Author: Jonathon

Divine Misdemeanors comes out tomorrow so you guys can actually read it for yourself which is what so many of you told me on-line. You get the book tomorrow so you voted for me to hint about Flirt which is the extra Anita Blake novel that you’re getting in February 2nd 2010. Hm, I’m bad at hinting if I’m not very careful. I tend to give too much away. So, how much to share without it being too much?

First Flirt interrupted my writing of Divine Misdemeanors the way that the novel Micah interrupted Danse Macabre a few years back. Books usually sneak up on me, but neither of these did. They knocked on the front door and when I tried not to open it, saying, “I’m busy, come back later,” they banged on the door. I went to the door to chase the interruption away, but it was like opening the door and finding something interesting standing there, something you just couldn’t quite ignore. So, I thought, well, I’ll write a few pages and see how it goes. Fifty pages later I knew that Micah had to be finished before I could go back to the other book. I learned from that experience and I knew what Flirt was, a second book barging its way into my creative pipeline, but these pushy books clog up the works as if your ideas snarl into some kind of log jam and you have to write the interruption to clear the way for the book that’s actually due. I let Flirt have its way with me and it wrote in similar amazing speed. It turned out to be a little longer than Micah. The difference is that Micah came out of nowhere. The character just came up behind me and finally told me more of his back story, and I knew Anita had a job out of town. It was like getting mugged by my own muse, but in a nice, happy way.

Flirt wasn’t like that. In fact, Flirt is one of the few books when I knew exactly when I got the idea for it, and where, and what inspired it. I’ve blogged earlier about all that, and even put an essay in the book explaining where the idea for the book came from, and tried to explain as much as I could how I got from idea to finished product. So, not only do you get a new Anita Blake book, but you get me telling you how I did it, where it came from, what made me go, aha, I have a book idea. I tell you the music I listened to while I wrote it, and the schedule I kept. I do my best to reveal the magic trick. Plus, Jennie Breeden of Devil’s Panties did her version of the original event that inspired me. Her event is much funnier than mine, and more charming, mine’s fun and a little funny, but not as funny. Her’s is full of sexual innuendo. Mine more overtly sexual and more poignant, even a little sad, and eventually mine goes horribly, horribly, wrong. Because it’s me and I can never behave myself for long. When my muse and I play at much more than short story length violence is guaranteed and sex is almost guaranteed, Flirt is no exception to that rule.

What do you get that you haven’t seen before? You get to see Anita with three of her guys on a lunch date. You get new bad guys, professional bad guys. You see a new werelion group and find out some of what Haven has been saying behind Anita’s back. He’s been a bad lion. You get to meet a new victim, or romantic interest for Anita, depending on how you want to look at it. What’s the old saying, when the only tool you have is a hammer all your problems begin to look like nails. Massad Ayoob wrote that a few years ago. He meant that if the only skill you have is a gun then the only thing you’ll know how to do is shoot. He encouraged people to learn how to talk their way out of things, or to avoid the problem all together by being aware and smart about their surroundings. The more skills you have to get out of a problem the less likely you are to have to use your gun in that ultimate way. Taking Anita’s guns and knives away no longer makes her unarmed, not really. The bad guys learn that the hard way. And no, I don’t just mean sex and the ardeur. Remember her day job? That whole zombie raising thing, well, we get to see her do that again, a lot of that again.

So, new bad guys, new werelions, romance, flirting, fighting, sex, violence, preternatural psychics, and zombies.

 

Just a quick note tonight that we’ve updated the tour info and here’s where to go for it:

http://blog.laurellkhamilton.org/index.php/news

 

First the new website is up and live. Jon and Carri did a wonderful job. Carri is our web designer and graphic artist. Jon did the code. Together they are amazing. There are new pictures of me all over the place, and some of me and Jon. There are still some bugs to be worked out, and Jon has been doing just that tonight, but its up and its working, and that was the goal. We wanted the new website up before we went on tour for Divine Misdemeanors which hits the shelves on December 8th which is next Tuesday. I know you guys are counting the days and say it can’t get here soon enough, but we’re scrambling on our end to get everything done before we get on that first plane. Tour dates and such are up on the website. I’ll be blogging about tour and such probably tomorrow.

It is going to be an amazing year and a busy one. Even I can’t quite believe that Divine Misdemeanors is next week. Merry Gentry #8. And then Febuary 2nd 2010 is Flirt an unscheduled Anita Blake novel, sort of like Micah, but a longer, and with extras. When we get back from tour for Divine M. I’ll talk more about those extras. Then in June 2010 is the regularly scheduled Anita Blake: Bullet.

