Author: LKH

Serpentine Tour – Blog One

Serpentine, my latest novel hits the shelves on August 7th! I can’t wait for you to finally get to read it. There were so many times that I’d write something fun, or surprising and I’d want to Tweet it, or blog about it, but I knew that was a nope. Why? Because it was usually something that would give away the mystery, or character development, or the big reveal. When a certain character finally came on stage it was everything I could do not to Tweet it, or do a quick video for Instagram, but I knew that if I could have behaved myself on Twitter, I’d totally have spilled the beans on a video. So I stayed offline and behaved myself, because I wanted you to be able to read it yourself for the first time, not have me do spoilers months, or even a year ahead of time. But now, the tour for Serpentine is about to begin, and I still won’t be able to talk about spoilers, because not everyone will have read the book yet. Arrgghhh!

So now I have to decide, do I let you and I talk about Serpentine as if we’ve all read the book, or do I police us so we don’t spoil things for those who haven’t finished the book yet? I wish we could all sit down with a cup of coffee, or tea, and just talk about the book, but I can’t talk to each one of you personally, so how do we do it? I’m also doing interviews in print and recorded, some of which have a few spoilers in them. Not like who/what done it, but character interactions and some reveals about plot, so as those come out then we should be able to talk more freely at the signings and tour events. But the first event in Huntington Beach Barnes & Noble (Tomorrow night at 7-10 pm more info in the link) that has to be spoiler free; right? Right? Come on, right? Yes, right, because most people will not have read Serpentine all the way through yet. We have to behave ourselves and let everyone catch up, but I think as the tour continues we might all finally be on the same page. Or not, we’ll see. I’m thinking that maybe you can give your opinion in the comments below. Let me know who’s having time to finish the book so I can gauge whether it would be fair to talk about spoilers at the tour events.

When the Demons Come – Memorial Day 2018

Once I loved a military man. My husband and I dated him after he’d already come home with his wound and his medal. We’d go to sleep in a twist of sheets and warm bodies, me in the middle of my two men, but he’d wake in the middle of the night driven by dreams of those that didn’t come home with him. Things done and things left undone. I’d wake to find his side of the bed empty and I’d go searching in the darkened rooms. I’d usually find him on the couch not sleeping, but not wanting to wake anyone else. I’d coax him back to bed, asking him to let me hold him, even if he didn’t sleep, just come back to bed. I learned his breathing, the feel of his body, the change in weight as the demons came. If I could catch it soon enough I could pet him back to sleep. Caress him until his breathing evened out, his body relaxed beside me, and I’d cuddle back down between my two men. Some of the most peace I’d known was sleeping between my husband and our soldier. Until by the time we parted ways I missed his snoring, and had to relearn how to sleep without it.

I love a military man, he’s my best friend. I knew him before he put on a uniform, and I’ve known him ever since. He trusts me and I trust him. He trusts me enough that he knew he could call on the day that he had his gun in his hand. He didn’t tell me he had it, I heard the metallic clack-clack as the slide went back on the gun. There’s no other sound like it and I knew it meant he’d put a bullet in it and it was live. I knew he was sitting there on the other end of the phone with a loaded gun. I remember the spurt of fear, the panic as I thought, what do I do, what do I say? First, I told him I knew what that sound was, he’d known I would. No bullshit between us, no lies. I knew he was sitting there thinking about it, but I trusted him enough to believe I was his call for help, not his suicide note. I heard the slide go back again, knew he’d ejected the live bullet. I breathed a sigh of relief and kept talking. I tried doing the whole, all you have to live for speech. I tried to be comforting. The slide went back again. And that was it, I called him names, I asked how could he do to me what his friend’s death had done to him? How could he make his family feel the pain of loss he was feeling right then? I used some more colorful phrases, some of which he’d help me prefect over the years. I got angry at him, fuck softness and hand holding. If this was it, we were both going down fighting. I heard the slide go back again, and I yelled at him some more, that we weren’t doing this again, and he agreed. He put the gun up. I told him if he took the easy way out and I didn’t, then I won. I’d be the better man. What military man wants to lose to a girl?

I love another military man, and the demons wake him, too. The loss of his brother in arms haunts him. I’ve held him while he railed against the loss. I’ve held him while he screamed his rage at those that didn’t come home, and why was he alive, why him and not them? I helped hold him and finally screamed myself, until he could hear me. That I was glad he was alive. That I was glad he was in my life. That his brother would want him to live. That his lost friend wouldn’t want him to die with him, but to live, and to keep on living.

