel written after her birth had the highest kill count of anything I’d ever written. Motherhood didn’t make me soft, it made me fierce. It made me more committed, determined to succeed. It made me cranky when our daughter was very small, because lack of sleep will do that to you. Even with my now ex-husband dividing up the newborn caregiving it was beyond exhausting. My hat is off to all new parents because it was the hardest stage of parenting for me. It just gets better after that.

Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman are expecting their first child together. Amanda is a wonderful musician, singer, bard, and recently, writer of her very own book. Neil is an amazing writer of novels, children’s books, comics, screen plays, pretty much if it can be written he’s done it and done it well. They posted a lovely photo of Amanda and a female fan promptly commented to Amanda that she had ruined her career as an artist.

First, the fan hit Amanda in the fears of many female artists when they decide to have a family. Will children take all my creativity and time? Will my art die? Will I change so much that I can’t write, or sing, or paint? I said publicly on Twitter that all that is bullshit. I’ve written short stories and thirty-one novels since my daughter was born. Having a child didn’t make me less of who I am anymore than marriage did. You remain yourself no matter who you bring into your life, even if it’s a whole new human-being. I understand the fears though, but I do not understand the other woman telling Amanda such hurtful lies, because I’m proof that they are lies. You don’t have to give up your life to be a mother, and before someone says it, no I did not have a nanny for my child. When she was born I couldn’t have afforded it and I also decided that I wanted to be the main input on our child, not a stranger that I paid, but that was my choice later on, when she was born it was just my ex and me to do it all. I would take her to childcare first for a couple of hours a day, and then gradually longer, but I learned to write in McDonald’s play lands while she explored the kiddie hamster trail. I wrote anytime she slept. Her naps were my chance to do a few pages. I handed our baby to my husband at the door when he came home from work and then vanished into my office. (This may have contributed to our eventual divorce.) I wrote on the kitchen table with the baby in a pumpkin seat beside my portable computer. If you are not determined and driven you can combine parenting and a career as an artist.

I believe that Amanda Palmer is driven and determined. She also has Neil Gaiman, her husband, in her corner to help. I had some help from my ex-husband, but when I married a second time I found even more help in Jonathon. He took care of her when she was sick more than I did so I could make my deadlines. He picked her up from school more often and he brought his wonderful mother and step-father into our lives so that by the time our daughter was seven, or eight, they were grandma and grandpa. One of the best things I ever did was offer his mother a chance to be a full-time grandma. I had more help as our daughter headed into double digits than I ever had before. It’s only now as Jonathon has more empty nest syndrome than I do, that I realize how much I pushed my new husband into the deep end of the parenting pool. He was twenty-five and had never been married and I just excepted him to step up. He did, but it’s only now that I realize how hard it must have been on him as an only child to suddenly be a dad. I have faith that Neil and Amanda will step up for each other as artists and parents and as a couple. It can be done, and done well, it just does take effort, planning, compromise, and a determination to make it all work. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t mix art and babies because that’s just not true.

But one thing that is strangely absent in the whole online furor about whether Amanda can be her artistic self and a mother is that no one has raised the same doubts about Neil. Yes, the woman carries the baby in her body, and the man can’t do that, but why is it assumed that the woman will sacrifice her career for parenthood but the man doesn’t have to?

I am the main breadwinner for my family, but I have had people ask me already if I’m going to be a full time grandmother and help my daughter raise her kids when the time comes. I say, no, and they look at me strangely. They have never asked the same question of my husband. I plan to do what most successful writers do: die when I’m old and gray, still typing away at my keyboard trying to tell that one last story. I expect Neil Gaiman will do the same, but I’m willing to bet that no one has asked him if he’s going to quit writing and become a full time grandpa and help raise his grandchildren, just as no one thinks a new baby will end his career.

If you want to stay home and be the primary parent for your children, then do it. If it makes you happy and you can afford it, then do that, whether you’re a man, or a woman, but please stop assuming that because we are women that it’s automatically our job to sacrifice everything for diaper duty.

International Women’s Day

I really hate this day because I’m not sure why we need a day to remind us that woman are important. We’re over half the human race. There are almost always more girls than boys born every year. We out number the men. Yet, here we are reminding people that there are women scientists. I knew that as a child. I read about Madame Curie and Jane Goodall was a personal hero of mine. There are women in every branch of science and mathematics. Why is that still a surprise to anyone?

There are women athletes, police officers, soldiers, politicians, weight lifters, firefighters, every job that men can do we do, except sperm donor, and there the men have us, but then we are the only egg donors. It takes both of us to make a new life, a new human being, of either sex.