Below is a spoiler for anyone who hasn’t read past book 9, Obsidian Butterfly, in the Anita Blake series:

I had an insight today while doing my 11 pgs on Bullet. Richard Zeeman has been problamatic almost from the beginning of the Anita series. Today I had to go back and reread the first moment Anita ever saw him on the page, and I realized that Richard was created for one reason and one reason only. He was supposed to be the perfect man for Anita so she’d date, marry, and bed him, and forget about Jean-Claude and his vampire wiles. I have never created another character with such a one track purpose before, or since. No wonder I had problems with him. He was never his own person to me. I saw him only as an extension of Anita and Jean-Claude. He was a walking, talking, solution to their problem. Sort of like Lilth and Eve both created to be Adam’s wife, but not created to be someone on their own. The story makes Eve especially just an add on to Adam, and look how that turned out. Well, Richard had to fight to be his own person because that’s not how my subconcious and me saw him. I’ve been writing Richard for ten years, or more, and its ony today that I realized why he’s always been problematic to write. I’m hoping now that I’ve had my insight into him that things will go smoother. Tomorrow’s scene will be a telling one, so either it will go smoother, or he’s going to be my problem boy forever. I guess if I’d just been created to be someone’s perfect mate I’d be pissy, too. Shades of Stepford, and my apologies to my imaginary guy friend.

 

First the amazing news that Swallowing Darkness paperback is # 22 on the New York Times List as of 12/13/09! Thanks to everyone who bought a copy and helped us get on the list. Second, I’m going to blog about the Merry series and some of the questions you guys have been asking on-line.

Divine Misdemeanors comes out on December 8th which is next week. Ah! I love it when a new book finally hits the shelves and you guys can read it. But enough of you on-line have told me you’ve either just found the Merry Gentry series, or read them out of order, or many are going “Swallowing Darkness came out in hard back, when?“or “How did I miss it?” So to help clarify all that, plus welcome all the new people to the Merry party.

The Merry Gentry books in order are:

A Kiss of Shadows; A Caress of Twilight; Seduced by Moonlight; A Stroke of Midnight; Mistral’s Kiss; A Lick of Frost; Swallowing Darkness; and coming soon, Divine Misdemeanors.

The idea behind the naming convention for the series was that each book would get progreessively darker and then the titles would have light imagery in them as Merry triumphed over her enemies and won the day. The books would start with A Kiss of Shadows, then A Caress of Twilight night is falling, Seduced by Moonlight implies after dark, and then A Stroke of Midnight is most definitely late in the darkness, and Swallowing Darkness seemed to me to say everything I wanted to say about that point of the books, but my editor at the time couldn’t see her way clear to it. In fact, both my agent and my editor seemed strangely quiet, or reluctant, or even nervous whenever we discussed the title. It would take me several years after we jumped the naming-convention tracks to Mistral’s Kiss and A Lick of Frost, before they would let me use Swallowing Darkness as a title and I would finally understand why the nervous laughter on the phone calls from New York. My idea behind the title Swallowing Darkness was that Merry would have to embrace her darker magic to save herself and the people she loved, but as those who read the series know Doyle’s nickname is The Queen’s Darkness, or simply Darkness. So everyone in New York thought I meant to imply some sort of oral sex double entendre with the title. I swear to you that I didn’t intend it that way, and didn’t get the joke for years. The light would finally dawn, and then I felt sort of stupid for not realizing the double meaning in Swallowing Darkness. A lot of my books have a very high sexual content, the Merry books have had that from the beginning, it makes people assume I get some jokes that I don’t get. I’m not a good joke audience, because much of that kind of humor passes me by, whether the joke is sexy or not. Sometimes you have to explain the joke to me and then its not funny anymore, I don’t do it on purpose, but sometimes I’m a little clueless. This was soooo one of those times.

They finally let me use the title and it matched with the new naming convention which was one of Merry’s bodyguard’s and lover’s names with some sexy sounding phrase: Mistral’s Kiss; A Lick of Frost; Swallowing Darkness. And now we have yet another naming convention for Divine Misdemeanors.

I deliberatly chose to switch title themes for this book. I see the first seven books as one story arc, and Divine Misdemeanors beginning a new one. Now you get to follow up on events in the first seven books, but the direction and flavor of the series is different. Merry has made her choices, thrown out a third of my plot, and remade her life. (Here’s a problem with knowing that some of you have not read all of the first seven books. I don’t want to spoil the surprises for you guys, but I want to talk to the readers who have read them all. I don’t know how to do that without series spoilers. It is a puzzlement.)

I think I can say this that the first seven books are set in modern America and a fairy land if J. R. R. Tolkein was more interested in socilogy, politics, and personal relationships than language. It is a quest, but instead of a distant land, or a holy relic, Merry and her friends are trying to stay one step ahead of assassination attempts and trying to live long enough for her to be crowned queen of the Unseelie Court, the Dark Court of Fairie. She is literally a fairie princess, the only one born on American soil after the fey were kicked out of Europe. I’ve had some little girls go, “Fairy Princess, a book about fairyland? Oh, I want that.” Um, no little girl you can’t read these books, its not that kind of fairyland and Merry is not that kind of fairy princess, not even close.

