books Archives - Laurell K. Hamilton

30 novels in 30 years – Happy 30^th anniversary to the Anita Blake series!

“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.

The College Professor and Dr. Seuss

Once when I still believed I’d get my doctorate in English literature, and write on school breaks, one of my favorite teachers had an epiphany in our upper level lit class.

One fine spring day, a literature prof named, Dr. Lalka declared that he would not read children’s literature to his soon to be born baby. He would read them only Literature, serious Literature like Shakespeare and Chaucer, Keats and Shelley. Children’s books he doubly declared, damaged a child’s brain and ruined their chance to love real Literature.

The eight students sitting around his table all looked at each other. He called them his little Cherubs, and they called him, Doc. They were the pride and joy of his students. The best, the brightest of them all. Those eight shining stars stared at each other and then with shared smiles began to recite, GREEN EGGS AND HAM by Dr. Seuss. His little cherubs spoke very word from beginning to end, leaving out nothing, remembering it all though it had been many years since they had read it.

That college professor named, Doc began to blush, pink at the beginning then red and redder and reddest of all until he had to bend down his head and recover himself. When once more he could speak, he said, that perhaps there was more to these children’s books than he had first thought and maybe among all the Shakespeare and Chaucer he might sneak a few stories with less thee’s and thou’s and more Sneetches and Loraxes.

His little cherubs rejoiced in that college classroom, knowing they’d saved Doc’s baby from the doom of being forced to grow up far, far too soon.

Happy Birthday to Dr. Seuss! Happy World Reading Day to everyone! Hope you’ve had a lovely one.

First Bird of the Year 2023

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 was released

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.

Listening to the Silence

It’s 11:00 in the morning and I have no writing done. I’m on deadline and I have no writing done. This is usually my cue to beat myself up emotionally which feeds all sorts of issues which if fed enough will trigger the chorus line of personal demons that I think most of us have in our heads. Once that chorus begins to chant their negative messages and dance their little dance not only is writing unlikely to happen today, but my day will be wrecked. I will be wrecked emotionally and it just goes downhill from there.
Often when I’m behind in my morning routine for work I try to hit the writing hard and make up for lost time, sometimes that works, but not when my head has already started going dark. On days like that I’ve learned that I need to do one of two things, maybe both, get on the treadmill and walk off the black mood, and/or mediate. I light a candle and try to focus not on the stressful morning, or all the things that are feeding the bad day, but on listening to that still, small voice that we all have inside us. The voice of our good angels, our totems, our spirit guides, that little slice of God/Goddess that is there to help us if we take the time to listen. It’s hard when most days are so rushed, but I’ve learned that if I can take even a few moments to stand outside in the sun, or hug a tree, or do anything that helps me be still and truly listen, that there will be comfort, or wisdom, or I’ll think of something I didn’t think of before that helps. Think about how powerful that is, that inside each of us is a spark of the Divine that will guide us, teach us, steady us, and it is always there, if we enter the silence and listen for it. (For all you atheists out there, you have it too, maybe you call it consciences, or inner knowing, but it’s there.)
I came away from meditation with this thought, “That there has to be chaos before there can be order. Sometimes you need that bad relationship in order to learn the lessons needed to have that wonderful relationship next time. Sometimes you lose an opportunity, because a better one is waiting for you. You make a mistake that turns out to be exactly what you needed to solve a major problem in your life/job/family/romance. A frustrating morning can lead to a life lesson that helps you find your way to a better afternoon, and to happier days in general.”
If I can hold onto this lesson, I’ve already put it in my journal, and I’m typing it here, then perhaps I won’t let the negative things drowned out the positive things, which I have a tendency to do.
I meditated and then I allowed myself to sit in the big, comfy leather chair in my office, cuddle with one of my dogs, sip tea and read from the book I’d almost finished. It reminded me that life isn’t all about the rushing around and accomplishing goals, it’s also about working hard so you can have the time to enjoy the things that make you happy. Now, I feel ready to start on that second bottle of water of the day, and get back to working on the story that is due. I have hope that I’ll get through the majority of it today, which is a lot better attitude than I had before I took a few minutes to be still and listen.

Fear, Fame, and AFP

Me and Amanda Palmer backstage at The Pageant, November 2010

My grandmother told me not to toot my own horn, which meant that I wasn’t encouraged to take too much pride in my accomplishments. She also believed that you should never enjoy anything too much, or God will punish you. These two beliefs made her life incredibly bleak, and in turn made my childhood not exactly a bowl of cherries. Skip ahead decades of therapy later and I thought I had worked through the issues those two messages had given me. Of course, bedrock issues from childhood aren’t so easily conquered. In fact, one of the things that’s been most disappointing about therapy breakthroughs is that even after you figure out what your personal demon is, the demon doesn’t always go away. Sometimes they do, sometimes the exorcism works and you’re free of that issue – free forever. I love it when that happens, it feels so liberating, but there are some issues that no matter how much cognitive therapy holy water you throw on them, they refuse to let you go.

