News

I thought this blogger was supposed to be about writing. Specifically about writing the next Anita Blake novel. So I’ve tried to avoid things that were too far off topic. But the amazing response to the last blog entry I did, which had nothing to do with writing, and everything to do with the horrible attitude in this country about women and their bodies, has made me reconsider what this blog is supposed to be.
Maybe, you guys want some opinion that is not connected to business. Maybe. I am very uncomfortable with the idea of anyone getting up on their soap box, when they aren’t an expert in a field. So I hesitate to inflict my opinions on you. But maybe I’ll do it a little more often. I am still a little uncertain how I feel that my opinion, my view, can impact so many people. I’m a writer, not a politician, or an actor. Writers are usally a much more solitary animal. So I’m still feeling my way in the dark of suddenly having so many people pay attention to me.
I am getting better at it. I had someone recognize me at my allergist, and have a book in hand to be signed. She apologized for doing it in the doctor’s office, but when else would she see me. I understood, and it didn’t bug me. But I admit that a few years back when I first started getting recongized by face and not just by name, it spooked me. Not scared, but I was just uncertain how to handle it. I am told that most actors that get to a certain level of fame are given some training in how to handle situations like this. Writers are not. First, it rarely happens to most writers. Even if their books are wildly popular their faces are not. I’ve even asked a few people, and it’s not my picture on the back of the books that is outting me. Most of the people who talk to me outside of a signing or an event have seen me at a signing or something. They’ve seen me in a profesionally capacity, and apparently even out of make-up I’m recognizable.
It was a little odd the first few times I was out with my daughter school shopping and had the sales lady ask if I was Laurell K. Hamilton. I’ve been recognized sometimes by name and sometimes by face in department stores, video stores, record stores, the Disney Store, movie theatres, and rarely, strangely, book stores. I have to admit that it weirded me out at first. I mean most of us become writers because we’re sort of unsociable. Sometimes we’re just not good at being social, or sometimes we just prefer not to be social. Either way writers are a low key lot. It is a way to be famous and not be known, and I am certainly not KNOWN in the way that an actor is. I cannot imagine not being able to go to the grocery store without someone recognizing you. I’m starting to hear the scary stories about people camping out across from this or that acrtress’s home, so they know when she leaves. That’s just creepy. And shouldn’t it be covered under stalking laws.
No, actors, actresses, well known models, anyone with that high a profile has my most profound sympathies. I cannot imagaine it. My small taste of it has been unnerving enough.
Yet, having said that, I continue to strive to widen my audience, to get more publicity, to put myself out there more. An odd dicotomy that. I want to hit that next level, but I didn’t realize until this year what that might mean in terms of being noticed. Good thing I’m not shy.
I research everything, pretty much. I’ve actually been thinking about finding people more famous than I am, (of which there are plenty. any actress on any moderately successful television show or movie for instance,) and asking them how do they do it? How do they survive in that kind of limelight? How do you balance the desire to do what you do as work, with the attention it gets you?
Having said all that, it brings me back to my first point. Honest it does. I was wowed by the postive feedback about the blog where I ranted against the idea that women must be tiny, stick figures to be attractive. It just isn’t true folks. Men like curves, and the women I’ve met that like women, like curves, too. Now there are always exceptions to this rule, but not nearly as many as the media would let us believe. My point is that so many people read my blog. So many people took my opinion and some will give it more serious consideration because of who I am. Not because I have a specility in this field that I gave my opinion on, but simply because I am a little bit famous. I find that kind of power to presaude both frightening and exciting. My hope, my most frevent hope, is that I use this louder voice that success has given me, wisely. That I always remember that fame is the by product, not the substance of what I do.
I’ve got to go make pages now. Because in the end if I don’t make pages the rest of it doesn’t matter. Not really. If the books don’t get written it doesn’t matter what interviews I’m asked to do, or who thinks I’m great. A writer writes, that’s what we do. So, bye for now.