If all the above is true, then why do we need an International Woman’s Day? Why can’t everyday be a celebration of women and men and whatever sexual determination in between, that exists or may exist in the future? I don’t know, but I do know that I’m still getting asked, “Why do you write strong female characters?”

I’ve asked the male writers I know and they’ve never been asked, “Why do you write strong male characters?” They’ve never even been asked, “Why do you write weak male characters? Or, caring male characters . . . or why do you write male characters?”

It’s 2015, and I think it’s time we all understood that women can be strong, men can be caring, and that whether you make a good stay-at-home parent is more about your personality than your gender. That whoever is more career driven should go out and pursue that career, regardless of whether they are male or female. Just be you – whoever, whatever, that is for you.

I’m tired of things that divide me from the rest of the human race. I’d like to embrace what brings us together, what makes us love each other, not what makes us hate each other. I’m tired of the male bashing and I’m tired of catcalls from passing strangers. I’m just as tired of the women who are cruel and belittle other women because of some misguided idea that somehow by cutting other women down it makes them look better, it doesn’t, as I am of the men who belittle women simply because they’re women, as if that matters. It’s not a question of gender, it’s a question of respect for yourself and for others. If you don’t respect yourself, it’s very hard to respect others. I have female friends and male friends, and anyone that tells you that the genders can’t be friends with each other because sex gets in the way is full of shit. My best friend on this planet is a man. We’ve seen each other through divorces, second marriages, career changes, you name it and some things you probably couldn’t name. We are each other’s 3 AM phone call, when the rest of the world has gone black.

I spent the day with my girlfriend Genevieve shopping for the last few things we need on the remodel of our home. I texted with my daughter Trinity, because she was at a convention with friends this weekend. She’s turned twenty, which still seems odd, but on International Women’s Day is seemed like talking to my daughter was appropriate. Of course, we talk and visit when there’s not a special day celebrating women too. Jonathon visited his mother today, not because it was International Women’s Day but because he loves her. Spike, Genevieve’s husband and the other man in my life, is the one cooking dinner tonight because he’s awesome that way. He’s masculine in the best sense of the word, the traditional ideal of a good man, but he certainly doesn’t see cooking as women’s work or men’s work, it’s just part of running a household. Tonight he cooked, tomorrow it may be Genevieve’s turn or Jonathon’s turn. It’s rarely my turn since I am domestically challenged. They’d rather have dinner well prepared and timely than let me take a turn. At our house, everyday is International Women’s Day and International Men’s Day. We try to celebrate each other’s skills and strengths and work around our weaknesses every day. There’s no woman’s work, or man’s work, there’s just work and we try to find the best person for the job. If it’s heavy lifting beyond what I lift in the gym, it just makes sense to use the men’s upper body strength. If it’s sewing a hole in a beloved pair of jeans, you want any of the other three of my partners, but not me. If you want me to write a book or short story, I’m all over that, but sewing is not a strength for me. Jonathon is better with a rifle than I am. Spike is better at hand-to-hand. Genevieve is the best organized of us all. She’s also the tallest and I’m the shortest, so everybody gets to, “come be tall” for me, unless they want me climbing the cabinets to reach the highest shelves.

So, happy International Women’s Day, but here at our house we don’t need a day to remind us that women are great, or that men are great, or that everyone is special regardless of gender, race, or nationality. I wish the rest of the world seemed to know what we’ve learned at home: that we are stronger and happier together than we are apart.

On Sunday, March 8, 2015, Laurel K Hamilton <lkh@laurellkhamilton.org> wrote:

The Woods Were Lovely, Dark and Deep . . .

I’ve gone from 80s & a warm Caribbean Sea to below freezing and snow, from tropics, to the buckle of the Bible Belt, to the East coast, back to the Bible Belt, to upper west coast, all within two weeks. We’ve been home about 96 hours in those last two weeks. Jon has been with me throughout & we were even able to keep the dogs & our other significant others, Spike & Genevieve, with us until this last trip to Seattle, which helped a great deal to make everywhere we went feel like home. But now with them back in St. Louis with the dogs, I am feeling more cut adrift.

This year is an experiment in travel, in saying yes to adventure & new places. Its our daughter Trinity’s first year in college, in the dorms, so Jon & I decided we’d travel like we’d been wanting to but couldn’t because of being tied to her school schedule. It’s an experiment & Spike & Genevieve have agreed to try it with us for this first year of cohabitation. Thanks to technology their jobs can travel with them and it’s a telecommuting fest. We also decided to do a major remodel in the St. Louis house, because Jon & I had been planing to anyway & now the space will be our space, all four of us have picked the colors & style of everything. One of the reasons we went to the tropics for me to finish writing Dead Ice was to have a working kitchen, TV room, and living room, while the remodel happened. It’s still not done. We’ve been eating take in, in the Solarium on a table meant for leaning on in the summer, but we’ve done it cheerfully and with a lot of laughter, which bodes well for many things.