Memorial Day is to honor the dead who have fallen in defense of our country and our freedom, but we don’t just lose our soldiers to the violence of war. Every day twenty veterans commit suicide. Every day an average of twenty of our brave men and women that have served in our armed forces take their own lives. Every day, not just Memorial Day, not just Veterans Day, but every day.

We need to lower these numbers. We need to figure out how to help the men and women that we send to fight our battles for us.

If you, or someone you know, may be considering suicide, please reach out.

Veterans Crisis Line

Call 1-800-273-8255 ext 1

Or text 838255

Mission 22

http://www.mission22.com

Battle In Distress

http://www.battleindistress.org

Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors

http://www.taps.org

Spike

A lot of you have asked me to talk more about Spike and Genevieve, the other half of our fourple. (Actually the term fourple was coined in a conversation with one of Jonathon’s and my ex-boyfriends when we were sharing what was new in our personal lives. Thanks, Nocturne!) You’ve asked for pictures, and more information in general. I spoke in a live Q & A on the fact that they both want to maintain their privacy. They are not famous, I am. I am the public figure, not them, and they want to keep it that way. If I’d known then, what I know now, I might not have dragged my husband, Jonathon, into so much of the spotlight. But with Genevieve and Spike I had another chance to discuss and plan things, so they both opted to be behind the scenes and private. I respect that and I hope that you do, as well. Many of you have been very supportive of it, and for those who have been so positive and understanding I came up with a way to give you more information about Spike that he approved.

What is Spike like? He’s as if Edward and Micah had a bastard child and somehow Nicky got involved. Does that explain the picture at the beginning of this blog to you? Edward and Anita on the cover of First Death, the comic that Jonathon and I wrote together as a prequel to my novel, Guilty Pleasures. I kept trying to turn it into a novel and Jonathon made sure it stayed a comic book. The cover art is by the wonderful Brett Booth. The standalone short novel, Micah, seemed appropriate to represent him. It is a lovely cover, though Micah is definitely not a blonde. Since we have no visuals of Nicky I chose two books that I used when I was first researching my werelion society and interactions. The Lions of Savuti HUNTING DOWN THE MOON text by Dereck Joubert and photographs by Beverly Joubert is a fabulous visual and informational feast. It’s from the National Geographic Society so I knew it was a good place to start some serious research. It’s also where I began to get ideas for the werehyenas in my books. The Art of Being a Lion by Christine and Michel Denis-Hout is another good one. This book was part of the inspiration for Anita’s fight with Haven, alias Cookie Monster. I’m very visual so sometimes I’ll just go back and look at images of the real animals when I’m trying to get in the headspace for my shapeshifters. These two are very good for lions and the first one, for the hyenas, as well. I have several shelves of natural history books about the real world animals that I write about. If you want a convincing “monster” start with as much reality as you can find and use it as your stepping stone into fiction.

Piles of Snakes

If you are phobic of snakes, please skip this blog. Trust me, you don’t want to see any of this. Now that I’ve warned all of you who suffer from ophidiophobia, here’s a recent video from Florida. Thanks to Ken Harris for bringing it to our attention. None of what you are about to see is my fault, even if my next novel Serpentine has a lot of snake Lycanthropes in it, and a few do change into a wriggling mass of snakes, and the book is set in Florida, this is still not my fault.

Video shows den of snakes slithering from tree in Oviedo

It would be disturbing if it was a tree in my own yard, but I had a Crocodile Dundee moment. “That’s not a pile of snakes, this is a pile of snakes.”

If you’re Scared of Snakes, Don’t Watch This

Edits, Travel, and the Injury at the End

I finished the edits on the next Anita Blake novel, Serpentine at the beginning of March. Jonathon, my husband, and I were already on a romantic vacation, but he helped me take time out to finish the edits that I hadn’t managed before we had to leave for our getaway. At the end I went old school: writing the changes long hand on sticky notes and handed them to Jonathon for him to type into the manuscript edits. I hadn’t written that much long hand in years, but it felt right. I’d already written the book, the edits were small things, or a scene here and there that needed changed for plot or character development. I took out one side plot that had started off as a red herring, but turned out to lead nowhere, so it had to go. I even had to cut a great new character that I hope we get to see later in another book. Larry Kirkland was a character that was actually in one of the rough drafts of the first Anita Blake novel, Guilty Pleasures, but he wouldn’t actually get on stage until book three, The Circus of the Damned. One of my favorite things about writing a series is that characters and plot lines that have to be edited out of one book can still see life later on. Interestingly, Anita, Micah, and Nathaniel try to have a romantic trip in the book, but both her work and Micah’s interfere with it. I wrote that months before Jonathon and I would be on our own trip and my work would cost us the first few days of relaxation, as if my muse knew it was coming. Of course, Anita’s work was a missing person and murder, and Micah’s work was a type of lycanthropy that we’d never seen before. My edits seem so tame in comparison.

