Dead Ice: Anita Blake
This is the last blog before Dead Ice hits the shelves here in America, you lucky fans in the U.K. already have your copy, but on this side of the pond we’re still waiting and in anticipation of that wait here is Anita. Because if there’s just one more blog left before the pub date, it’s got to be Anita.
Question: How did you come up with the character of Anita?
Answer: The summer after college I read my first hard-boiled detective fiction, Robert B. Parker’s Spenser series, Sue Grafton, Sara Paratesky, Raymond Chandler, and Dashiell Hammett. I’m sure there were other male writers in the genre I read that year, but that’s the list that sticks out in my mind. What stood out in my mind then was that the male detectives got to cuss, have sex, and shoot people pretty much without remorse. The female detectives rarely cursed, sex was either nonexistent or sanitized and off stage, and if they had to shoot someone they had to feel really, really bad about it. The difference between the two hard-boiled genders was so unbalanced that it pissed me off, and out of that anger I decided to create a female detective that could even the playing field. At the same time I read a short story with zombies in it, several articles on real life voodoo as a religion, one on Sanataria, and . . . the idea that Anita would be more than an ordinary detective began to take shape.
Secrets to Share: In retrospect I may have done a bit more than just evened the playing field, but then if something is worth doing, it’s worth overdoing? *grins* The seed that would eventually become Anita Blake, and spawn a #1 New York Times Bestselling series, began with that sense of outrage at the gender inequality in hard-boiled detective fiction. If I’d stayed with that original idea then I would have tried to sell a seriously violent detective series with a hard talking and sexy female detective, and respected editors in the mystery genre have told me that they love Anita Blake, but the series would never have sold if it had been straight mystery. We may have come a long way, baby, but apparently mainstream mystery hasn’t come far enough to have a female detective that can play as hard as the men. In fact, Anita gets to play harder than most of the men in the plain mystery section. If I hadn’t read the pieces about voodoo and zombies at nearly the same time as the mysteries, then I don’t know if I would have thought to have Anita raise the dead for a living. Adding the horror genre to the mystery was what allowed me to be as violent as the crimes Anita was investigating needed to be; and horror also lets women fight back right alongside the men, more even than mystery.
The zombies came from reading the right things at the perfect time, but I’d already decided to put the supernatural in the series because I thought I’d get bored with just straight mystery. I read a lot of mystery series after those initial ones, not just hard-boiled, but cozy, and everything in between the two. What I found was that most writers seemed to get bored with their series between book five and eight. You could watch them fall out of love with their characters and their worlds. Some authors rallied and were able to find renewed energy and fall back in love with their series, and some were selling too well to stop so they struggled on for more books, but the lack of joy in their work showed through on the page. I decided I’d give myself enough toys so I would never grow bored. I’d read fantasy and horror most of my reading life and I loved old horror movies, especially the old Hammer vampires films. I’d watched them as a child on the late night creature feature show and been enthralled. I’d read all the real life ghost stories and folklore that I could get my hands on from the time I could read, so I decided I wanted a world where everything that went bump in the night was real. More than that though, I wanted it to be modern day as if we went to bed one night and got up the next day with all the monsters being real and everyone knew about them. I wanted to see modern day America have to deal with vampires, zombies, and shapeshifters as a reality, not as a rumor or a ghost story, but real. I wanted to mix the fantastic with the mundane in a serious way and see what happened. That was one of the main things that interested me at the beginning and is still one of my favorite things to write about today.
The fact that I then added relationship tropes to the series just helped me push the writing in any direction the story took me.
Question: Will we ever meet Anita’s family on stage in a book?
Answer: I think so.
Secrets to Share:
I actually wrote the first chapter and planned the mystery plot for a book where Anita goes home for Thanksgiving. The original idea was she would take Richard to meet her family, but by the time I sat down to write the first chapter it was Micah and Nathaniel. Why not Jean-Claude? First, vampires don’t travel as well by car, and that was the original plan. Second, Grandma Blake is crazy religious and prays for Anita’s soul because she’s sleeping with a vampire. We don’t trust her not to do something like open a window so sunlight hits Jean-Claude. The original idea was that Anita would stay in the house she grew up in, like most of us do when we go home for the holidays. Nothing like being surrounded by family and staying in your old room to throw you back into old childhood mindsets. Not sure how much of the plot would change, but every time I try to make it the next book it just doesn’t work. My muse and I aren’t ready, or maybe Anita isn’t ready.