We all liked the two months in the tropics, and I may try finishing every book somewhere else from now on, because wherever I type “the end” I want to runaway from it; I seem to need a change of scenery. I think it works better wanting to run to home rather than away from it. I was so happy to walk into my office in St. Louis. It looked beautiful & sunny, surrounded by trees at the top of my three story eyrie. I miss my ocean view terribly, but I was still very happy to be home. Usually, I finish a book and don’t want to see the office for weeks afterward.

I’m typing this in Seattle, Washington in our room before my first panel of the day here at MythicWorlds. It was FairieCon West once upon a time, but they’ve changed their name to reflect a more diverse myth and folklore interest. All wee and not so wee beasties are now welcome from all walks of the between spaces, not just the wee folk of the fey. The vendors area is fabulous here. I’m wearing a necklace I bought yesterday from Touchstone Runes. We have already committed much commerce! Fairecon East, that we did earlier in the year, had a fabulous vendor’s room, too.

All the huge, dark trees here in the NorthWest make me think of the Robert Frost poem, “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Especially the line, “The Woods are lovely dark and deep . . .” indeed they are here, so the poem’s title was more appropriate than ever.

The edits for Dead Ice come back from New York on Monday, maybe a few hours before we land in St. Louis, and we finally get home. I’ll have a week to see what the copyeditor, and my editor, Susan, have noted in the book. I know that I’m already reaching out to my police friends that help me keep my mistakes to a minimum, because I know I didn’t do one of the police scenes exactly right. I’m just not sure what I missed, but I finished the scene and then had that niggling feeling I’d dropped a ball along the way. That’s what edits are for, to catch the dropped balls and put them back into play

Genevieve has sent us pictures from St. Louis of the fish pond frozen so solid the big dogs can walk across it. Jon says, he’s never seen a pond frozen that hard there in twenty years, and he’s lived in Missouri all his life. We keep telling her and Spike that it’s never this cold in St. Louis, I think they’ve stopped believing us. *cross my heart* I say, and Genevieve gives me that look, you know the one, your wife/girlfriend has one, too. The one that says, she loves you, but . . . We’ll be home Monday and do our best to make it up to her and Spike. We’ll find ways to keep them warm through the long winter nights, but first – edits.

Down the Rabbit Hole and into the Maze:

The White Rabbit from The Nursery Alice by John Tenniel, Held and digitised by the British Library, and uploaded to Flickr Commons. A higher resolution version may be available for purchase from BL Images Online, imagesonline.bl.uk, reference 065443

I fell down a rabbit hole this week, not a literal one, but a literary one. No, I didn’t reread ALICE IN WONDERLAND by Lewis Carrol, but that’s where the original idea of following a strange rabbit down it’s hole and falling into something, or someplace, totally unexpected came from. I first heard the term ‘rabbit hole’ used for writing by Emma Bull on a panel at Archon, a science fiction convention here in St. Louis. I was in the audience back then because I had yet to sell a single story of my own. I had read and loved Emma’s book, “War for the Oaks,” and listened to any bits of writer wisdom from her with great attention.

She and her husband Will Shetterly both explained that for a writer to fall down the rabbit hole meant an idea, or subplot, that led you off your plotted path. They seemed to think rabbit holes were always a distraction and the writer should climb out and get back on their plot path as soon as possible.

Years later with my own writing group, The Alternate Historians, we continued to use the term in much the same way. If you are a writer that plots and outlines heavily then rabbit holes are truly a bad thing, but if you are an organic writer like me, sometimes the rabbit is right. I believe George R. R. Martin calls them gardeners as opposed to architects.

What does it mean to be an organic writer? For me, it means that sometimes all I know is the first sentence of a short story, but I’m going to sit down and write that sentence and see where it leads me. It means that once the world building is done, or sometimes in the midst of it, I’ll often start writing the first draft of a book because I learn things about my world and my characters by actually writing. What I learn goes into the character building, or even the world building. I often find that what looks good in notes, or plot outline, doesn’t work at all when you are in the middle of the story. I’m very much a throw it out if my characters have a better idea that comes more naturally to them and their world. A word of warning here: do not edit heavily as you write your first draft, especially as a beginning writer. You do not know how your process works yet, so don’t do what I do, be cautious, save everything, and edit once you have a complete draft.

For an organic writer chasing rabbits down their holes can lead to new ideas that help grow your world, your characters, and just make it all into your own Wonderland. Or it can be just a distraction that wastes your time, energy, and derails your book just like I was warned all those years ago. The problem is that you can’t tell the difference from the outside of the hole. You have to crawl inside and risk falling down and down, before you know if you’ll be talking to a hookah-smoking caterpillar, or just trapped in the dark, covered in dirt.

