“My first Anita Blake novel, Guilty Pleasures, was rejected over two hundred times.”
October of 1993 Guilty Pleasures hit the shelves. It was the very first Anita Blake adventure. After over two hundred rejections from almost every publisher possible and moments when I wasn’t sure I’d ever publish another book, I finally had the first book in my series published, and better yet I knew there’d be at least two more, because I had my first multi book contract. When I signed on the dotted line the contract was for three Anita Blake novels. I still remember the thrill of knowing there would be at least three books in the series! I’d already had one series end with the first book, Nightseer, because like most first novels it hadn’t sold well enough for the editor to buy more. It was supposed to be four books and now it would never be, but Anita would get at least three novels. I was giddy with the just that.
Anita Blake lives in a modern-day America where everything that goes bump in the night is real and everyone knows about it. The first book starts two years after Addison v Clarke had changed the definition of life and death by declaring vampires were legal citizens with all the rights that entails except for the right to vote. If you see a zombie on your street the police will come and keep you safe until an extermination team arrives with flame throwers in hand. I actually got rejected by a couple of publishers because my monsters were out of the closet. The editors said that without the mystery vampires aren’t scary. I’ve been proving them wrong on that for thirty books now. Another publisher offered to buy my book if I would make all my monsters a secret like every other horror novel I’d ever read. Anita Blake works full time at Animators Inc, where she raises the dead for her money hungry boss, Bert Vaughn. She consults with the police on supernatural crime part time and is one of the new legal vampire executioners because once a vampire starts to murder people for blood, they don’t stop. There was no way to go back and change Anita and her world, so I just kept collecting my rejection slips until then Penguin Putnam said, yes without wanting to change a thing. They bought me because it was something new that they’d never seen.
I had no idea that Guilty Pleasures would launch my career, or that I would ever get a chance to write the thirtieth Anita Blake novel, Slay that’s coming out November 7, 2023. My goal was to be able to support my family. I had no ambitions beyond that, because what was the point? All I knew then was that I was contracted for three books and if it all fell apart, I’d have at least a trilogy under my belt. If I’d told myself how successful I’d be as a writer way back in 1993 I wouldn’t have believed myself. I wouldn’t have believed a lot of things. The first three books have pagers and telephone booths as the high tech. Somewhere in The Laughing Corpse, or Circus of the Damned Anita gets a cellphone, but it’s nothing like the smart phone that we all live on and through now. It wasn’t just my career I couldn’t have foreseen, but the changes in technology that would reshape the world. Not a single science fiction writer, or even scientist saw that coming, so I don’t feel too bad. I would arbitrarily update all the tech in the series somewhere in the middle novels. It’s a tradition in long running mystery series that the main characters don’t age as fast as the rest of the world, and that you update history to keep the main character current with the present like changing their military service from Korea to the Middle East. I say mystery instead of horror, or fantasy, because at the time I was creating Anita, I had to turn to mystery series to read twenty books or more with the same character, no other genre had that at the time. Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, Robert B. Parker’s Spenser, John D. McDonald’s Travis McGee – none of them ever age out of being able to outthink, out fight, or just be tougher than anyone they’re up against. If it’s good enough for the greats of the genre, it’s good enough for me. I do have the added benefit of Anita Blake’s supernatural powers helping her age slower than normal, or perhaps she’s stopped aging at all, we’re really not sure yet.
People keep asking me if each book is the last Anita Blake novel, because a lot of my fans are from horror, fantasy, romance, and not as much mystery, so they’re used to series stopping at three, four, maybe six books if you’re lucky, but that wasn’t the template I used when I was planning my series. I went to mystery and studied some of the longest running series out there at the time. There are 21 Travis McGee novels, so I’m already ahead. Robert B. Parker wrote 40 Spenser novels before he passed and other writers were invited by his estate and publisher to continue the series. Ace Atkinson wrote 10 and has just passed the mantle to Mike Lupica who’s first Spenser book, Broken Trust comes out in November. Just hitting the 40 that Parker did is ambitious enough. Rex Stout wrote 33 novels and 41 novellas and short stories. If you add it all together that’s 74 Nero Wolfe adventures. Now that’s a goal.
Happy Spring Equinox and Blessed Ostara! Smolder, the latest Anita Blake novel comes out tomorrow! I can’t wait to share it with you all, but it’s extra special this year of 2023, because this is the 30th anniversary of the Anita Blake series. We’re starting the celebration with two events. March 21st St. Louis HiPointe theater live and in person with a virtual streaming of that both version require a ticket. It’s hosted by Left Bank books. Everyone’s been lovely and agreed to mask for me, I got long covid and to keep me safe and writing more books for all of you, I’ve asked everyone to mask. Thanks again. March 22nd for all of you that couldn’t make it to St. Louis there is a Barnes & Noble ticketed virtual event where William MCCaskey, my co-editor from Fantastic Hope will be asking your questions live online! You also get a signed copy of Smolder, but to get your questions answered and your signed copy you need to get your ticket to the event ASAP.
Each month we are going to be doing giveaways to help celebrate 30 years of Anita Blake! Head over to the contest page to view what current contest is running.