Question: Is Anita you?
Answer: No.
Secrets to Share:
I made Anita my size, because it was easier to choreograph a fight scene if my main character was my size. If I’d made her taller, or in any way that different from me physically, then I’d have had to find a friend the size of my character anytime I went gun shopping or looked at a shoulder holster. She’s my size because the hand I have is the hand I need to fit. It just made sense to me at the time. I gave her my hair because I like my hair, and I figured if I was going to screw her life up with terrifying mystery/horror plots that I should give her something that she might like, too. I’m told that Anita’s attitude is tough, strong, masculine, not very feminine, and in many ways, it is my attitude; but I didn’t think of it in those terms until readers and interviewers started telling me. Anita’s personality and mine were closer to the same at the beginning of the series, but it’s a first person narration so making her sound and think like me was easier as a new novelist. When I sat down to write Merry Gentry years later I would make sure she didn’t sound like Anita, which meant she didn’t sound much like me, and made writing her a whole lot harder. I think it’s one of the reasons that Merry writes slower than Anita, because I don’t think like Merry does, and yet she’s a first person narrator, too. Anita and I have diverged as people because our experiences have been very different. She’s gone on to have one of the highest kill counts in fiction outside of war novels, and I married, moved to suburbia, had a child, dogs, and did a much more traditional approach for the first decade I wrote Anita. She was anything but traditional by any standards. Anita is now decades younger than I am, because I read an essay by Agatha Christie years before where she complained that she’d made both Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot too old, and if she could do it over again she’d have started them off much younger. I took that bit of advice to heart and Anita was twenty-four when she stepped onto the page, as was I when I wrote the first short story with her in it. Seven to eight years is all that’s passed in Anita’s world, while much more has passed in the real world.
Anita and I both lost our mothers in car accidents as children. She was eight when her mother died, I was six. Why did I do that? Because when I was twenty-four my mother’s death was still so traumatic that I couldn’t imagine understanding a character that hadn’t had a similar experience. That early tragic loss made me understand just how fragile life was, and took forever the ideal that the adults around me are omnipotent and could keep me safe, because they couldn’t keep themselves safe. That knowledge at such a young age has made me a different person than I might have been, and it’s so intimate to who I am that I gave the viewpoint to my main character, because again, first person narration. They say, write about what you know, so what did I know? I knew death and loss, monsters and lovers, small town American lost in the big city, I knew how to be a strong woman in a man’s world, I knew not to ask for mercy for there isn’t much to go around, save the mercy for someone who needs it more.
Sneak Peek from Dead Ice:
Lita looked at me, head slightly to one side. “You didn’t worry that it’d make men not want you?”
“No,” I said.
“You didn’t worry that it made you look like a victim?” Kelly asked.
I frowned at her. “No, every time I look at my scars I think that I lived, and I killed what hurt me. These are victory marks, not victim,” I said.
26 thoughts on “Dead Ice: Anita Blake”
Comments are closed.
One of the things I love most about Anita is that she isn’t soft and she does play just as hard as the boys! It’s what drew me to this series from the start. Although the vampires and werewolves helped too as I am a supernatural fan as well.
Love reading this series and can’t wait for Dead Ice to be out so I can get my hands on it. Hope there are many more books to come for Anita and her men.
I just want you to know how much your series both Anita and Merry have mentioned to me. Your books is one of the only ones that I can reread over and over and will still surprise me with something new or look at differently each time. I’m in the US and can’t wait till my Preorder comes in for Dead Ice.
When I started reading your series, I really identified with that stubbornness of Anita’s because it reminded me so much of me and also the hard core pragmatism that can be seen as being ruthless when you are just trying to survive. I when I learned you were from MO it all made ssense, because I am from the KC area on the Missouri side, plus I visited St Louis many times for family. So there were many ties to yourself I guess in all this, which is a good thing. Thanks for being brave enough to share a little bit of yourself for all these years.
PS If you haven’t seen it watch Winter’s Bone or read the book, that could have been my life if things had gone differently, it is a darker/starker side to country small town life. Thanks again.