In other words, the hole could lead you to things you need to discover as a writer, or it could just get you lost and covered in rabbit poo. To find out which way it will go you have to chase the rabbit and be willing to climb into the dark and follow where it leads.

The Anita Blake novels, and the Merry Gentry series, have both benefitted greatly from me chasing rabbits through their tunnels. It has led me to some of my most creative and innovative ideas, or most poignant scenes, but it’s also led me to the dark end of a lot of tunnels, where I had to dig my way out, or back track and cut out all the writing I’d done while I was in that particular scene “tunnel”. I’ve lost a week, or more of work this way. Hundreds, if not thousands of scenes, characters, all useless in the end, but I’m still not certain that writing out the useless bits doesn’t shake something lose that I need.

When I was in high school, I read an article by Ray Bradbury, I believe it was exerts from, The Zen of Writing, but I’m no longer certain. I do know that I translated his wonderful, and much more poetic advice into this, “Every writer has about ten thousand words of crap in them, so you better start writing early and get the bad stuff out, so you can get to the good stuff.” I think sometimes books are like that for me, I need to write the stuff that doesn’t work, then cut it, to find the stuff that does work. I can’t prove that this is true, and maybe I just tell myself that to feel better about all the lost pages, but I can’t prove that isn’t true, either. I’ve written over thirty novels this way, so I’m not going to change my creative process, it works for me, but I’ll admit it’s imprecise. I think all creativity is imprecise, if you could measure it out to be precise it would be science, not art, though there is more than a bit of art in most good science.

I don’t mind following the white rabbit when I know that’s what I’m doing in a book. I’ll run the new idea, or scene, up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes. If they don’t then I delete it, probably put it in an outtake file, and go back to the original plot point where I diverged and keep writing. What I do mind is when I don’t realize it’s a rabbit I’m chasing and I think its more unicorn. For a unicorn, which is an amazing idea that will make the book even better, I’ll drop everything and give chase, but I hate it when I see a horn and think unicorn, but it turns out to be more jackalope.

Last night when I finished writing I began to suspect I had fallen down the rabbit hole. I was hoping I was wrong, because my deadline was upon me. I went to bed hoping I’d wake up and it would all make sense, but instead I knew it didn’t. It wasn’t a rabbit hole, it was a rabbit warren full of tunnels and it was all dark, dirty, and even the rabbits had fled. I had to own that I would be throwing out about twenty-five pages, or more. Days worth of work when I honestly can’t afford to lose the time, or the pages, if I am to make my deadline, but there it was, the brutal truth. I was trapped in the maze in the dark, and the only thing I could do was try to find my plot thread in the dark, and follow it back to the last point where the book really worked.

As a beginning writer it was easier for me to tell when the plot thread broke, because the writing wasn’t as good, but as I’ve had more practice, I’ve gotten better. In fact, I’ve gotten so good that my writing is great even when the character development, plot, or world building, has derailed. It all reads well, but that doesn’t make it right. It doesn’t make it the best the book, the characters, the world, can be.

I had to go back through this morning and read, painfully, where that character wouldn’t have done/said that. Oh, there’s where the magic system that I have so carefully built and explained to the reader totally imploded. Yes, it was an exciting scene, riveting, but it isn’t the way the magic works, so out it goes. Okay, so that whole scene goes. Wait, that entire plot line is out. It’s far too late in the book to throw in something this big; it will distract from the mystery which we have to solve in ex-number of chapters. I’m not an obsessive outliner, but I do plot my mysteries out in broad strokes, the closer to the end of the book, the more that outline is filled in and eventually becomes fixed. This close to the end of a novel I have to keep my eye on the goal, which is to solve the mystery in a fair manner that helps the reader feel that all the clues were there. I dislike other writers who cheat by pocketing clues and just almost lying to the reader, so I try to play fair myself. Yes, I am aware that some really big names in mystery hide clues from the reader all the time. I adore Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot, but Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie are both guilty of hiding clues to keep the reader in the dark. Sometimes it works brilliantly, but it’s still a bugaboo for me as a reader myself, so I try not to do it to other people.

So here I am in the maze, which is the worst possible kind of rabbit hole. Not only am I in the dark, covered in dirt and maybe worse, but it’s not just a straight tunnel. I can’t just back up a few pages and keep writing, because there are tunnels leading off the main tunnel, so many lefts and rights that I’m not entirely certain which is the main tunnel, or if I came this way, or that.

