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Thank you all for for your participation as well as your patience and understanding while we tried out a new system for contests.
-Jonathon
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Dawn came in with pink, cotton candy clouds here in Atlanta today. The book I’m currently writing was too loud in my head for me to sleep in, so I took everything out to a less crowded part of the rooms, opened the drapes for the view and wrote. We’re here for DragonCon again, and for those who don’t know what it is, well . . . DragonCon is Geek Carnival, Stan Lee called it Geek Mardi Gras, but my husband, Jonathon, said later, “Any town can have Mardi Gras, but there’s only one Carnival.” He’s right, and for anyone that loves Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, whether it’s short stories, books, television, or movies, this is the place to get your geek on. They’re expecting 65,000 attendees, but it may run higher. Normally this is a break from the everyday routine for me, but this year it feels more like an interruption than a vacation. 
Me at my Q & A panel
We went to Ireland and Britain for a month, we got home two weeks ago, and now we’re at DragonCon. The research trip was fabulous and absolutely necessary to the new book I’m writing, because at least half the book is set in Ireland, which I’d never visited. I’ve had this book idea for a few years, but kept putting it off because of the amount of travel and research that was needed, and there was another book set in England that I kept putting off because I needed a second research trip for it. Two books that I kept shoving back down the creative que, because I didn’t want to take time out of my actual writing schedule to travel for the research, but finally my imagination said, “The Irish book is next. Get your ass to Ireland, its time.”
I’ve tried to argue with my muse in the past, and I’ve won. I have successfully talked my muse and myself out of writing books in a certain order, not this plot, but that plot. I’ve done it and the books themselves are good, but after I’d forced my muse to write a book that it wasn’t ready for my writing process would be fucked up for months. The closest to true writers block I’ve ever had is when I don’t write the book, or short story, that my muse says is next in the creative pipeline. I can force my muse into harness and make her help me write the book that is due, the book I think should be next, but once that book is in New York then she turns on me, or I turn on myself, or my imagination does. Whatever you want to call it, that thing that makes me a happy, working writer balks like a huge draft horse that you need to pull your wagon. The horse holds up its hoof and says, “I’m hurt, can’t you see that? I’m lame. You’ve forced me to work when I wasn’t ready, on a road that I wasn’t ready to walk on, and I hurt myself. See?”
No, my muse doesn’t come to me like a horse, or talk that directly to me, but the metaphore is accurate. Sometimes my muse pushes me from behind like the hand on a swing sending me higher and higher into the cloudless blue sky – those are days of gold and joy when the words flow like magic. But most often the muse pulls me along, or we work together picking our way through the rocky field of a book, while the plow blade catches on rocks, old tree roots, and other nameless debris. When it works well my muse and I are a great team. We work well together she and I, or he and I, though muses in mythology are traditionally female, so I usually say, she. I am not referring to real life muses, as in a person that inspires an artist to create, that’s an entirely different topic, and not the kind of muse I’m referencing. When I say, muse here, I mean that spark inside an artist that helps them create and finish a work. Lots of people get good ideas for stories, even great ideas, but very few actually write the story down, finish it, rewrite it until its ready to send to a publishing house and an editor, and then send it off. My muse doesn’t just inspire me, she helps me work, or maybe helps me be inspired day after day. Now, there are days when she doesn’t show up at work on time, but I’m still at my desk typing and eventually she hears the activity and comes to look over my shoulder. Sometimes she thinks, “Good enough, and sometimes she thinks, we can do better.” Ray Bradbury once said, “The muse cannot resist a working writer.” He’s right.