My books are set in a very adult world. There are moments of horror and violence that wouldn’t be out of place in a slasher flick. There is sex. Good sex. Real sex, except for the whole glowing skin and magic thing, but I try for all the sex in my books to be humanly possible. I guess in some ways Merry’s world is the antithesis ot Tolkein. There is no sex in Tolkein. There is this feeling of the old boy’s clubs when they gathered together to get away from the women and not have to worry about all that girl stuff. You can sometimes hear your male friends on that guy’s camp out, or fishing trip, except with elves, dwarves and dragons, and evil warlords. My books have almost none of that, and the term elf is never used though Tolkein’s elves are probably close to my high court sidhe in appeance but where I always felt the elves in his world would never want to get dirty enough to have really good, squealchy sex, my sidhe are very sensual and very sexual beings. They’re nature deities, or were once, that’s a lusty bunch, its gotta be. I will say this for Tolkein’s world I always thought that if any of his races liked a good roll in the hay it had to be the Hobbits. They liked good food, good music, dancing, parties, smoking weed, there’s a reason they had more fun than anyone else in the books. It was also why I think it had to be a Hobbit that took the ring through everything, because they seemed to have a more complete life to lose. The Hobbits are the most alive to me. When I was younger I wanted to be an elf, but as I grew older I knew I was a Hobbit. I’m too short to be anything else for one thing.

The Merry Gentry series is marketed as a paranormal romance, and they are closer to that paradeim than the Anita Blake books, but I say, I write Paranormal Thrillers, because that covers what I really write. The first seven books are more romantic as in the princess is looking for her true love and trying to win a crown, but its me and I’m always the subversive so my princess isn’t your typical one, and her choices won’t be either. Spoiler alert, but not a major one: I mean what other fairie princess has as her major magic the ability to make people bleed out or melt their flesh so they turn into a little, screaming ball of flesh. Two of the nastiest magical ideas I’ve ever come up with and that says a lot coming from me.

For the male readers, I do apologize that you guys are taking grief for the Merry covers. They look like straight sexy romances and I know that it takes a secure guy to carry that around school, or work, or on the bus. I thank you all for your bravery. The men who have braved it say the books are great, but they’re really happy that Anita Blake is being repackaged in something other than body part covers, something more mainstream and that doesn’t get them grief on the subway from little old ladies with umbrellas. (We’ve had three men acosted on the bus or subway by older women accusing them of reading porn because of the early Anita covers, or Merry covers. One guy got hit with an umbrella. One guy’s wife told him to take that porn out of her house. She’d never read me and was just basing it on the cover. He got her to read the book and now she’s a fan, too. We will conqueor our detractors with luv.) I love the cover of Divine Misdemeanors, but I can see where as a guy it might make you feel like you’re trying to sneak contraband across the border from the girl’s side to the boy’s. Trust me when I say that the men in my world are very manly, and Merry is a girl that’s more than okay with that. We have battles and duels and all that adventure stuff, plus enough blood and gore to make Quentin Tarotino happy, but with enough real emotion to make Nora Ephron smile. I can’t think of a movie maker that does magic and sex to the degree I do, so I’ll have to leave the movie metaphores behind. Maybe for fantasy Del Toro?

Divine Misdemeanors is less of a romance and more of a thriller. We have a seriel killer slaughtering the fey Americans of Los Angeles and Merry and Grey’s Detective Agency our requested to give their cultural expertise. Its not every day that you see supposedly immortal people murdered even in L. A. The relationships between the characters continue to build, and there’s sex, so does that make it a romance? Or does the serial killer and solving the who-dun-it make it a detective drama? Or does the magic make it a . . . You get the idea. I write Paranormal Thrillers, because that covers everything I write in every book.

 

I have been procrastinating as hard as I can for the last two days, if you count today as day two, and I do. I have fidgeted with knickknacks, used iTunes, ranted I can’t find music, Twitter has been very tempting, I’ve even answered e-mail when I should be working. I’ve never taken so many business calls personally in forever. Anything to keep me away from my desk. I am up against a deadline to do intros to a bunch of nonfiction essays about the Anita Blake series. It has pulled me away from Bullet which is your regularly schedule Anita book for June. The book was going well and I’ve reached that point where I resent anything that interrupts me on it. It’s a good sign. It means I’m enjoying the book, the characters, and the world, but it also means that anything else I have to do is deeply resented. This reaction can get pretty severe for me. I can get so wrapped up in a book that food becomes just an unwanted distraction. I-Just-Want-to-Write! But I gave my word that I’d do the intros and it is interesting to read other people’s take on my work.

I realize that only I would say I’m procrastinating when I’m getting this much writing done, but to me if its not pages on the main book it just doesn’t count. I know that isn’t true, but I have trouble convincing my muse, or my inner child, that things that take us away from our playtime (writing Bullet) isn’t time delayed.

In fact, as the very best of literary discussions can do some of the essays have insights that are new to me. New ways of looking at characters, story-lines, my world. Interesting, even useful in that near therapy kind of way, but its also odd to be reading other people analyzing my books. Remember along with a biology degree have one in English lit, so I’m not unfamiliar with literary interpretations of books. I guess I just never thought mine would get the same treatment. I know that my books have been taught as part of courses at some colleges and universities. It’s happened often enough that it no longer seems weird, though sitting in on one of the classes probably would be, because some of the essays I’m reading make statements.

They say things like, “I’m sure the writer was giggling when she wrote this.” I can’t remember exactly which essay that was from, but I clearly remember thinking I didn’t find the incident funny, I found it frightening. Oh, it was about Anita’s interactions with Olaf in SKIN TRADE. Maybe the essay writer meant that nervous giggle that you do when you’re half-scared and half-intrigued, but either way I never find Olaf giggle worthy. I find him frightening, and confusing, and intriguing as a character, but not funny.