I begin to suspect it isn’t rabbit droppings on my shoes, but Minotaur crap, and that’s much worse for the book, and for my deadline. My plot thread has broken off in the maze somewhere. I only know it’s not ahead of me, so I can’t keep writing the book from here, I must go back. How far back? I’m not really sure, but I have to find where the thread broke, so I can follow it back and rewrite from there, because the thread still in my hand leads to the heart of the maze and the ruin of the book.

I know I will find my way out of the maze, because I’ve been lost in here before. I know I will find my broken thread and trace it back, and then write myself out of the maze. I know, because I’ve done this before, and that means I can do it again. That’s really what an experienced writer has over a beginning writer, we know that we can do it, because we’ve done it. Success is like a shield to protect you from the monsters, both the outside obstacles and your own self-doubt.

So for all you fellow writers out there both experienced and not, if you find yourself lost in the dark take courage. First try to just back up, if it works, then it’s a rabbit hole, and you’ll soon be out. Dust the dirt off and keep writing. If you realize that some of the tunnel was great ideas, then dig your way up and out, and keep writing from there. If the worst happens and you realize you’re standing in the middle of the maze with a broken thread in your hand, and Minotaur crap on your shoes, then keep moving. You will find the other half of your plot thread, eventually. Once you find it, grab it and drop the other end, because the other end only leads to the heart of the maze where the Minotaur waits to smash you to has-been, or never-was pulp, and dance with castanets on your creative soul.

A Tropical Blog

Things I have learned by being this long in the tropics:

That it is possible to tan through SPF 100 sunscreen and if you don’t reapply regularly, it’s possible to burn through it.

Getting wet in the ocean means you either need a different kind of sunscreen, or to reapply every time you get out of the water. Trust me on this, sunburns ruin all the outdoor fun, and some of the indoor fun, too.

Lizards bigger than our Pug and Japanese Chins are abundant. The dogs are not okay with this.

There seem to be more insects here. They like the taste of my flesh and laugh at bug repellent. Apparently, I taste better than Spike, Genevieve, or Jon, if the number of insect bites is a way to keep score.

The broad-brimmed floppy hats that I’ve always thought were ridiculous and only looked elegant on 1940s-1950s era movie stars really work at keeping the sun out of your eyes. It’s especially effective at my desk when I write. I do not look elegant in the hat, but I am solidly in the “everybody who isn’t a movie star looks silly in them” camp.

Everyone loves bacon, even fish, even if it’s second-hand bacon via sea sickness. Jon discovered this on our snorkeling trip.

Not even the dogs like a long walk in a hundred percent humidity.

Sand is everywhere; there is no escaping it.

The sea really can be teal, turquoise, and shades of blue that I’d only seen in calendar shots of exotic places.

Dolphins are a terrible and intriguing distraction for all of us.

Osprey, even more so; our local birds decided to eat their breakfast outside my office window most mornings.

That pelicans hit the water so hard the fish are stunned from the impact before they are scooped up in that big bill.

That peregrines really are one of the most widespread birds of prey in the world. Totally didn’t expect to see one here, but it was loving on the seagulls in that serial killer sort of way.

That seagulls are the sparrows of the ocean to me, they all look vaguely alike and I’m not sure what I’m looking at.

That I’d rather snorkel and dive with the fish in open ocean than go spear fishing for them.

That I still love kayaking on the ocean.

Kayaking in mangroves is amazing. Genevieve called it tricky.

That sea hares get purple ink all over you when you pick them up, and the ink smells like sweet flowers.

There is nothing sexy about getting in, or out, of a wetsuit.

That snorkeling/diving really is like swimming in the world’s biggest, most beautiful aquarium ever.

That spying a sea turtle, even if it’s just a head poking up and taking a breath, makes me happy.

Viruses don’t care if you’re in a tropical paradise, they’re still out to get you.

That even here in this beautiful place with all four of us plus the dogs, we can still be homesick.

That traveling with the dogs here can be an adventure.

Dawn comes in soft & pastel, but sundown explodes in technicolor fire, as if the day grows up and gets hot and heavy by nightfall.

If you’re with the right person, walking hand in hand on a tropical beach is as romantic as it’s supposed to be.

Teachers can make all the difference

Beverly K. Sheline
August 9, 1947 – January 10, 2015
Kokomo, Indiana

Miss Beverly Sheline was an English teacher at my high school. She taught my first creative writing class. I was fourteen, still painfully shy, and a serious bookworm. Now most writers read voraciously when they’re younger, but I was still using books to hide from the social anxiety of dealing with too many other people. By the next year I’d begin to force myself to break the prison of my shyness by joining speech team and drama, but that year I was still very much letting books be my shelter. I mean, if you’re reading people are much less likely to try and talk to you, so you don’t have to worry about talking to them. I was still very much in hiding, and only decided that summer that I wanted to be a writer, but not just a writer, I wanted to write horror, dark fantasy, and heroic fantasy. I was this shy kid from the middle of Indiana farm country that had decided she would be a horror writer as her profession. Can you imagine how badly that could have gone if I’d gotten the wrong teacher at the very beginning? But Miss Sheline was very much the right teacher.