Normally DragonCon is something that refreshes me and my muse. We come to play, but this year the trip to Europe was so long and full of so much information that I haven’t finished processing all of it in my mind. I have a stack of research books that I found in Ireland that is probably taller than me if we could safely stack them atop each other. I need time in my office to write the front end of the book set here in America, as I read and go over my research notes and pictures from Ireland. I’ve never tried to do this much research at the same time I’m writing the book, but it seems to be working for this particular book. I have a process for each book and most of that is the same for each project, but every book is a little bit different, too. It’s like dating, people can take you to the same restaurant, but the experience is totally unique, because the person beside you is totally unique. From dinner table conversation to whether you’re both comfortable holding hands, or if there will be sex afterwards, or not. Books are like that, too, each one unique, though it all has to be researched, written, rewritten, edited, and published, so the process is the same, but different. Again, like dating, because if all dates were the same you’d sleep with them all, or marry them all, and you don’t. The difference with writing books as opposed to dating is that you have to cross the finish line with each book, so you have to come across, or get engaged, or walk down the aisle, or whatever you feel is “finished”. On a real life date you can have dinner, shake hands, and go home alone, because that’s all you want to do, but with a book – I have to find a way to like my own book enough to want to do a hell of a lot more than just shake hands at the end.
For me, even a day off from a book when it’s going well can derail me for a week, or more. I was so tired when we all finally went to sleep last night here at DragonCon, but I woke early with the book demanding to be written. I wanted to finish the scene I’d been working on yesterday, which I did. It is the first time I’ve ever worked successfully at DragonCon, because like I said, it’s usually a welcome break, but not this year. This year my head is full of Ireland and everything we saw, did, and learned there. I keep thinking about all the research books. Some I absolutely need to read before I get to the second part of the book, but others maybe useful, or may just be more information that doesn’t directly impact the book I’m writing. There is even a third kind of research that never makes it visibly onto the page, but is important to have in my head, because it helps me write this book better. I can’t explain the difference in the types of reading, or research, but I know it is different, and I know that sometimes the difference is slim, but incredibly important to me as a writer.
Now I’m in the room alone with all my loves out doing different things. They are enjoying being in costume, getting their pictures taken, or visiting with friends that involves panels, parties, LARPing, and other things that I don’t really do, or understand. I’m in something cool and bed worthy with the lights down low so I can look out at the spectacular view of nighttime Atlanta from the room’s desk. Its a great view to write to, and that’s what I’m doing. I’ve got headphones in listening to the same music that I’ve been listening to at home as I write the book. (I always pick music for a book and listen to it until I burn myself out on it. It can take me years to be able to listen to an album, or artist again, and sometimes the music is so wedded to a particular book that I’m never able to listen to it for simple enjoyment again.) The moment that music comes on my muse and I are ready to go, because that is the music for this book. Some writers work better to silence, but for me, I need music most of the time. One thing I am doing differently is writing on my iPad. I wrote most of Dead Ice, the last Anita Blake novel, on my iPad because we weren’t home for the winter last year, so my main desk top wasn’t with me. It was the first book mostly written on the iPad, and now this book is also being written mostly on it, because I knew I would be traveling a lot while I wrote it, and I thought that keeping the same computer would help. It has, and its reminded me that I wrote most of my early books on some of the first portable computers. It was how I could write at restaurants, or playgrounds, when my daughter was little. It’s helping me a great deal to write on the same instrument on planes, in hotels, everywhere. Same music, same computer, same book, the continuity is helping me a lot.
I tried to go down and play with my people tonight, but the crowds got to me. Too many moving parts, too many things to keep track of, its just too much chaos tonight, so I kissed them good-bye and went back to the room. My security has me tucked in for the night, and I am content with that. I got plenty of attention today at the signing and panel. It was great seeing everyone, and thanks for everyone who stood in line for hours for the signing. You guys rock!
So at one of the biggest geek parties of the year I’m sitting in a darkened room by myself typing. The book is thunderous in my head, and I’m hoping to get another chapter done tonight, before my people get back from their panels, parties, and costume fun. I’m just not in the mindset to play, I need to work – I want to work. But then if I didn’t actually enjoy being alone in a room with just my imaginary friends and me, I wouldn’t be a writer, and I certainly wouldn’t be a Best Selling novelist with over forty books to my credit. I’ve been trying to learn to play, and I’m better at it than I was when I started, but in the end writing is my play. I think I forgot that for awhile, and I got confused with deadlines that were punishing, so that I began to see the writing as a punishment and not a reward. If you do anything too long and too hard, you can take the joy of it, and I did that to myself and my muse. We worked in harness far past our ability to plow a straight line and take care of ourselves. Now, I’m remembering that books are my play, whether its reading them, or writing them. My muse and I sit in the darkened room together, we are writing, and we are content.