I have trouble being proud of my accomplishments, because though my grandmother has been dead for years she raised me and she raised me not to be too proud. I’m not sure why taking pride in a job well done was such a sin. Weirdly, you were allowed to work hard to get good at something and then to do it, but once you actually started getting positive attention about it, then you had to not be prideful. It was an odd double message, be good, but not too good. It was good to get good grades and be smart, or good in athletics or whatever, but don’t get a big head about it, don’t get too full of yourself. It was okay for you to be told you were pretty, or smart, or whatever, but you couldn’t call yourself any of that, because that would be getting above yourself. Conversely anything you were bad at, or not perfect at would be pointed out immediately with comments like, “You’re so clumsy. You’re stupid. Etc . . .” I don’t know why she felt it was so wrong to praise success, but totally okay to criticize on the other end so harshly. I wondered in hindsight if she thought cutting me down would help keep me humble, just like not praising me to my face would? At her wake friends came up and told me how proud she was of me and how much she praised my accomplishments. It was news to me, and by that time I had totally taken in her mixed message of succeed, but don’t let yourself enjoy it. Due to my parents divorcing when I was a baby, my grandmother was with me from birth, and the only parent I had from age six when my mother died. She was my only parent, my world, and a lot of her beliefs and behaviors had a profound influence on the person I am today for better and worse.

I have pictures of me with famous people and I’ve posted almost none of them. Actors, singers, other writers who probably fully expected me to post the images on social media, but I didn’t. Why? Because I still can’t shake a terrible discomfort with being that kind of famous. In fact, the picture with this blog of me with Amanda Palmer, singer/song writer/author, almost didn’t get posted with this, because it made me so uncomfortable as if just the picture was bragging, and bragging wasn’t allowed. Then this morning I got the notice that Amanda had dropped a new song from her upcoming album to Patreon’s only, and since I’m a Patreon of her’s I listened to it. Gods, it was so intimate as if she were whispering into my ear, her breath against my hair. The rawness of it, it feeling so personal made me cry, and in that moment I knew that I had to use the picture of the two of us together for this blog. The picture is seven or eight years ago when she came through as one half of the amazing duo that is, The Dresden Dolls. I joined Amanda’s Patreon in part because she seems to thrive on social media and attention, and be much more comfortable with fame than I am. She is one of several people that I’ve tried to study to see if their ease with fame will help my discomfort. What I learned is that I can’t be Amanda Palmer, or anyone else. I have to figure out how to be famous as Laurell K. Hamilton.

I’ve had offers of free stuff, if I’ll just wear their clothes, or use their product and post about it, take pictures of myself in or with it. I accepted one offer of lovely shoes and then I didn’t post any of the pictures when they wanted me to post them. Why? It would take me a few more years to realize it was because the idea of me wearing shoes being possibly able to influence other people to buy them freaked me out.

Any time that I got too much attention in this area I’d sabotage it, not on purpose, not actively, but it was still self-sabotage even if just by procrastination, or losing an email. I’m never so disorganized than when it’s something that might raise my profile higher than it already is, and honestly if my agent didn’t insist on it, I probably wouldn’t say, New York Times #1 best selling author, but I am and my agent has chastised me enough times that I use it.

A journalist on the tour for my latest novel, Serpentine, this summer asked me if I’d thought about where my papers would be donated. It took me a second to realize he meant my archival papers like my drafts, notes, literary detritus and mementos. I was completely at a loss. It hadn’t occurred to me that any college or institute would be interested in my literary fingernail clippings. I explained that I’d been raised not to take too much pride in things and I just couldn’t shake it. He was older than me by a couple of decades, and we talked about the fact that some things that we know are damaging to us, old beliefs we were raised with that hold us back, never leave us. He said something to the effect that you have to stop trying to get rid of the parts that won’t go away, and just accept them. Since he’d been trying to slay his personal demons for at least a decade longer than I have, I appreciated him sharing his insight. It should have been discouraging that twenty years from now I’m still going to be fighting this deep issue, but it wasn’t discouraging, instead it was encouraging. (I cannot find the file with all the interviews from last summer’s tour that would have this wonderful, and professional newspaper journalist’s name in it. I’ve sat on this for two days trying to find the information, until I realized I’m using it as an excuse not to post this blog. When I find it, I’ll post with all his information, but for today, no more procrastinating.)

I’ve had open invitations to come back for radio, blogs, podcasts, and all sorts of wonderful interviews with great people who wanted me to come back any time I wanted, and they meant it. I have not initiated a single return interview except when a new book came out and my publicist told me to do it. Why? I don’t know why, or I didn’t, but I know what issue is behind the behavior.

So, to all the celebrities that tried to get into contact with me, especially early in my career, I’m sorry if I dropped the ball. Sometimes I couldn’t believe you were actually contacting me, like the shy girl who suddenly gets asked out by the most popular guy in school. There must be some mistake, or it’s a cruel joke and will end in ridicule and tears.

I will be trying to post more of the pictures as I find them, and I will try and believe it when people say, come back any time for an interview. I’ll try to be more comfortable with it all. Now that I know what some of the issues are that hold me back in this area I’ll try to move forward as if I don’t have the issue. Fake it until you make it, I guess.

I will at the very least stop torpedoing my opportunities for more publicity and fame. I can’t get rid of the part of me that squirms with embarrassment about me being “famous”, but I can admit it its a problem. I can admit that as successful as I’ve been I probably could have been even more successful if I had been able to embrace that success more wholeheartedly and not missed certain cues. Here’s to being a better dance partner with my success in the future, and kicking this particular inner demon down the road.

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.

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.

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.