She let her students write whatever type of story they wanted without judging the worth of the topic. I would get a lot of judgement on the fact that I wrote genre fiction in college, but in that first precious class there was no judgement, no classifying of one type of story being morally superior to another. That was a gift, to just let her students fly and be who they were as writers, a gift that far too many creative writing classes don’t give their students.

I’d been writing since I was twelve but had only finished a story beginning to end that summer. It was a horror story, a mystery and slasher flick really, because everyone died horribly except for the baby who crawled away into the woods with the implication she would starve to death with no one to care for her. My Uncle Monk, who I think was the only one I gave it to for reading, did the best thing possible. He patted me on the head, said it was good, and didn’t get all freaked out that I was writing about torture and dismemberment. It was the best reaction he could have given, I think. The year I was thirteen- fourteen was a very big turning point for me creatively. I discovered Robert E. Howard’s short story collection, Pigeons from Hell, which solidified what kind of writer I wanted to be and I’ve never wavered from that decision. It led me to find other horror authors to read including Stephen King and Anne Rice, which would both influence my own writing, especially Salem’s Lot and Interview with the Vampire.

I wrote my very first vampire story for Miss Sheline’s class. I’d grown up watching the old Hammer vampire films, had read Salem’s Lot, Interview with the Vampire, and I think all that helped me be ready to write that first story. The other ingredient was a friend I rode the school bus with let me have the cover off her Teen Beat magazine. It was a picture of Parker Stephenson who played one of the Hardy Boys on the then TV show. Yes, I had a crush on him, but it was the image, not the crush, that made me want the picture. I couldn’t explain it to my friend, but I knew it was important for me. I told her I’d use it in a story, she was dubious, but she let me have it, making me promise to show her the story afterwards.

I used that picture to base my first master vampire on, but the main character of the story was a petite, black-haired vampire herself who had made friends with a human girl that the charming but evil vampire had seduced and killed. The main character used a crossbow to kill the other vampire and avenge her friend. I no longer have a copy of that story, but I remember it in startling detail all these years later, and yes the first shape of Anita was in that main character. The vampire loosely based on Parker Stephenson’s picture never showed up in my stories again; strangely dead is dead for me with characters.

It never occurred to me that Miss Sheline might be disturbed by my subject matter. It would only be years later that I realized how differently it could have gone, but instead she read it, gave it an A, and said, “You scared me.”

I’d scared a grown up! I’d scared a teacher! That was heady stuff and just the kind of ego boost that I needed to keep me going forward with my dream.

I learned just two days ago that Miss Beverly Sheline died of cancer recently. She is being laid to rest today and family and friends are gathering to say goodbye. If I’d been thinking more clearly I would have sent flowers, but it hit me strangely harder than I thought it would, and I didn’t think about flowers, I thought about writing. I thought I would write about the teacher who helped start me on my way to being a writer. There were other teachers at Oak Hill High School that were influential on me as a writer and a person, but I’ll save those stories for another day. Today is about Miss Sheline. I did tell her, and say in my very first newspaper interview which was for the local paper where I grew up, how much she had helped me. She read the interview and she and several teachers that I’d mentioned came out to the signing at the local mall. I’m doubly glad she knew that she’d made a difference to me and that I got to tell her in person years ago. Good teachers inspire, lead, but sometimes the best thing they do is to let the students know they matter, and that their first efforts are rewarded. I still remember the thrill I got from her words, “You scared me.” Now, I scare people professionally, but few moments have been as important to me as that first one. Thank you, Miss Sheline.

New Blog – Happy Winter Solstice from Our Family to Yours

Listening to Christmas carols and the ocean, as I sit outside and write to the glow of holiday lights. The windows are open behind me so the carols on the blue tooth speaker are background noise to the pounding waves. The wind has picked up from the gentle slap of earlier. The sea had sounded almost lazy as we walked along the shore, but now the sound alone makes me know there’d be no swimming off the beach and even a small boat would be a rocky ride tonight. The stars that had been so brilliant earlier are hidden behind a thick cloud cover. It’s a black night beside the sea and even with the glow of the Christmas lights I’m strangely melancholy. I guess it’s the time of year for it, remembering the people that aren’t here for the holiday and never will be again this side of the grave. Missing my mother is a constant, but I wonder what my grandmother would think about our tower by the sea, to my knowledge she never saw the ocean and never wanted to.