I proceeded to take the longest purposeful break from writing that I’ve ever taken. Jonathon and I finished our trip without more work interfering. Then I got to spend our daughter’s spring break with her. My sister and her wife were able to fly into the country and visit with us. I spent all my “vacation” traveling. I’d finally get on the first plane towards home, but in the all out run to make it, I fell.

I was running full out, I was even thinking, “Wow, I can really run now. I’m so glad I can move like this, yay gym!” And then I wiped out. I did a good job of it, because kind strangers came to stand over me, making that face you make when someone hurts themselves in front of you. Thanks to the kind man who offered me a hand up, because I could not have gotten up without help. I wasn’t even sure that I’d be able to stand at all, until I tried. I was finally able to limp to my plane like Igor from the Frankenstein movies, but I was just happy to make my plane. I enjoyed my travels, but I was so ready to go home. I made my plane discovering that I was bleeding from the skin I’d lost, but I was able to walk better as I moved more. I still hurt, but I got to my seat. The flight attendant got me bandages, alcohol wipes, and eventually ice bags to put on my knee. Thanks for the care and attention Delta. Thanks also to my seat mate, Charles, who was a gentleman in the best sense of the word, putting my bag overhead for me when he saw I was hurt and helping the flight attendant pass me things to do some first aid. He also kept my mind off how much I was hurting by having an intelligent and calm discussion about our different paths of faith.

The skin is growing back from the scrapes, but I’ve either scraped my meniscus, or got a micro tear in it, which means no gym or martial arts for awhile. The page proofs of Serpentine have come back for one last chance to read over and catch any small things. It hurts to even sit at my desk for too long without propping my leg up. Sigh.

I’m looking forward to finishing the page proofs and getting back to the gym and dojo, and onto writing the next story.

Praying in Time


 

 

I went to a Christian college because it was the only college close enough to home for me to stay at home and take care of my grandmother.  Dr. Martin was head of the history and political science program and he was a man of strong faith.  I no longer remember what tragedy had happened, there were a lot of them when I was younger, but it was over and done with and I was in his office crying.  He said, “Let’s pray.”  I said, “But its over, you can’t pray for help when its over.”

His reply was this, that God and the angels are not trapped in time the same way that people are.  God does not live time in a linear fashion like a straight line.  God is everywhere all at once, so we could bow our heads and pray for help about something that had already happened.  
I am no longer Christian, I have been happily Wiccan for twenty years, but that moment of comfort, that thought that God, Goddess, Allah, Buddha, whatever name you use for your Deity is not trapped in time, but can move back and forth in a way that we cannot, I still believe that.  So let us pray.  Let us pray for the people, animals and land impacted by hurricane Harvey. Let us pray for all the people and animals suffering through the wild fires in the Western United States.  Let us pray for all those effected by the earthquake in Mexico.  Let us pray for those injured in the bombing in London.  Let us pray for all the countries and islands devastated by hurricane Irma.  Let us pray that help comes to those in need, not just for the electricity, the medical care, the food, clean water, clean clothing, sanitation, and all the rest that the survivors need to be well, but that our prayers reach them before each disaster, and during.  That the angels protect and keep them, that hope and comfort are there for everyone in that moment of fear.  That God and Goddess reach out to all that have been effected, even those that are not directly impacted, but lost in the overwhelming confusion of how to help.  Let us ask for guidance on where best to spend our time, our money, our goodwill to do the most good.  Let us send back in time prayers of hope and comfort, and let us pray forward that our world grows wise and better prepared.  Let us pray for the now, and find ways to give hope and comfort, and real aid to those who have been touched by all the horrible things that have happened recently.  If you can give money, then find a charity and donate.  If you don’t have extra cash wait until they have places that are needing donations of old clothes, and household items that will get to the survivors, or help those closer to home with donations of things that you no longer need or want.  If you can’t help those impacted by the hurricanes and the earthquake directly, then please find other people in need to help.  I believe if we all do what we can, even if it is simply to be kinder to the people we meet every day that we can take care of each other.  God doesn’t always come with angels and a heavenly light show, sometimes He comes in the shape of another person who offers a helping hand when we need it most.  Let us pray and then let us do something good.