Laurell hamilton and stephen king are my all time favorite authors…
Oh I liked this one! :o)
Speaking of one…
!!! ONE DAY TO GO !!!
Dead Ice, baby!!!
Woo-hoo!
I originally started reading the series when I was fifteen and I was so unbelievably happy to finally have found a series where women were allowed to be strong. A series where the main character never even thought about getting pregnant. But was as strong or stronger than a man.
It gives me hope for the future. Hope, that maybe one day all women will realize how many opportunities they can have. I’m nineteen now and in my village twenty percent of nineteen year old girls are eater already married, pregnant or already have children. It disturbs me.
I don’t want children, I think I never will. But if you say something like this in my hometown you will get long shocked silence and women who tell you that you’re crazy for wanting to have a career.
At 39, I am still looked at like a failure because I do not want children or marriage. When I tell another woman, its even worse. I am dragged into the same conversation every time where I get questioned until I have become rude because I get tired of being told how I should feel and whats wrong with me. Ive known since I was 12 that I didn’t want children or marriage and yet everyone was sure I would change my mind when I got older or met the right person…etc etc etc. And yes everyone I know is either married, divorced and all of them have kids. Some started at 16.
Mary, I encourage you to stick to your feelings and never let anyone try to convince you you are wrong for feeling that way or that you need to do something you are not interested in. Its your life. And hey, guess what, there is nothing wrong with you
People who do not want children should not be arm-twisted to have them. It’s one thing for a person to change their mind, and many do; but not all. It’s another thing entirely to be trying tell someone that their decisions should be the same as yours, which is what (in my experience) most of the arm-twisters are doing.
I speak as the father of two wonderful adults. Your decisions should be your own to make. I am sorry that so many people consider it acceptable to get in your business about this.
I just wanted to say how much I love your Anita Blake series. I like the Mercy series as well but Anita is my favorite. I started reading it with Incubus Dreams. The cover just drew me so I read the book not realizing it was a series until about halfway through. Loved it so much that I went back and read from the beginning. My favorite character is Anita cause she’s so badass, with Micah second, and Edward third. Thanks for all the years of enjoyment.
What I love about Anita is; although she is tough as can be she sees beyond the superficial, if you will. She doesn’t see what others consider ugly, she sees beneath that. A lesson for us all.
I fully understand your rage at the differences of the genders in fiction (and films, sitcoms…) I feel it too, when watching every other sitcom (I decided not to call another woman a slut or anything with similar meaning ever, as long as men have seemingly more freedom in number of lovers – especially in newer US series, as it seems to me), or reading news, watching commercials (why do always only women have problems with dirty laundry and a male scientist is the saviour or even the toddler son in the future?) etc. Congratulations for having found an outlet in writing your Anita Blake stories that is so valuable for us readers and fans! 🙂
There is another point I was fascinated by almost from the first book: The fact that Anita is brave, because she does things while and although feeling fear. Having a cautious nature and feeling fear much sooner and apparently more intense than most others I know, I can fully identify with that. Your stories and philosophy helped me to do things with my fear intact – accepting it, and stop being ashamed of having the fear in the first place. Instead I am happy if not outright proud when I manage to overcome it.
I am really looking forward to reading Dead Ice.
I’ve always told people that they could remove the identifying info from a passage from Merry and a passage from Anita, and I’d still be able to tell them apart. I’m impressed that you are able to maintain two such separate voices!
I love your writing – I even have your Ravenloft book. I love Anita! She was the first really bad a$$ female protagonist I’d read, and I was hooked! I still am. Thank you for giving us something besides the stereotypical girl!
Anita Blake is the only series I have ever read and re-read again and again. I absolutely love all the characters and am very much anticipating Dead Ice. Thanking you Ms Hamilton for fulfilling my quiet times throughout the years.
I’ve not read the new book yet, (Ordering it next paycheck) but what I want to know is Will Anita ever shift? Will she ever have to confront that side of her power? Will it be normal Lycanthrope shifting? Or like so many things will have mutated into something not tied to the moon? Will it be a net positive or a net negative, Also where is her vamp servant? Will he gain in power as so many other of her people have? Just so curious about Magic side of things… + JJ more JJ would be good she’s fun! + Anita does need a new best female friend Just wondering…
Loved the new book! I look forward to each new adventure in Anita’s life and it’s always fast and furious with angst, tenderness, and surprise moments where I just want to bite my nails to the quick!