I can smell the steaks cooking under Spike’s watchful eye. Genevieve is helping Jon prepare fresh green beans for pan sauté with garlic and a few other spices. It’s nearly eighty degrees outside while Bing Crosby sings about a white Christmas that will never happen here. The ocean pounds, the carols sing, the lights glow, the dogs wonder why I won’t throw the ball while I type, and it’s almost time for dinner with my polyamorous foursome. Life is good, but there will always be those people who aren’t with me at the holidays that make it a strange time of happiness and sorrow.

Trinity, our daughter, will be joining us from college later. This is her first year away and the first time she has to come back for the holidays. It is both wonderful and a little sad, as well. She is off on her own adventure and we’re thrilled, but it’s another big change and all change can translate to loss in our heads and in our hearts if we’re not careful to remember the difference. It’s all good, but it is different.

Genevieve introduced me to the song, ” All I Want for Christmas is a Real Good Tan,” by Kenny Chesney from 2003. It was pretty appropriate for this year, though we all slather ourselves up with sunscreen in an effort to avoid sunburn. The idea of a tropical holiday isn’t new. Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters were singing about it with, “Mele Kalikimaka” the Hawaiian Christmas song in 1950. Ella Fitzgerald crooned, “Christmas Island,” in 1960. When I was a little girl I loved having a white Christmas with lots of snow, but I’m pretty good sitting here with a warm ocean just outside the door and palm trees swaying in the tropical breeze. White sand will do just fine as a stand in for all that snow.

The picture with this blog is from my office for the day where three of the dogs helped inspire me, just like they do at home.

I hope that all of you reading this will have a wonderful holiday celebration whether it is Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Yule, or Winter Solstice, and that family, whether of choice or of blood, gather round you. May you have friends, and if a solitary holiday is what you want I hope you enjoy your own company, because in the end no matter how many people we love, or love us, it is ourselves that we come to in the end and always.

Celebrating being #1 on the New York Times List!

The newest Anita Blake novel, Jason, is #1 on the New York Times List! Thanks to everyone that bought the book and showed how much they loved Jason the novel, and Jason the character! Thanks to all the booksellers virtual and brick and mortar!

When I sold my first story, my first husband took me out to a fancy dinner. When I sold my first novel, Nightseer, it was my Dungeons and Dragon group that surprised me with a party to celebrate.

When Guilty Pleasures, the first Anita Blake novel, sold, my writing group, The Alternate Historians, made me a cake shaped like it’s cover and we had a party.

When I hit the New York Times List for the first time I was alone on tour for A Kiss of Shadows. I thought I was being calm, cool, and collected until the room service waiter brought my hot tea. I had about an hour before I had to get ready for the signing that night, so I’d ordered tea to relax. I was so calm about the news that I accidentally gave the waiter a fifty dollar tip. I caught my mistake and fixed it explaining I’d just learned about the Times List, and then added, “If you came back with a fifty dollar tip they’d think you did more than just deliver tea.” He didn’t think I was funny. My media escort took me out later to a very nice restaurant with a view of the sea.

When I cracked the top five with Narcissus in Chains, my second husband, Jonathon, was on tour with me. It was our first tour together. In fact, it was the first time I’d brought anyone on tour with me. We used up the cell phone batteries in his phone, my phone, and our media escort’s phone calling his family and my writing group to tell them the news. We were in San Fransisco, because we went into China Town there and bought a necklace to commemorate the event.

When I made #2 for the first time with Cerulean Sins, I went to a wonderful local bakery and bought three to five cakes of flavors that they didn’t make cupcakes in, so we could finally taste them. We invited Jonathon’s parents and other friends over and had a cake tasting party. This was before I started exercising again, or watching my nutrition. Though honestly, I have a serious weakness for cake, not sweets, but cake is yummy.

I made #2 with A Lick of Frost for the Meredith Gentry series. There were other times that the Merry books hit the List, but I honestly don’t remember what I did to celebrate for each book. But there was only one Anita Blake novel, Incubus Dreams that hit #2 before Micah brought home the gold medal.

How did I celebrate that first #1 with Micah? Which, incidentally, was my last original paperback novel; like Jason, it was a shorter piece featuring the title character though it was a mystery complete with zombies and mob connections and background on Micah that even Anita didn’t know. Years before this I’d told my friend Joanie that if I ever made #1 I’d take her family and we’d all do a trip to Disney World. When I called to tell her the news, she reminded me of the promise and that’s what we did. Joanie, her husband Jim, and their daughter, Melissa went with Jonathon, our daughter Trinity, and me to Disney. Yep, that’s right, I celebrated my first New York Times #1 book by going to the Mouselands.

