writer Archives - Laurell K. Hamilton

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.

Crimson Death, the book that would not end.

I wrote this weeks ago, but was so busy actually writing, and living that I forgot to post it.
It’s raining here today. The kind of rain that settles in like a guest before the cozy fire with a cup of hot tea and a good book. It’s that kind of day, but I can’t curl up with someone else’s book yet, because I have my own to finish. Crimson Death is written, but now it’s page proofs which are the last chance to catch any small mistakes. If you find any large ones that would require pages to fix, or even paragraphs, you are out of luck. The book has been to the printers and these are the finished sheets, so small changes like the fact that I keep trying to give Cardinale green eyes to match Damian’s, when she is introduced books ago with blue eyes, that can be caught and changed. You can add, or cut a sentence here and there, but beyond that the book is the book – it’s done. But like so often in publishing, it’s done, but it’s not. Crimson Death is almost set in stone, but here are page proofs to show that the stone can still be polished a bit more.

I have now read and reread this book so many times that I’m having to fight not to change things just to change things, so it will read differently. I’m somewhere between bored with it and terrified that I’ll miss something that will haunt me later. Today is the last day though, tomorrow the page proofs MUST be in New York. My editor, my publisher, the entire long suffering production team, everyone who has touched this book and helped it along are waiting for me to finish this one last pass through the manuscript, which now looks like the final typeset of the book. It’s still loose pages when printed out, but it is now set like it will appear between the covers of the book. The art department has that lovely cover waiting to go around these pages like a lover’s hug to hold it safe, warm, and made to feel pretty. The book is done, but it’s not.

Crimson Death more than any other book in memory has been done, until I realize it’s not done – yet. That first ending that didn’t work at all. That second climatic ending that in retrospect didn’t seem all that climatic. My old editor retired happily, and I’m happy for her, but my new editor and I are still finding our feet. I think I may owe her flowers after the grueling literary slog this book has become on our end. Or maybe we just need to meet at a bar somewhere and have a drink, or three. I don’t normally drink, but on the research trip to Ireland for Crimson Death, I finally learned to appreciate it. So cliche that I had to go to Ireland to learn to drink. This book is leaving me thinking that I might curl up in front of the fire on a rainy day with something a little harder than tea. Maybe some Glendalough whiskey shining amber in a crystal cut glass, while I finally put my feet up and get to read someone else’s book, but not yet.