My first signing in England will be August 7, at Forbidden Planet in London from 1700-1900. See you all there!
I will also be appearing at Nine Worlds on August 8 in London.
Saturday 8 August.
So for all you fans that have been asking, “When will you do a signing in Europe?” These events are for you, so come out and see me, because I’m finally here and I don’t know when I’ll be back.
It’s zombie day! No, it’s not a new book, it’s the first day after tour. It was great seeing all of you across the country for the Dead Ice Tour! You guys let me know just how excited you were to have the newest Anita Blake novel in your hands, and that was a lot of excitement! I loved answering your questions in Atlanta, New York, Houston, Dayton, and Lexington. You asked for me to tour some cities we hadn’t done in a few years, so I talked to my publisher and we did it! You guys came out in amazing numbers in every city, and we took selfies so you could see yourselves being awesome! (Okay, I forgot to take a selfie in a couple of cities; my bad.) But thank you for showing us so much positive energy! Thank you for loving Anita and all the rest of my imaginary friends so much!
But no matter how wonderful the tour was, there is always a zombie day after we get back. What is a zombie day? It’s a day after some major event like finals week, or finishing that huge project at work, or typing, ‘The End’ of a novel, or coming home from tour. Shorter tours are easier to recover from but no matter what there is always a day when I stare off into space at nothing in particular, can’t concentrate worth a damn, and am more tired than I thought possible outside of the first few weeks of a newborn baby coming home. All important decisions should wait until this phase of post-tour recovery is past, trust me on that one. Sometimes I try to ignore zombie day and muscle through, or at least try to ignore it, but I’ve learned that’s a mistake, so now I just let myself be as exhausted as I actually feel.
The best use of zombie day is to sleep in, maybe take a hot bath, and a hot tub is a bonus, drink lots of water and juice, take more Airborne and Emergen-C, and rest. Now, add that Jonathon and I both usually catch some bug on tour, so we’re actually sick on top of it all . . . and the only thing to do is nothing much. Dozing on the couch covered in sleeping dogs with a movie I’ve seen before playing as background noise is one of my favorite things to do when I’m this tired and sick. I usually do mysteries for the videos, but today a David Suchet Poroit, “Five Little Pigs,” actually had me crying, even though I’ve seen and loved the movie a dozen times. (Did I mention I can be a very emotional zombie on zombie day?) I needed a true feel good movie, so “Despicable Me” fit the bill. “Despicable Me 2” is currently playing, because it’s one of the few sequels that’s just as fun as the original.
I’m still occasionally trying to cough up a lung, but I’m feeling a little bit better than last night when I got off the plane. Happily, I didn’t catch whatever this is until after I hugged the last fan, shook the last hand, and answered the last question. So, whoever shared more than a hug with Jonathon and me, I hope you’re feeling better today, too. A lot of you asked why I’m not doing more cities, and the answer is simple: the longer the tour the more zombie days at the end of it. Shorter tours mean I can be back to writing pages on the next book, and that’s what all of you wanted the most on tour – the next-next book.
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.
Dead Ice: Nathaniel
We’ve only got two blogs to go until Dead Ice hits the shelves on June 9th here in the United States, but in UK today was your day to get Dead Ice; no spoilers! But since we’re running out of time for the blogs on our side of the pond, it’s got to be Nathaniel Graison, the other third of Anita’s live-in threesome.
Question: Is Nathaniel based on a real person?
Answer: No, but he’s one of the few inspired by a true life event.