I can’t remember precisely what I did to celebrate my first hardback #1 Blood Noir. I know we did dinner somewhere nice, but after going to Disney World for Micah, it was just hard to top that, especially because I was deep into writing the next Meredith Gentry book, so there wasn’t time for a trip.

So how did I celebrate Jason hitting #1? I got the calls from my Agent, Merrilee, and then my editor, Susan, while I was changing for gym. I continued getting dressed, and when I got off the phone the first thing I did was tell Genevieve and Spike. This included much jumping up and down, hugs and kisses. Jonathon wasn’t at home. I debated on texting him, but waited until I could tell him in person, much kissing ensued. Then . . . then I went to gym. I had a great workout, came home, showered, and celebrated with my happy polyamorous foursome. My real life has become special enough that my normal plans are a celebration. Realizing that truth made Jason being #1 a very special milestone.

The flowers in the picture on this blog are from my U.S. publishing team at Penguin Random House, thanks guys!

New Blog – Jason, the novel, is here!

Today is the official on sale date for my latest book, Jason! It’s the newest Anita Blake novel, and the first original paperback since Micah, thus the title being the name of one of the leading characters in the book. My publisher and I are very into naming conventions. Before you ask, yes, I do have ideas for other short novels featuring other major, or even minor-major characters in Anita’s universe, but currently I’m finishing up the next hardback original for Anita and the gang, Dead Ice.

In fact, Dead Ice woke me at 5:20 this morning according to Spike, who is as light a sleeper as I am, so he was very aware when I tried to creep out of bed and not wake anyone else. Genevieve and Jon usually sleep very soundly, but I learned at lunch that even they knew when I got out of bed. One of the unforeseen downsides of being polyamorous is that when ideas wake you up at odd hours you disturb more people. Or maybe that’s a downside of sleeping with a writer, regardless of your relationship style.

The book was very loud in my head, I knew exactly what came next and exactly how to write the scene. I’d gone to bed knowing what came next, but not how to get from A to B, and suddenly I woke in the dark and I knew. I also knew I couldn’t wait to get to the computer and start typing it. I’ve learned that when inspiration knocks that loudly you need to answer it quickly, because otherwise you end up knowing you had this great idea, or the perfect way to work this scene, but now you can’t remember most of it, just a vague sense you lost the wave that would have carried you further in the book. I hate that feeling, so I was typing before dawn, trying to keep up with my muse. We’d done 12 pages yesterday, so to be this pumped again today was a very good sign that the book is gaining momentum.

I’m happiest as a writer when I’m writing fast. I joke that I write as if the monsters really are chasing me and if I hesitate too long they’ll catch me. For all of you reading this that are wondering why I didn’t give myself a day off to enjoy Jason coming out, well first, I spent many years on tour for every book. It sort of conditioned me that I didn’t get the on sale date off, and in fact traveling across the country to promote a book can be pretty grueling. My record for grueling is still 26 cities in 28 days, that book tour still lives in infamy for Jon and myself, because he traveled with me on every last day of it. We hadn’t met Genevieve and her husband, Spike, at that point.

It is a wonderful thing for a publisher to spend money to send a writer on a book tour, it really is. But I’ve done my time and it’s a blessing to stay home, too. Thanks to the internet there are so many ways to promote your book now that don’t make you get on a plane to travel the country. Because if we were on tour for Jason, I wouldn’t be writing on Dead Ice. I can write on planes, while I try to pretend that I’m not flying (Yes, I shared my fear of flying with Anita), but I lose the thread of a book when I tour. I know some writers can continue to write a new book through a tour, but I’ve never been one of them.

Being home I could take the day off and just enjoy that Jason is on the shelves, but I didn’t. Instead I did what writers do, I wrote. Writers write; that may sound simple, but a lot of beginning writers don’t seem to truly grasp the concept. Writers write when we’re happy. We write when we’re sad. We write when we’re inspired. We write in order to get inspired. We write when the outside world has moved us to spill some reality onto the page. We write when the inside of our head is so loud that it seems almost more real than reality. We write to understand ourselves, to understand others, or to just admit on paper we don’t understand either. We write to make sense of the world and to share fiction that is often tidier and more logical than real life. Some of us write to escape logic and put the fantastic on the page so that everyone can hunt dragons from the safety of their homes. Writers can help you hunt down a killer, solve a mystery so baffling and dangerous that the death toll is frightening, all from the safety of your armchair. Writers write about what moves them, outrages them, intrigues them, makes them laugh out loud, or weep. Writers write; and if they’re very lucky, what they write moves the rest of the world as much as it moves them. I celebrated the release of my newest book, Jason, by working on the next book, because I’m a writer, and writers write.