EDIT: We are aware that there is an issue with the contest. We are working on getting it up and running.
EDIT 2: I’m pretty sure that I have got the contest fixed and running.
Have you Pre-ordered Smolder, the next Anita Blake novel coming March 2023? If you have, please go to this form and fill it out to receive your own bookmark and holiday card from Anita and the Gang!
What was your first bird of the year? The first bird you saw outside on New Year’s Day. Mine was cardinal for the second year in a row, but 2022 it was a single scarlet male the only color in a winter landscape full of snow. This year the day was gray looking more like late November here than December. Three female cardinals fluttered around the bird feeders their soft brownish tan bodies with the tips of faint red at crest, wing and tail blending into the dead leaves and bare trees so that only their movement betrayed them. The first bird traditionally tells us what the coming year will be like, or what will be important to us. I have had January firsts where the birds all hid and I saw mammals, squirrels one year, and a cat one year. But it’s usually a bird, then you have to figure out what the message is for the year. Squirrels for me are to balance work and play better. Cat, was a sign to ask my allergist if I could have my first cat. That was a really wonderful moment after twenty years of allergy shots. Doves usually mean it’s going to be a year of matters of the heart, or issues associated with Goddess. Cardinals usually mean I need to be willing to be seen more, to stand out and say, look at me! It’s a lesson I struggle with like most writers, because on one hand we want our books to be wildly popular and sell tons, and make us tons of money to go with all those sales, but we are also usually introverts and shy, or at least more comfortable at our desks than doing interviews or public appearances. Even if we’re good at the public side it drains us. I was not happy with last year’s message of bright red cardinal, but female cardinal is a little less flashy. She does most of the egg sitting in the spring because her coloring lets her blend in and not attract predators while the male is the stalking horse saying, look at me and don’t look for our nest. Do I get to hunker down at home and nest this year? Cardinals don’t stop with laying eggs and raising chicks just once in the spring, unlike most song birds they will rinse and repeat two to three times a year. Here in Missouri where the weather stays mild longer I’ve seen them still feeding fledglings in early October. Though that’s a chancy month in the Midwest, because we can get a freak October snowfall. The year I noticed them feeding in October the weather stayed mild, luckily. They build a fresh nest for each set of eggs, probably because even the slowest predator might figure out where their nest is if they keep going to the same location to feed babies from March to October. Once they successful raise all their young then it’s time to form winter flocks with the juvenile birds who look just like mom. The males won’t get Dad’s bright red plumage until next spring, so the threesome I saw by the feeders on January 1st probably weren’t all females, but mom and chicks all camouflaged together to up the chances of this year’s babies surviving the winter without getting eaten by a hawk, or other predator. Maybe that’s my lesson for the coming year that I don’t have to be the brightest thing in view, but just concentrate on laying as many eggs (ideas) and raising as many chicks (books) as possibly this year. Be wildly productive and concentrate on writing new stories, and don’t put all my eggs in one nest, basket like the cardinal I’ll up my chances of success by having multiple nests for different broods (ideas/novels/stories) and concentrate on raising them until their ready to fly on their own and share with all of you.
Rafael came out February 9th, in both the US and UK. If you missed it, maybe that’s because it wasn’t originally scheduled. It was sort of a surprise book to me, and my publisher. How does a surprise book happen? Well, there was little thing called a pandemic and a lockdown and, well you know the rest. We all lived it, are living it. I reached out to as many fans as I could on as many social platforms as I could and the one thing that all of you asked for was, more stories. You told me that my books were your refuge away from the real-life craziness, but even though Sucker Punch had come out in August of 2020 as scheduled, you wanted/needed more now. You needed more books now, not later, but now. I heard you, and I went to my publisher and said, “If I could write you a shorter Anita Book like Jason or Micah, could we do that?”
The answer was obviously yes, but then I had to go to my list of characters that hadn’t had their stories told yet, and your requests for people you wanted to see front and center more. Rafael and the wererats were some of the most requested. Rafael is literally tall, dark and handsome. He’s a man of honor, a warrior, and a king, so why hadn’t he had his own book yet? Good question, and finally I had a good answer.
But a funny thing happened when I sat down to write the “short” book. It kept growing bigger. It’s over double the size of Jason, and longer than Micah, in fact Rafael turned out to be long enough to be a hardback novel like my regular books, but my publisher had made space in their lineup for an original paperback and so, that’s what Rafael is, an original paperback that’s long enough to be one of my hardbacks. I should have realized that Rafael would make the book bigger and more serious, he’s just not a light and fluffy kind of guy. I should also have realized that the first time for the Rodere, the wererats to be front and center in a book they’d need room to stretch and show all the wonderful culture that hasn’t been seen on stage before. The wererats have been quietly building their powerbase for years, and in some books not so quietly building, but now the cat, or rat is out of the bag. I’m so excited to finally share the world of the wererats with everyone. They turned out to be even more complex and magical than I’d expected.
There was another reason for me to agree with all the people that wanted Rafael to have his own book, 2020-early 2021 was the year of the Rat, and that meant wererats and Rafael in Anita’s world, and in ours.
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