Secrets to Share: I tackled researching BDSM, bondage and submission the same way I did guns, police work, or vaudun/voodoo: with respect and thoroughness. This was before I realized that BDSM was a part of my own lifestyle, so it was all brand new to me. I learned about dominants and submissives, it would be years before I learned about tops, bottoms, and I was still being told switches, people who can be both dom and sub, didn’t exist. I learned that healthy kink is all about safe, sane, and consensual. But I learned about a man who had vanished from the community after losing his dominant to a breakup. This individual was someone who didn’t play safe, or sane, but kept the consent; but what he would consent for was beyond what most dominants wanted to do with anyone because he wouldn’t safeword before he was hurt. A dom trusts his submissive to either call safeword before they are truly hurt in a scene, or to tell them upfront, “Sometimes I get caught up in the scene and I won’t safeword in time, so please help me keep an eye on me and call it for me if you think its needed.” Or words to that effect. The man who was missing wouldn’t do either, so most people didn’t want to play with him, let alone have a relationship with him. In a world where how much pain you can take could be a mark of pride and attractive to people, this man worried people. They’d actually encouraged him to get therapy because bondage isn’t a replacement for it. You should do bondage because it’s part of your sexuality, not because it’s part of your pathology.
The missing man was named Nathaniel, or that was his name in the kink community because most people use a nickname. Now, don’t get excited, I have no idea what this man actually looked like, I never met him, never talked to him, never had him described to me – honest. But the idea that someone was so lost that they wouldn’t, or couldn’t, protect themselves during scene play to the point where they would allow people to do irreparable damage or worse, really disturbed me. It disturbed the dominant who was my guide to the world, he was afraid that this Nathaniel had found someone who didn’t stop in time either from lack of knowledge, or desire for darker things than are acceptable in the community. BDSM is not a replacement for good therapy, if that’s what you need, go get healthy, and then once you’re better if BDSM is still something that interests you, come back with a better outlook and a healthier mindset. For some people bondage is a sign they need help, for others it’s just a part of their life. That this Nathaniel might have gone off with a stranger, which you’re not supposed to do, either you get people to recommend people or vouch for them, and let himself be . . . lost for good . . . It bothered a lot, just the concept that a person could be so . . . out of the confusion and dark fascination with the entire concept of someone doing that came my fictional Nathaniel. I kept the name and the dilemma, but my Nathaniel’s background history, physical appearance, personality, is all made up. I have no idea how it matched up with that long ago and long lost, person who planted the seed that would become my fictional Nathaniel. I didn’t need to know, because my imagination had taken that seed and run with it. In fiction I saved Nathaniel, and he got therapy and helped save himself. I was able to write a happier ending for my fictional character than seems to have happened to the story that inspired that first seed.
Question: Is Nathaniel based on your husband Jonathon?
Answer: See above, and no.
Secrets to Share: This is probably one of the most persistent rumors, that my husband is either Micah or Nathaniel or they are based on him, but neither is true. Sorry to disappoint everyone, but I do not base characters on the real people in my life.
Question: Is Nathaniel your sexual fantasy? Is Micah, Jean-Claude . . . etc . . . your sexual fantasy? Are the men in your books your sexual fantasies?
Answer: No, sorry, but though I find the men in my books interesting, and hot, because it’s hard to write a good sex scene if I, as a writer, aren’t attracted to the characters, but other than that, no. The closest to being my fantasy is Nathaniel, but not because of the great sex and his beauty. He is my fantasy husband/wife because he enjoys domestic duties like cooking, cleaning, and organizing a household. All of which I am terrible at, and Jonathon isn’t much better except for the cooking part. That he’s a domestic goddess is a wish fulfillment for me, because it’s something I’ve been wanting/needing in my life but couldn’t find romantically for a very long time. That Nathaniel is beautiful and in great shape is due in large part to his job as a stripper, he has to look good on stage. I now know the time and energy that you need to put in to look as good as he does, and it’s almost another full time job. If he wasn’t having to look that good for his job, then he probably would look a tiny bit less fierce, but he would still be beautiful. Of course, Anita works out too, both to stay healthy and to be able to run away or after the bad guys and fight if she has to, it’s a matter of life and death for her, which is a great incentive to hit the gym. She works out more than I do, because my job is to sit here and write. Sedentary jobs are so bad for the body. Both for health and my doctor’s urging I keep trying to add back in more exercise, but I actually hit a time a few years back where the amount of exercise was impacting how many hours I could write in a negative way. It was weird to realize how much time it takes to look a certain way. I’m not sure it’s possible for most people to dedicate that kind of time to it. One of the reasons Anita never does “normal” daily things is between her jobs, her relationships, and hitting the gym there really isn’t any time to do anything else. Staying in fierce shape is almost another job, and the way you have to watch your nutrition . . . it is a level of discipline and time management that boggles the mind, or it boggles mine.