Fallen Heroes

I got a text from my best friend the other day. We joke that our friendship is old enough to get its own drinks now. He’s a non-practicing Marine, and a former police officer. His text was simple, “Had two friends in law enforcement die today.” It came through when my phone was silenced for Kali sword practice, so I didn’t see it until I was home, then I called him.  
A lot of people wonder, what do you say when something like this happens? You say the usual, I’m sorry for your loss, is there anything I can do to help or make this day any less awful? Sometimes there will be specific things they need, or you can take errands off their plate, anything to help ease the moment, but usually the only thing you can do is listen. Let them talk, let them rail and rant, or be calm, very calm. Police and military people are often incredibly calm outwardly, because they’re trained not to let their emotions get the better of them. Most men are conditioned from childhood to not show too much emotion, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t hurting, but don’t poke at that; okay? This is mainly to the women in the lives of such men, do not poke at the wounds, let them talk, listen to what they have to say, but allow them to show you as much, or as little pain as they are comfortable with, the best thing you can do for them is to listen, just let them talk, if they will. If they want silence and solitude give it to them, but if they talk to you take it as the gift that it is, because men like this don’t talk to just anyone. My BFF and I bonded over a lot of things, but one of the most important was that when something seemed wrong, or off, I asked, and I was ready for the answer. I was able to hear about his day at work as a police officer, whatever it was, and listen with no judgement and no horror and no extra emotion from me got added to his story. That’s really one of the reasons most cops don’t talk to the women in their lives, we have tendency to react too much, show too much emotion on our faces and they see it and are worried that they are burdening us, making us feel the pain and difficulty of their jobs. My BFF and I have been doing this long enough that I can give him more emotion, because he trusts me with it and with his own, and I never forget what a gift that trust is, which is why he and I are each other’s three AM phone call. We have seen each other through divorce and loss, and remarriage and gain, and . . . So much. We are each other’s person in a way that is rare for someone with his background and a civilian like me. That I am a civilian woman and have his trust and friendship is even more rare, but I did know him before he went into the Marines, and he knew me before I sold a single short story. We’ve been in each other’s lives a long time, through a lot of changes. We have earned each other’s trust. 
All this to explain that I’m putting up a link to a Go-Fund-Me campaign in this blog. The Go-Fund-Me is for a man I never met, but my BFF did. Aaron Allan was a Lieutenant with the Southport Police Department, he was previously a school police officer for the Indiana School for the Deaf, and was one of the two friends that died. Lieutenant saw a car speed by and crash, rolling so that anyone would be worried for the safety of the people inside of it, but he was a police officer. It was his job, his duty, the kind of person he was to run for the crash and to check on the driver first, because you know there was a driver, you don’t always know if there are passengers in a crash, so police are taught/trained to check on the driver first. Lieutenant went to help the driver, make sure he was still alive, and the driver shot him. Why? We don’t know yet. The driver is still alive, so maybe he’ll be able to tell us why. Its likely that he and the other person in the car were fleeing from some criminal activity, or something they thought they shouldn’t be doing, and instead of seeing Lieutenant as someone that was there to help, they saw him as an officer, and as a threat and they killed him. My BFF and I talked about the fact that he would have done the same thing if he’d been the officer responding.  
The other friend and officer that was killed was Deputy Chief James Waters, Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department. He was off duty at the time, and had simply stopped to aid a motorist with a flat tire. He was doing something that a lot of us have done, just helping out someone that seems to need it. Sadly, a semi-truck struck him and he would later die of his injuries. Deputy Chief was from a larger department with greater resources which is why there is no Go-Fund-Me account for him. Southport will do all it can, but its a small town on the edge of a big one and it simply doesn’t have the resources to help the Lieutenant’s family the way the much larger Metro Department would be able to help the Deputy Chief’s family. That’s why the Go-Fund-Me exists for one fallen officer and not the other. My husband and I have personally contributed already, and I’m putting this up here for those of you who might want to help out. No pressure, but I wanted to explain that through my BFF I had a more personal connection to this campaign and that’s why I’m putting the link up. If you feel like helping out, thank you. I understand that for most of you police officers are just someone you see as you drive by their cars, or they give tickets, or they come into your house on the worst possible days and nights, but at their best police officers are the people who run towards the car crashes, the explosions, the screams of pain. They run towards the bad things and try to help the rest of us survive them. I’ve always felt that should be honored and the more men and women in uniform that I am privileged to know, the more I believe that.  