Some essays make statements about what I meant when I wrote something, or came up with something, and its either incorrect or it would take me books to realize why I wrote something and what its purpose was in the series. But the writer of the essays has a lot of hindsight to draw from, when writing the books its like living your life you’re too in it to realize the big picture sometimes. But some of the essays actually do get what I intended in ways that please me, because some do hit it dead on the way I meant it, and its not always the majority view among the fans, so that’s cool.

And then you have the next essay or two later where another essayist totally doesn’t get what I meant, and is as anti-theme as the first essayist was pro-theme. The ardeur is one of the major things that swings back and forth between the essays. One writer honestly nailed what I intended or rather the big picture, which was nice. My favorite was the essay that gave me fresh insight onto why Micah and Nathaniel got to Anita’s domestic center before Jean-Claude and Richard. The writer made some very good points that I’d never thought of, and I think she was right. She was right about my characters and helped me understand things that had confused Anita and me. Now, that’s interesting to me as a writer. Maybe in your books, as in your life sometimes you don’t understand everything because you’re standing too close. I certainly stand very close to Anita, and she’s not always the clearest emotional window into her world, and neither am I.

Interestingly the essay collection is entitled: Ardeur and its edited by Leah Wilson.

I’ve given myself permission to work on Bullet this morning, but knowing I’m behind th eight ball with the essays plays with my concentration. I can do comics, even script, but something about the essays and the intros has seriously thrown me. Its like it both uses the same part of my brain as my main fiction writing but without the energizing effect of the fiction. So I’m both tired and drained. An odd and unexpected effect that will make me more likely to say no the next time someone wants me to do this kind of thing again. Anything that messes with my process to this degree is to be avoided if at all possible. I value the insights and the experience of writing the intros and reading the essays, but I think it will be only time for such a task. So enjoy it when it comes out, because it may be the only collection that gets this much of my time and attention.

 

I had people who were doing the National Novel Writing Month send in their votes to see what was kicking their butt the most on their novel: character or plot. The vote was very close. Also, many seemed to be having problem with both, or a combination of both, so I decided I’d give a few tips for both those pesky characters and that twisting plot.

Characters:

1. First problem is usually when you can’t get a character to have a distinct voice in your head, let alone on paper. The person you’ve tried to create just sits there on paper and is as flat as the computer surface your working on. What can you do?

1a. I sit down at the computer and talk to the character, or complain to the character. Sometimes it feels more like character begging as I try to figure out in a long rambling way why this imaginary person is not alive on paper. Its a type of freeform almost stream of consicousness writing and I find that it will often help bring the character to life, or point out why the character isn’t working.

1b. If the above doesn’t work I’ll switch to doing the same thing on paper in long hand. Sometimes reluctant characters seem to prefer pen to paper therpy rather than computer. I actually think its that the physical act of writing helps open up new pathways in my own head and body, but whether its the fictional character or me, it often shakes something lose.

1c. I sometimes have objects that help me get into, or stay in, a character’s voice. This usually means you already have the voice and it was working, but now you feel like you’ve lost the feel of them on paper. For Anita Blake it’s coffee, sometimes just the smell of coffee will be enough to bring her voice roaring back to life. A nice mug with a message on it that would make Bert, her business manager, cringe also helps. For Jean-Claude my master vampire its silk or lace, something pretty to wear, or hold and stroke.

1d. Exercise, I find that a walk, or some weight lifting will often knock something lose whether its a character not talking to me, or a plot not working. We are afterall physical and not just mental, sometimes using both helps me think and write better.

1e. Ok, this is probably the oddest one, but I’ve used it and it really works for me so I’ll share. There is a book by Dr. Daniel Tortora entitled, “The Right Dog for You.” Now not only did I use this book to find my ideal breed of dog, pugs, but I’ve used it to get characters clear in my head. How? The book has a series of tests in the back that the prespective dog owner is supposed to take so they will know themselves better, and thus pick the right dog for them not the dog they think they should have. Example I was a big dog person, but my ideal was, and is, a pug which is a toy breed. The tests if you’re honest are very eye opening.

The first character I used it on was Nathaniel. He’d been a minor character in several books but when he hit the stage in a major way neither Anita nor I understood him. He was so submissive a personality that he wouldn’t tell me what he wanted, he wanted to conform to my ideal which was very him when he entered the Anita Blake series. But I needed his voice, him, to talk to me not just wait to be ordered about. Neither Anita nor I have that kind of patience. Tell us what you want, what you need. There are about twelve different personality tests that you take in the back of the book. Now, first take them yourself and see how you turn out. If you’re not honest enough to get thorugh the tests and recognize your own self then you may not be open enough for your characters to speak to you like this. First, know yourself because in the end all the characters all the voices have to come thorugh you. You are their mirror, their camera, their voice. Its okay if you don’t know yourself as well as you think you do as long as you’re willing to learn.

I took Nathaniel through these series of tests and once I did I just knew more about him. Having to have my imaginary friend take the tests and me keep score and figure out what kind of dog he’d be happy with helped me know what kind of person would want that dog. See, I told you it sounds a little silly, but all I can say is that its worked for me more than once.

Plot problems:

1. Plot isn’t working and the book has ground to a halt. I try to find where in the book I last enjoyed myself as a writer. I often find especially with the Merry Gentry series that is where the plot train jumped the tracks. I back up and rewrite from there and it works again.