Sneak Peek from Dead Ice:
“When Gabriel first introduced me to Jean-Claude I thought I was there to sleep with him, instead I was there to audition for going onstage at Guilty Pleasures. I thought I knew how to take my clothes off onstage, but Jean-Claude showed me the difference between shaking the moneymaker to the music and getting naked onstage, as opposed to a true striptease. I can still hear him: ‘One is an art, and the other is cheap and tawdry, and nothing cheap dances on my stage.’ God, Jean-Claude was so elegant in everything he did. I’d never seen anyone like him.”
“He is pretty unique,” I said.
Nathaniel laughed. “He was always a perfect gentleman with all the dancers. He said he couldn’t be a good manager if he played favorites, so first he taught me how to be elegantly sexy onstage and then he taught me which fork to use, and not to tuck my napkin into my shirt collar.”
Micah blog:
Micah Callahan came on stage mid-way through the current books, almost literally half-way at book #10 Narcissus in Chains. The book was a game changer in a lot of ways for the Anita Blake series, but one of the biggest for her personal life was the addition of Micah.
Question: Why did the sexual content go up in the series once Micah was introduced?
Answer: It didn’t really go up that much.
Secrets to Share: The Meredith Gentry series was actually created, at least in part, to give me somewhere to put all that literary sexual frustration that wasn’t happening in the Anita Blake novels. I had written and finished the first Merry book, A Kiss of Shadows, and set a much higher sexual content from the very beginning. I think that’s why no one ever complains about it, because it was the dynamic from the start, but with Anita it wasn’t. She started out a very old-fashioned good girl, in that I’m-waiting-for-my-white-dress-and-picket-fence kind of way. So, after nine books where she had managed to have sex twice, three times if you want a more open definition than just intercourse, I’d decided to stop arguing with her. If Anita wanted to keep both Jean-Claude and Richard at bay and continue to cling to her commitment phobia, then so be it, I was done. Not done with the series, but done arguing with her, with Richard, with everyone. Merry didn’t argue about sex, or even commitment, because the whole idea was for her to find a prince/king to her princess/queen. Narcissus in Chains is a solid mystery with a villain that is still one of the most original ideas I’ve ever come up with for a bad guy; but to listen to the haters you’d think there is nothing but sex in the book. In fact, there is only one full-blown sex scene in the entire book. You could make a case for two, maybe three, if intercourse, or oral isn’t your sole criteria for definition of sex. One of those scenes amounts to metaphysical foreplay scene with Richard, Jean-Claude, and Anita, but the other two scenes are with Micah, who was a brand new character introduced in this book. There is actually no more sex in this book than in Blue Moon or The Killing Dance, but what is different is who the sex is with.