There were a couple of plot lines that I didn’t feel were complete. That was slightly frustrating. I’m hoping that the next chapter in Anita’s life will flesh out those areas that were left sort of hanging.
Anita is so awesome. I first found her while in college, and it was a strain pulling away to looking for textbooks
Get back to the story and stop the ongoing therapy session. It’s become too boring.
Please tell us there is more of Anita’s story to come.
Finally caught up from April!! Dead Ice is out. I think I’m only 2 books behind. I got side tracked with the “A Song of Ice and Fire” series. Loving the individually devoted blog posts for the Characters on Anita’s world. I’m surprised Edward didn’t get a nod there… Then again, does prefer a low profile. 🙂 I need to catch up so I can ask the questions I have. Unless…
they may be answered in the books I have yet to read.
Just got done reading my copy of the book. I can’t stop squealing over parts. But I do have a question; when is the big bad Olaf coming back to town? I can honestly say that Olaf and Edward are my two favorite male characters.
I enjoy seeing the internal evolution of Anita’s perspective in her attitude toward not only her job as an official executioner and necromancer but, also her gradual acceptance of the relationships in her life. I hope she becomes a powerful pan-shifter, like Chimera w/o the crazy.
Just finished Dead Ice and I like the book overall, but I definitely miss the action, suspense, and getting to read about Anita kicking ass and the more suspenseful fast paced fight scenes that were much more prevalent in earlier works. So, the second half of the book was far more enjoyable to me than the beginning. I’m feeling, just like Anita, sick of having to tend to all the people in her life, and having to deal with everyone’s emotional wellbeing, issues, and SEX. Please enough already, Anita has lovers and lots of sex I get it and it’s become annoying to me as the reader because the books are more BDSM and erotica than the exciting paranormal action adventure rollercoaster ride that made me love the series in the first place! Even more than just missing the action, I miss Edward. He’s such an amazing character, that has evolved and gotten better with each appearance, and he and Anita getting together and bringing it to the bad things that go bump in the night is way hotter than group sex scenes and poly drama! Book for book in the series I break into my happy dance when Edward arrives on the scene. Give me the chaos and adrenaline of an epic Edward/Anita Blitz over yet another sexual dalliance. At least with those two there’s an almost endless variety of mayhem they can encounter, but all the sex scenes have become repetitive and cliche. I know Edward can’t be in every book, but he definitely needs to make more frequent appearances in the future. AND more action, suspense, and just more of Anita being at work and as “The Executioner” needs to happen. I feel like that Anita has all but disappeared buried in the emotional shit and might as well just stay naked in bed with her legs spread, because it doesn’t seem like she has time for anything else! . Harsh I know, but I think I’m probably not alone on this by a long shot. Especially since all the other people I know who also read the series have had lots of discussions on this very subject and all agree with me. If I want paranormal erotica there are plenty of authors that fill that niche, let Anita come back out and play with the bad guys and not her fuck buddies.
Pretty please, I’d really hate to give up on a series and characters I adore because they can’t keep their cloths on and their libidos I n check. Everyone has so much more to offer than just that!!! (More Edward, more action.)
Much thanks, from a devoted follower.
oi! Eu AMO, AMO, AMO a Anita e a Meredith. Adora a maneira como você escreve e os rumos das histórias. Sempre fico louca para ler a próxima. Parabéns pelo talento e a imaginação.
I completely agree with Amy H! I stopped keeping up new releases as the last few books were more about drama and her sex life than about the action and magic. Too many lines devoted to her thinking about her life, and dwelling on her drama. I love the Anita that has interesting storylines with her necromancy, And draws on her magic to use to fight the bad guys. What would really be awesome to see is maybe a new “arch-enemy” to fight. Some new bad guy (or maybe a couple) that has his own strong powers, is very clever, and seems to be one step ahead of her. Lots of Action, Mystery, and a surprise ending with a kick ass twist. The best books in this series are the action ones that keep you guessing and on the edge of your seat until the end! Anita rocks!