1a. Now if its a mystery plot and its not working it may be lack of planning on your mystery, your clues, and your slueth. The mystery is usually the backbone of most of my books and I find that if I haven’t thought it through I may wonder around a bit. That requires thinking on paper about how we can solve this mystery so it will be fair to the reader and require no cheating on the part of our slueth. There are tons of books and articles that detail that, and I will tell you the sad fact that sometimes until somone else reads the book you don’t know if the mystery worked or not, because sometimes the who done it is so loud in your head that you can’t see that what was in your head never made it onto the page.

2. You’ve written yourself into a corner, now what? Sometimes you have to back up and figure out where you lost that wheel, so you can get back in the race, but sometimes its your character going I wouldn’t do that. If that happens I count it as a blessing and let the character tell me why it doesn’t work for them. Then with more insight into the character I move on from there. I will have more to say on this one at the end of this blog, but it’s a series spoiler so I’ve put it at the end.

3. You’ve been following your character around for hundreds of pages and they suddenly sit down and look at you, and you really had no plot other than following the character around. That’s a tough one and one of the main reasons that I always put the spine of a mystery in my books because that gives me major events I know I have to hit and helps keep everyone on the page moving forward. If mystery isn’t your gig then I’m going to refer you up to the ideas for getting your characters moving in the first half of this blog.

3a. Again, go back to the last place the book was working for you and sometimes you find where you jumped the tracks. I’ll be honest and say I’ve never had this happen to me so I don’t have a lot of suggestions.

4. You’ve outlined in detail and your book won’t stay on the outline. Now there are two camps of writers on this one, the outliner and the none outliners. Now, even I make notes and have a list of events that will happen in a book, but I know one writer friend that outlines almost a quarter of the length of the full book so that she knows nearly every event. If I outlined in that much detail it would take away the need for me to write the book, I’d feel done before I’d ever gotten a page, but she can’t write without one, so there you go.

4a. If you’re an outliner, and you’re sure of that, then beat that character into submission and bloody well make him, or her, behave, and get your book back on track.

4b. If you are not an outliner, or aren’t sure which you are yet, let the character have their head for awhile and see where it leads. I find that sometimes my characters and my subconscious are a lot smarter than I am and if I trust them it will be all right.

5. The rabbit hole. I first heard this term from writer Emma Bull, I highly recommend her book War for the Oaks, fairies in modern day America years before I would write my Merry books. She and her husband also a writer, Will Shetterly, called the rabbit hole that moment when a character or the plot takes you down a blind alley or kidnaps your plot and you lose control. They put rabbit holes up as bad things, and they are, or can be, but the problem is that sometimes as a new novelist its hard to tell if a rabbit hole is really just a rabbit hole leading into the dark, claustorphobic underground, or if it will lead you to Wonderland and some really cool adventures with your own character version of Alice. So beware of rabbit holes because they will swallow your book and leave you trapped in the dark with no way out, but occassionally they lead you to wonderful places you wouldn’t have found otherwise.

5a. Sometimes I get rabbit holes in my books and I will cut them out and save them in a different file. One of the joys of writing a book series is that just because a scene, or idea, doesn’t work in this book doesn’t mean it won’t work beautufiully later.

6. The scene that would not die. There is one of these in almost every book I’ve ever written. Its usually a dialogue heavy scene where I just can’t get people to stop talking or find an exit from the scene. I’ve cut out seventy pages of an Anita book and ninety pages for Merry and both scenes were literally big dialouge scenes with lots of characters.

6a. When I was first starting out as a writer I would just power through these scenes and cut them later, or edit them down later. But as I got more expeirence I began to get a feel for when I’d hit the-scene-that-would-not-die. What do you do if you know you’re trapped? I make a list of what the scene was suppose to accomplish. Are there clues you need? Character background? World building. What was the reason for this scene? If the scene has now accomplished all the goals you had for it just stop, pull the plug on this scene and move on. If you have no goals for your scene or your book I can’t help you since I am one of the most goal oreinted people I know. I can only advise on what I understand and lack of goals isn’t one of them. Sorry.

7. Your character and your plot seem to be arguing. I always side with character and have thrown out a third, or more of a plot so that my characters are happy. Recent example is the end of my Merry Gentry novel, Swallowing Darkness. I had this epic fantasy battle planned for this book, I knew it would be the seventh or eighth novel, and I knew exactly my end. Ok, guys what follows is a serious spoiler so please be warned. Very serious spoiler, are you still reading, ok you’ve been warned.

Spoiler: Last chance to avert your eyes.

I had planned on Merry and her royal guards getting an army of the goblins, the lesser fey, and kicking Cel and Andais’ ass. I’d planned on Merry taking the throne, choosing a single king, or kings, and living-happily-ever-after in fairy land. But somewhere in A Lick of Frost, Merry decided she didn’t want the throne she wanted the men she loved. The loss of Frost was a real blow to Merry and she finally fought back against my plot, my plans, and the sticky note timeline that I’d had up on my wall for years. She stepped up in Swallowing Darkness and she said, no, and she meant it. In giving up the throne for love and taking her royal guard back into voluntary exile in Los Angeles she destroyed years of planning and blew up a fourth of a wall of sticky notes that will now never be used at all. My grand, epic battle was trashed and a much more personal combat ensued. It was more powerful and more real than the original plan, and it just flat worked. Not only for Merry as a character but for Doyle and Frost, and the others. This was real, this was right, and my plot was well sacrificed to get where Merry wanted to be.