I had so many people complain about the sexual content in Narcissus in Chains that I almost accepted that there must be more sex in the book than I remembered writing, but no, no, there isn’t. It has only been recently that I realized the problem was that the first metaphysical foreplay scene was with Jean-Claude and Richard, the two men that Anita had dated for most of the preceding nine books, so fans had become wedded to the idea that this was it – her two guys. They were also convinced she would pick one guy to finally settle down with, and then suddenly Micah comes out of left field and wins the day, the lady, everything, because that’s what some fans seemed to think. They would have to wait for the next novel, Cerulean Sins, to discover that Anita hadn’t dumped both the other men. She’d date and still be lovers with both Richard and Jean-Claude, but she would also continue to date Micah. It would take me almost ten years to realize why some of the anger directed at Micah existed and by then it was too late to change things, even if I’d wanted to, which I didn’t. My series, my books, my characters, and they tend to date/sleep with who they want to with very little input from me, actually. Micah was supposed to be a bit player, in fact he was supposed to be a bad guy henchman for the main villain. He wasn’t supposed to date Anita, let alone have sex with her. Which leads us into the next question.
Question: Did Micah rape Anita the first time they were together?
Answer: No. Not to me, but to my great surprise this was one of the most frequent questions I’ve gotten over the years about that first scene.
Secrets to Share: This question totally caught me off guard at first, and the people who asked it in a hateful way, or were just haters in general, I pretty much ignored. If you want me to pay attention to you, be nice. Some very sincere women, who were very nice, were upset about the scene. It turned out that the scene had seemed like rape to them because Anita had not said a fully spoken, “yes.” I swear that I remembered her saying yes in the scene. I swear that I wrote her saying yes in the scene, but so many women were genuinely upset by the scene that I went back and reread it. One thing was true, Anita doesn’t say an out loud yes. *head desk* Sometimes when you write a book, things are so crystal clear in your head that you think they are on the paper; you actually begin to read them into the words, but that doesn’t mean they’re there. The problem is copyeditors and editors in New York can’t see what’s in my head, only what’s on the page, and if what I “see” in my head never got onto a version of the page, then they can’t help me remember it.
I went so far as to add a “yes” between the hardback and one of the paperback versions of Narcissus in Chains, but honestly I can’t remember which print run the change was in, and when the next print run came out the publisher had reverted to the master print file, and the “yes” was missing once more. *head wall* If I could do this scene again I would rewrite some of Anita’s interior dialogue to make it more acceptable to the women who saw/feel the scene as rape. All I can say is that I did not write the scene with that in mind, but having listened to enough polite fans explain their point of view over the years, I can see their point. My apologies to those that were genuinely upset by the scene as written, and I have endeavored not to fall into ambiguity in any other sex scene with anyone since then.
Question: Is Micah going to become king of the wereanimals in America, the way that Jean-Claude is king of the vampires?
Answer: I don’t know.
Secrets to Share: Micah is one of those characters that changed completely between character building notes and stepping on stage. The moment he interacted with Anita for “real” on paper he was someone new, someone I hadn’t planned. He was honorable, determined, as ruthlessly practical as Anita, and in many ways the near perfect helpmate that Anita had been needing. I had no idea he was a leopard king, a Nimir-raj, or that Anita would be his leopard queen, Nimir-ra. I had to come up with vocabulary for that, and so much more, after Micah announced who and what he was in the shapeshifter community. Since I didn’t know any of this when he first stepped into fictional reality I had no idea that he and Anita would create The Coalition for Better Understanding Between Lycanthrope and Human Communities, or that Micah would be called all over the country when there was a conflict between lycanthrope groups, or between humans and the shapeshifter community. Here’s a freebie insight, in Affliction I thought it was clear that Micah only interferes with out of state animal groups when those groups call the Coalition in to solve a dispute, or violence has already broken out, but not gotten to the attention of human authorities, but apparently not. Again, with Micah, people thought he was just traveling the country forcing groups to join our larger group – no. The Coalition goes only where, and if, called, but once you call in help if we pay in blood and pain from our people to solve your problem, then you and yours may end up joining the Coalition whether you like it or not.
Sneak Peek from Dead Ice:
Micah came through the door like he came through every door, as if the room were his room, or at the very least he was thinking of purchasing it. It was a surety and security in himself that he’d had since I’d met him.