Today is the Emotional Day


This morning I woke up anxious and unsettled and couldn’t figure out why, then I realized, “Oh, this is the emotional day after I finish a book.” I was so mentally and creatively done when I finished the last book recently that I actually had two days of energy and DOING things before the adrenaline drop happened. Usually it’s instantaneous, or within a few hours. So this cycle of predictable post-book-isms has been a little off schedule, but when each day, or mood hits, I’ll ask my husband, Jonathon, or our domestic partners is this normal? Do I always do this after I finish a book? They will all nod and assure me this is the pattern. Jonathon and I have been together for seventeen years and will soon count our sixteenth wedding anniversary, so he knows the drill. Our domestic partners, Genevieve and Spike, have only seen me through three books, but even they know the pattern now. Apparently I am that predictable to everyone else, but to me it remains more mysterious.  
I couldn’t think why I was lying in a nice warm bed, cuddled with my sweetie and anxious, until I realized what part of my pattern was happening. Today I will be anxious, sometimes overly emotional, so I know to ride through the anxiety and not let the emotional issues get out of hand. This will pass, I just need to hunker down, hold tight, and allow it to happen. Fighting it, or beating myself up because I’m allowing myself to get all weepy, or angry, or scared, or whatever emotion is happening is not helpful. It just makes me feel worse, so today I need to be gentle with myself and with those around me, and just keep moving. Its a good day to do exercise I enjoy, a very good day for stretching and gentle yoga, or playing with the dogs and cat, or just sitting quietly with them.  
I wrote the above a few days ago, and today I’m reminded that if I don’t go straight back into writing something new that the emotional roller coaster isn’t just one day. It continues sporadically over several days. No wonder I’m a workaholic, this feels awful, but I’m still not ready to sit down and write. I will be brave and let my writing process have its way with me, until I am sure what comes next. 

Creative Emptiness


I’ve been running on empty so long, I don’t know how to refill my tank.  Usually when I don’t write for even a few days my dreams turn to violent nightmares and my inner demons and ghosts drive me back to my computer to put it on the page.  This time, my inner world is quiet.  I feel more peaceful and relaxed than I have in years.  I realize now that I never recovered creatively, mentally, emotionally, or even physically from researching and writing, Crimson Death which came out in 2016.  I tried to write a Merry Gentry book afterwards, but hundreds of pages in, it fell apart.  I thought, well maybe I’m not ready to write Merry yet, so I set it aside.  It was the most pages accumulated on any book I’d written where I abondoned it in place.  (I will get back to it, but with a different plot.  Trust me the darkness of what I’d written – no, just no.  Merry, Doyle, Frost, and the babies deserve better than that.) So, I turned to Anita, because she’s always written faster for me than Merry.  I had and have dozens of Anita ideas, but even there it was slower than normal.  I finally had to admit that I was drained, and that some books take longer recover periods than others, and Crimson Death was one of those.  I think it didn’t help that the last Merry book, A Shiver of Light, had left me, and my fans feeling pretty traumatized, too.  The Anita Blake novel, Dead Ice, was next written and published, but it, thankfully, wasn’t as hard on all of us.  Crimson Death wasn’t traumatic in the same way as A Shiver of Light, but it was almost three times as long as a typical novel.  That is a lot of pages to write in a deadline space meant for a book a third of its size.  And as my usual I didn’t allow myself time to rest between books, though honestly if I’m to do two books a year, there is no time to rest between, even if I’m doing one book a year if its the page count of two books or more, then again, there’s no time to rest if I’m to meet my deadlines.  Which leads me to why the book I just turned into New York will be out in 2018, so both my new editor and myself have more time.  Time, the one thing that we cannot create more of, and the thing that so many of us give away the most freely.  Its been so long since I had this kind of time to rest and regain myself between writing projects that I don’t know what to do.  I don’t remember what I used to do to refill my creative tank.  Right now my muse and I want to hibernate for awhile.  I feel like I could sleep for days, and yet I’m already restless and fighting not to grow anxious. 

I’m feel like a castaway that’s washed up on an island after fighting through a storm of waves and tides.  I’m wanting to sit under the shade of the palm trees, but currently feel like I’m still crawling my way out of the surf and skinning my hands and knees on the sand and seashells, as I try not to be swept back out to sea.  Eventually, I’ll have to swim back out and find my ship of words again.  I’ll need to find my star and use it to steer towards a new horizon, a new story, a new novel, a new world perhaps, but for now I just want to find a place to rest and let myself be happy that I made it to shore.  

The Book is Done!


The next Anita Blake novel is off to my editor in New York! I am exhausted, elated, and happy to put it into her hands for a few weeks, while catch back up with the rest of my life.  I found this picture and it seemed to encapsulate what I feel about writing in my office, currently.