 

Your regularly scheduled blog is being preempted by breaking news. Ok, its not breaking news since I’ve known for awhile, but the announcement has gone public. I’m a team player and I would have been happy to wait for a group announcement but since that’s not happening here goes.

The Anita Blake TV show on IFC is not happening. Now no wailing and gnashing of teeth about it. In the two years and some change since I sold the rights to my series its been very educational. I know a great deal more about television, movies, and how this branch of the entertainment business works. It has been frustrating watching other shows in the genre I pioneered go on the air while we didn’t, but in the end I believe most things happen for a reason. I would rather have no television show than a bad one.

I learned through this long process that I loved Anita and all the other characters in my world. I’d known that in a vague way, but through meetings and talks and hearing other people’s takes on my world, I began to realize that I really loved them. I say they are my imaginary friends. I take friendship very seriously. I protect my friends, take care of them, and the scariest thing to me is not having the TV show die before it really started, but the thought of watching my friends on the small screen and hating it. That would have killed a little part of me. I didn’t understand how much they meant to me until we ventured out into Hollywoodland. Like I say, its been educational.

Tomorrow I will get up and I will continue to write Bullet, book 18 in the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series. I will get to finish choreographing a scene with Anita, Asher, and Jean-Claude the likes of which I have never attempted before. The thought makes me both giddy with happiness and full of intense performance anxiety.

February 2nd will see an extra surprise Anita Blake novel, Flirt, so you’re getting two this year, because my muse and I are still in enamored with Anita and her world. I’ve been in love with it since I sat down to write the first book, Guilty Pleasures, in the late 1980s. It would take about two years to write the book and two more years to sell it. I would get 200 rejections on it before it sold to Penguin/Putnam. I was writing vampires long before the publishing industry realized it was a hot market. I was told by editors that the vampire genre was dead. Boy, were they wrong.

It’s been over ten years since I sat down to write Guilty Pleasures and longer than that for the first Anita Blake short story, "Those Who Seek Foregiveness" which only saw publication in my short story collection, Strange Candy. That story was beloved by editors, but no one bought it because zombies weren’t hot then, and mixed genre wasn’t either.

The moment Anita walked on stage for me so tough, so vulnerable underneath, unflinching, brave, I loved her. It would take a few books to love Jean-Claude, my master vampire. I actually planned to kill him at the end of book three, Circus of the Damned, but by then Anita and I both would have missed him. I loved Richard Zeeman, werewolf and junior high science teacher, and way too old to be this big a boy scout. He’s sort of made me fall out of love with him as he’s pushed Anita away, but I still want him to be happy. I want him to find his peace in this fictional life. I love Edward, assassin to the monsters, and I want to see what happens with his "family life". If there’s ever a wedding Anita and I are so going. I love Jason Schuyler and how he’s grown as a person. Nathaniel Graison who is the only character I’ve ever based even loosely off a real person. That person vanished and is probably dead now, but fiction does what fact cannot, it can rewrite, it can save the un-savable, and rewrite their ending into something gentler. Micah Callahan who came out of nowhere and surprised me as well as the fans has been Anita’s rock since the moment he showed up. A man who isn’t threatened by a strong woman, and is truly willing to be your partner is a rare find, Anita needed one of those, she and I just didn’t realize it until he showed up. Asher, who still breaks my heart, even as I begin to suspect he’s got some surprises for me and Anita that may not all be good surprises. I love them all, even the scary ones like Olaf serial killer and sometimes backup. (The fact that so many of you women like him romantically is a little scary. Some bad boys cannot be saved, okay?) I love that with each book I find new ways to push the mix of vampires, wereanimals, monsters, and zombies, to that next logical conclusion.

What fascinated me at the beginning of the series was our world if we woke up tomorrow and all the creatures of nightmare were real and everyone knew they were real. It’s still what fascinates me. I was the first one to bring them out of the broom closet, or coffin, whatever, and throw them into modern medicine, law enforcement, politics, and society in general. Most writers take the mundane and make it fantastic, I like to take the fantastic and make it mundane. I want you to believe in what I write. I research my ass off to try and get as close to real as I can in among my vampires and zombies.

I don’t think most people realize how rare it is to have a series that is this long running where the audience grows larger with every book. I’ve done that without a TV show, or a movie. I’ve done that because you guys love the books, too, and you keep telling your friends, your family, your coworkers, "You’ve got to read these books." Even now with more commercials and publicity that is still what I hear the most, that one of you recommended the books to them. Thank you. Some of you have been with me since the very beginning in 1993. Others of you have only found me this year. Welcome all.

But I think one of the reasons that you guys still enjoy the books, and that each book sales better than the last, and I’ve hit #1 on the New York Times list more than once is that I still enjoy writing the books. I want to know what happens next, too. I love that Anita and I have been kicking butts and taking names for over ten years and next June 18 books. I love that she keeps pushing me outside my comfort zone, and I push right back. She and I have grown up together in a way, or maybe we’ve just helped each other grow.