Dead Ice: Nicky
We’re only two weeks away from Dead Ice’s publication. This blog will be the first one that doesn’t have a graphic novel image to go with it, because Nicky is one of several major characters that didn’t appear in the early books which were later turned into graphic novels. I’m trying to get images to go with Nicky and the rest, but for now his traditional lion form stands in for the other two forms.
Question: Did you know that Nicky was going to be a major character when you created him?
Answer: No.
Secrets to Share: I didn’t expect to ever see him again because I thought Anita was going to have to kill him. He was just another sociopathic bad guy when he walked on stage from my imagination. I had no idea we were keeping him around until the very last minute and even then I had no idea that he would be in almost every book from that point on. Even keeping him, I didn’t know Nicky would go from bit player to supporting character to main character.
Question: Why did you do the rough bondage scene with Nicky and Anita in Affliction?
Answer: Because they are lovers, and both of them enjoy rough sex and bondage with each other.
Secret to Share: Nicky was fast becoming a fan favorite until I wrote that particular scene in Affliction. After the scene, a lot of the women fans disliked or even seemed to hate him. I was totally surprised by the reaction. Anita and Nicky had had rough sex before on stage, but some fans thought this scene was too much. Why? We’d had Anita tied up during sex before, and I believe that Nathaniel was even part of that scene, too, just as he was with Anita and Nicky in Affliction. So why the negative reaction? And none of the fans are angry with Nathaniel, just with Nicky, again why? The only difference I can see is that it’s a more serious breath play scene, which Nicky enjoys giving, and it was his suggestion to add that to the scene. I was very careful and very clear to have Anita and Nicky discuss what she was comfortable with beforehand. Nathaniel was there as an extra safety monitor and not just as an extra lover. I talked about safety issues, because breath play of any kind is edge play, which means it can be more dangerous. I did my due diligence on paper and Nicky and Nathaniel both watched over Anita to make sure she was all right. I talked about it, rather than just glossing over the possible problems. All three of them care for each other, and they all enjoyed the scene and the sex, so why did some people freak about it and start hating on Nicky? I don’t know, I honestly don’t, but some people who were fans of his are now literally haters of his, so apparently the scene hit issues for people.
Question: When will see Nicky interact with more of the local werelions?
Answer: In Dead Ice.
Secrets to Share: My research into real lions helped me shape Nicky taking over the local pride and how he runs it in Dead Ice. Contrary to the old idea of male lions as the “King of the Beasts” presiding over their territory and their harem of lionesses all by themselves, it’s rarely just one king. One lone male lion would be hard put to defend against all commers, most prides are run by a coalition of male lions. More detailed DNA testing has disproved another well loved theory in that the coalitions were genetically related, brothers, or at least cousins, but DNA proved that some weren’t related at all. Male lions are kicked out of the home territories as they come into sexual maturity, so they won’t compete with their father, or mate with their mother, or siblings. Theories are that the young male lions kicked out of their home territory meet up in their wanderings and find that hunting in groups helps them stay fed. They also fight as a group and that is a big plus among lions. In fact, prevailing theory is that the reason lions are social and live in groups is primarily to protect themselves from other lions. Also, if your lionesses like the lions in charge they will join the fight against intruding males. There have even been cases of lionesses banding together and fighting off males, so that they are a power unto themselves. It’s not common because the males are bigger, heavier, and just have more muscle to throw around, but the lionesses do most of the hunting. Males only usually come into their own on hunts when really big game is the main food source for the pride, like water buffalo, giraffe, and even elephants, on occasion. Real animals, and real science, helped me understand that Nicky was the muscle, but as a sociopath he emotionally couldn’t run a pride, so another male lion that was physically less able, but very good socially, joined him as part of his leadership coalition. By end of book we’ll add another, so he’s Rex, but it’s a three-for-one, not related to each other, just like a lot of real lion coalitions.
Sneak Peek from Dead Ice:
Nicky asked, “Do you mean you have pictures in your head of what you want to do to us?”
”Yes.”
”Are they your thoughts, or is someone putting them in your head?”
”I do not know, but even speaking with you now, it’s as if my pork dinner were talking back. I’d think I was mad, but I still want to eat it.”
”Eat me, you mean?” Nicky said.
”Yes, very much.” The southern drawl was thicker with every word, as if by the time he rushed us, or we shot him, he’d sound like Scarlett O’Hara.
”Interesting, Nicky, but save it,” I said.
”There won’t be a later for asking him questions.”
He was right, of course, but only a sociopath could have stood there this close, watching the process, and asked the questions that might help us understand what was happening. It was good that we had Nicky with us, because I was so spooked my mouth was dry.
Here’s the next blog in the series leading up to Dead Ice. I thought I’d leave the leading men behind and go to one of my favorite supporting characters, Zerbrowski.
Question: What is Zerbrowski’s first name?
Answer: Sorry, but he’s keeping that secret a bit longer. He considers it pretty awful though.
Secrets to share: He’s Sergeant Zerbrowski now, moving up the chain of command, but he’s still making wisecracks and being Anita’s main partner when she works with the Regional Preternatural Investigation Squad, though most people call it the Regional Preternatural Investigation Team, so they can use the acronym, RPIT, for the Rest in Peace Team.
Question: When will we see his entire family on stage?
Answer: “Dancing” is an e-special short story where we finally got to see one of the police barbecues at Zerbrowski’s house.
Secrets to share: I’d been wanting to see Zerbrowski, his wife Katie, and their kids on stage in a major way for years, but there never seemed to be enough time in one of the main books. “Dancing” exists because I wanted to see him at home. I wanted to meet his kids, not just talk about them off stage. Zerbrowski and Katie stand up to any of the police, or their spouses, that are unhappy with Anita taking Micah and Nathaniel as her dates. They bring along four-year-old Matthew who they are babysitting. Seeing Anita dealing with a child at an event with a bunch of other children and parents was very fun.
Question: When will we see Zerbrowski in a major roll in one of the books again?
Answer: Dead Ice has Zerbrowski back at Anita’s side helping her track rogue zombies and evil necromancers.
Sneak Peek from Dead Ice:
Zerbrowski made a face. “I bet. Nothing like coming to put flowers on Grandma’s grave and discovering she’s been scattered all over the place like dog food.”
Third in the series leading up to Dead Ice, I almost made it Anita, but in the end I decided we’d go with Rafael, the Rat King.
Raphael, drawn by Bret Booth
Question: When are we going to see Rafael on stage more in the books?
Answer: June 9, 2015 in Dead Ice!
Secrets to Share: Once I decided to have wererats in the first Anita Blake novel, Guilty Pleasures, Rafael just sort of appeared on paper. I don’t remember making notes, or trying to create him. He just walked on stage. He was handsome, Hispanic, a great leader doing his best under difficult circumstances to protect his people.
Question: When are we going to learn more about how Rafael runs the wererats?
Answer: See above, in Dead Ice.
Secrets to Share: Rafael told me how he was running his group. I had to work at figuring out how various other shapeshifter groups were organized, but not the wererats. Rafael was even a good leader in my subconscious. The only thing that I had to “invent” was the crown-shaped brand on his arm as the mark of kingship. That I worked at, but for the rest he’s always been very easy to write.
Question: Are Rafael and Anita a thing/an item?
Answer: If you mean have they had sex together, then yes.
Secrets to Share: No one ever asks if Anita is dating Rafael, they don’t ask if they’re lovers, because that can just imply sex and you all saw them have sex on stage, so that’s a given. But lover can also imply a more emotional involvement, and I don’t think we’re expecting that between them. So, what are Anita and Rafael to each other? Both have risked their safety, even their lives, to help each other. They are allies, and have become friends. He is honored and powerful food for Anita’s arduer. In Dead Ice we learn more details than ever before about how they work that.
Sneak Peek from Dead Ice:
His mouth was buried tight against Rafael, his throat working convulsively as he swallowed. I had a moment to think he was drinking blood from the wound, because that was what it meant when I saw Jean-Claude or Asher swallow like that.