So don’t be sad about the TV show going away. Be happy that tomorrow I get up more excited, more interested, with more affection for my characters, and a better grasp as a writer of my world and those characters than ever before. Think about what if the TV Show had gone on the air, and the show hadn’t loved Anita and her world as much as we do. 

Tomorrow, I’m working not because I have to, but because I want to, and my muse is poking at the scene, walking up to it, around it, and sometime tomorrow my muse and I will reach a boiling over point and it will drive me to the computer. I did three pages and some notes, just to bleed off enough energy of the scene so it wouldn’t keep me awake tonight. Yesterday I did 44 pages in a day because the muse woke me at 4 AM and by dawn I was working, and by 3-something I had the amazing page count. The writer’s high lasted for hours. What a rush of endorphins like the afterglow of sex, but hours of it. So, no regrets, guys, just more to look forward to. 

The book has driven me from sleep. Driven me from sleep and cuddling beside a perfectly, wonderful warm husband. I woke at 4 AM from a dream about football and I was either a player or a coach, but it was like I never saw myself and I was more a camera looking out, so I’m assuming I was a man, but didn’t feel different, just weird. The last of the dream was Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs taking the helmet camera off of me, and joining the crew for a laugh at how I had marks on my forehead from the camera outfit. I do mark up easily. On that odd note the dream ended and I was left staring up into the velvet darkness with the book instantly in my head. The next scene vivid, the characters settling down to talk and all I have to do is get to a computer and catch up. By the way, the book has nothing to do with football, Mike Rowe, or Dirty Jobs. No idea where the dream came from, but it certainly didn’t dissuade, or distract me from the totally different material of my current book.

I made myself cuddle back against Jonathon’s warm skin, my favorite comfort object is my husband, but sleep was over for me. I made it until 5 AM and then I woke Jonathon enough to let him know I was getting up and he could sleep longer. We have a deal that if one of us wakes up early we let the other one know so there’s no waking up to an empty side of the bed and going, where are you? The trick is to wake them up just enough, but not too much so the other half can get back to sleep. That delicate mission accomplished I fetched my clothes from the seat at the foot of the bed where I’d had the good sense to lay them out last night and crept into the bathroom to get dressed. Now I’m here typing this while I wait for tea to finish brewing. Then I’m getting a cup and heading for my office.

Sasquatch, our pug, was still sound asleep in his crate. He seemed almost puzzled for me to wake him in the dark and totally did not want to go out in the cold night time world. He wouldn’t go forward until I brought the big flashlight onto the steps so he could see. He looked back at me as if to say, "I’m not a cat you know. I don’t do that whole see in the dark thing." I lit his way and down the steps we went. He went in as little grass as he could manage skirting the flower beds. The grass sparkled under the flashlight beam and I thought we’d finally had a hard frost, but it didn’t look quite right. So I bent down to touch the grass and found it was simply soaking wet. It hadn’t gotten cold enough for frost last night. Sasquatch is like most pugs he hates to get his feet wet. He ran out in it, and ran back as fast as possible. I barely had time to admire the stretch of black sky above me and to pick out Orion almost overhead, before he was darting past my feet. He looked back at me from up the steps as if to say, "What are you waiting on?" It certainly wasn’t my comfort loving pug.  Tea timer has sounded. Yay!

Sasquatch has persuaded me to feed him before I go to the office. I have to say that pets do impede speed of progress some mornings, but I think how would I feel if I was hungry and couldn’t use my own can opener? I can hear him happily eating, the busy jingle of his collar letting me know he appreciated me warming his soft food in the microwave before mixing it with his dry. He’s done and has come for his back scratch. Oh, and he gets his first sweater of the season. Did I mention that pugs are comfort loving dogs? Sasquatch spent yesterday huddled on the couch and wouldn’t leave it. When Jonathon sat down he immediately climbed into his lap which he doesn’t often do since Sas’s seat on the couch is on the opposite side from Jonathon’s. So when he had to get up to go back to work he covered Sas with a blanket. The dog normally doesn’t care for that unless a person is under the blanket, but yesterday he huddled under it letting us know he might be cold. When I put his sweater on him just now he didn’t protest or give me that long suffering dog look. He also trotted down the hall beside me after being sweatered with a jaunty little walk and a tightly curled happy pug tail.

A few minutes to let him digest and then one more trip out into the dark and then I can finally get to my desk. Ah! If I don’t actually get to make a few pages before our daughter has to go to school when I woke up at 4 AM with the book loud in my head I will be . . .  not happy. As it’s six, I’m running out of time. I love my dog, but without him I’d be over at my office instead of in the kitchen. You’d have a much shorter blog, but I’d be at work. I luvs my dog, and he makes me smile on days when nothing else does, but today quicker would have been nice.

So many of you are doing the National Novel Writing Month and apparently many of you have hit the wall. Writer’s block you call it, but really that’s a very specific problem. What you actual have is just that moment when the book slows down. It happens. Its happened to me over the years with lots of books, not ever book, but enough. I’m writing book 30, so I know a few tricks to jump start the creative motor, and I’m happy to share.

1. Change desks. Change where you are writing. I have four desks in my office so that I can always move around if need be. Go sit on the couch, put on the TV for noise, but it has to be something you’ve seen a dozen times, nothing new.

2. Get out of Dodge. Take your portable computer or your notebook and go out to a restaurant or library, I prefer restaurants, and write there. I’ve found this particularly helpful over the years. Most of OBSIDIAN BUTTERFLY, the ninth Anita Blake novel was written at St. Louis Bread Company/Panera. I find if I’m out of the office for this reason that writing long hand in my notebook can shake something lose rather than just switching to the portable computer.

3. Music. I listen to music when I write, almost always. When I write outside the house I take headphones and my music. I find that sometimes until I find the right music the book stalls. Sometimes I find that if the book slows, or horror stops, that finding new music gets me going again. I used to try and talk myself out of this, that I was being a baby and just to get to work, but I’ve learned that my muse and I love music, and my muse needs certain music. It changes with each book, but I usually pick an album or a band with several albums and build a play list around them. When the writing slows despite finding the right music then I’ll listen to a musical. That’s right on a bad day I have a musical picked per book and listen to that. If that doesn’t do the trick I resort to Christmas music. Everyone here knows if they hear Christmas music coming out of my office at the wrong time of year the writing is going very, very badly, and they try to avoid me.

4. Sometimes I find that even in my office that using headphones so the music surrounds me and cuts out more distractions helps.

5. Change your clothes. This sounds funny, I know, but on a morning when the writing has been utterly sluggish its as if the crap of the bad work session clings to my shirt and I find that if I put something fresh on it gives me a fresh perspective. I’m giving you the things that have worked for me. I don’t question why my muse and I get along, I just work to make it happen.

6. Brush your teeth, or wash your face, or put on some makeup, comb your hair; anything ordinary. I find that if the writing is going really badly I start getting anxious, nervous, and if I get up and do something mindless and ordinary it breaks the cycle of anxiety and calms me down. Often just calming down helps the writing begin to flow again.

7. Find what time works for your muse. Some muses like night for work. Some like day. Some are, gasp, morning muses. If you can figure out what time of day you write best then try to write at that time and protect the hell out of that prime writing time. Don’t let anything, or anyone, encroach on it. Your prime writing time is like a freshly killed wildebeest and you are the lion. Protect your kill, because if you let the jackals of distraction steal your wildebeest you may not catch another one that day.

I find that my prime time is usually first thing in the morning when I hit my desk. If I miss that first wave of inspiration then I can struggle all day and never hit my stride.

8. Stare at a wall. I have one desk that faces a wall. My other main desk has windows on either side of it for more of a view. On days when my distractibility is high I will change to the wall so the view, birds flying by, leaves, whatever cannot distract me.

9. Stare out a window. Some days sitting in a chair with a notebook in hand staring out the window is exactly what I need to get my ideas going. Just doing nothing helps my mind to settle and work. I can’t tell you how to decide what’s procrastination and what’s productive staring out the window. That is a judgment call that every writer must make on a case by case basis.

10. Take a walk. Lift weights. Do something physical. I find that sometimes too long at the desk just cramps everything up and getting the body moving can get the mind and the muse moving. I don’t know your level of health or activity so only do things you are safe and capable of doing, but a walk around the block can do wonders for unsticking a plot. I find that a regular exercise routine really helps my productivity.

11. Play with your dog. Pet your cat. Never underestimate interacting with a pet. Again, it can still your mind long enough for something to unstick.

12. Garden. Game. Do your hobby. This one only works in limited amounts, because its too easy to turn this into procrastination. But in small bites again it helps unstick the mental gears.

13. Sex. I almost didn’t put this one in, but leaving it out would be me leaving something off the list that really helps me. For me sex is refreshing to the spirit and the body, as well as the mind. It quiets my mind because when I have sex I think about only that, only the person with me. The endorphin rush of good sex is a wonderful boost to me and my muse. I find that sex clears my mind, and that once that happy afterglow fades enough for me to move, I often know exactly what comes next in a book.

14. When did you eat last? If you forgot to eat your mind can get foggy from lack of nutrients.

15. How much sleep are you getting? Tired minds don’t function as well.

16. Give yourself permission to be really terrible on paper. Let your first draft suck, but finish it. Once you finish it even the worst piece of shit can be rewritten, but if the words remain forever stuck in your head waiting for the "perfect" phrase you will never finish that first draft. Finish it, and even if its as terrible as you fear you can now begin rewriting it. It’s a first draft not a final one. Give yourself the room to be bad at this at first. You’ll get better at writing with practice like you get better at any job. Do you pick up a baseball bat and hit like Babe Ruth the first time? No. Then why do you expect to sit down at the computer and write like (Fill in favorite writer here) the first time? Trust me, my first stories sucked. Everyone’s first stories suck. Yes, yes, there are exceptions to all rules, but for most of us we learn first by being bad at it. Then we learn how to make the bad not so bad, and with more practice, more rewriting we go from not so bad to actually being good. I sold my first book, yes, but I didn’t sell my first short story, or even my first dozen short stories. But for every unsaleable story I learned something. Something that got me that much closer to being good enough to sale. Just remember, first you are bad at it, then you can fix it, and with practice you’ll be better, and finally good.