Life, Death, and Fiction

I’ve been having fits with the current book I’m writing. I’m over 500 pages in, over 200,000 words, and usually by this point in a book I’m writing as fast as I can, just to keep up with myself, but not this time. I’ll get a productive day, and then the next day it’s like all my momentum is gone. It’s like throwing a punch at the heavy bag without rotating your hips. You’re still going through the motions, but you’re leaving most of your energy somewhere else. Today I figured out what was wrong, someone is going to die.
I’m a writer of mysteries, police thrillers, with relationship growth and a huge dose of the supernatural thrown in, so there are usually dead bodies and a villain to stop. I like my fiction neater than real life, so the good guys usually triumph and the bad guys get punished, sometimes they get punished to death, which works for me in fiction. Like I said, it’s neater and more black and white than real life, at least in some areas. I try to make my vampires, zombies, and ghouls as realistic as possible, so there are also huge gray areas where my characters struggle with moral dilemmas and balancing work and relationships. Crime busting can be very hard on couples, or threesomes, or fourples, or any family arrangement.
I love my world and my characters, so why is this book dragging its heels? Because I have a character on stage that is in the hospital. I know what’s wrong with him, and I’d planned on saving him, but . . . I realize now that it may not work. He had another close call a couple of books back, though anyone reading the book wouldn’t have realized it because the moment in the climatic fight scene where he might have died didn’t make it into the final draft. When push came to shove, I couldn’t do it.
I’ve had this problem before where I’d planned on killing off a character, but we realize that I, and my main characters, would miss him. The most famous example of this to me and my fans is that I planned to kill Jean-Claude off at the end of the third book in the Anita Blake series. That’s right, the sexiest vampire on the planet, and now king of them in the United States in my world, though I didn’t see that one coming either, was supposed to die at the end of The Circus of the Damned. But when the moment came, I couldn’t do it. Anita and I would have missed him. I wanted him dead because he was taking over my series and stirring it in directions I hadn’t planned on, but I let him live. I was right on him taking my series to places I hadn’t planned on, or wanted to go. He was a very strong character with very definite Ideas about what should happen, and when, and with whom. It would be a very different series if Jean-Claude had died so early, and maybe I wouldn’t be writing the twenty-fifth book featuring him and Anita. Who knows what would have changed if I’d followed my original plan; so I’ve had this happen before, but never twice to the same character.
I knew he was slated to die at the end of a novel, and I flinched. He’s a good guy, we like him, what harm is it that he’s still alive? Well, he’s changing the game on me, not as profoundly as Jean-Claude did, but he is impacting my plans for the other characters and the world in general. If I leave this character alive, will it have as profound an effect on my series as Jean-Claude’s survival did? If so . . .do I want that? Or do I want to stay with my own over-arching plot line for the series? How much freedom do I give my characters? How much do I play god? He’s destined to die, should he get a reprieve?
I find myself regretting every time I kill a character off. I miss them. I miss writing them. I miss what the rest of their story might have been. It’s not even just major characters that I miss, even the minor-major ones, make me think, “If only . . .” I hate regrets, and unlike real life I have so many chances to undo it. I could write the death scene and then get up tomorrow and rewrite it so that he makes it. It’s one of my favorite things about writing fiction, I can always fix the mistakes tomorrow. In real life there aren’t take-backs, or do-overs, at least not for death. That’s about as final as we get in real life.
I’m going to break for lunch, but when I come back I have to decide. Does this character live, or die? Do we lose him forever? Or do we save him a second time? It’s bugging me a lot that this is the second time he’s come up on the chopping block. It must mean something to my subconscious that this same character keeps almost dying. Does it mean I’m uncomfortable with him? I was with Jean-Claude back in the day. Does it mean I don’t know what to do with him on paper? That he’s getting in the way of other characters that are staying? Maybe, maybe not? I don’t know, I really don’t. All I know for certain is that when I get back from a late lunch it’ll be go-time, and he will either live, or die.

New Blog – My Page Count Sucked Today

Some writers work for a certain number of hours, or an hour, and when the time is up they’re done for the day regardless of how much, or how little, they’ve written. Others do word count, a thousand words a day, or four thousand, and when they hit that, they’re done. I’ve always done page count, and I work until I’m done, or until I’m too exhausted to keep going. I post my page count for the day on line, a lot. Okay, I post it on Twitter a lot. My minimum page count goal is usually eight pages a day, but sometimes I’ll lower it to four pages, because some books are harder to write than others. I routinely do over ten pages a day when I’m deep into a book. When I’m really in the zone I can do twenty-plus pages a day for a week, or close to it. I have a lot of beginning writers, and even seasoned writers chastise themselves, because they can’t rival my page count per day. First, I type over two hundred words a minute, so that helps, and no, I have no idea how I type that fast, it’s a gift. But since a lot of the writers on line seem to get upset, because they can’t do it, I wanted to be sure and post today’s page count. Two pages, yeah you read that correctly, I have two pages for the entire day.

When I’m in the zone I can get twenty pages in two hours, but today it took me about eight hours to get those two pages. They’re good pages, strong pages, but it was a very frustrating day. I worked in the morning for no pages, and then went back after lunch, because I knew I had gym in the late afternoon, so I wanted to work until I had to leave for that. That’s how I got my two pages, by going back for a second session after a completely fruitless one that morning. Sometimes when the morning is completely dry like that I’ll give myself the rest of the day off, because the creative tank is empty and needs to fill up by doing something else, or I’m not sure what comes next in the book, or I know what’s next but don’t know exactly how to get from point A to point B. At times like that a few hours, or even a day away from the book can let my imagination work, and when I set down again I’ll feel refreshed, I’ll know what comes next, or I’ll know how to write the next part. But sometimes I just have to keep slogging away, until the creative log jam bursts and the waters come rushing through, or in this case trickling through. If I had given up and not gone back after lunch I wouldn’t have the two pages which lets me know exactly what comes next, and precisely how to write the next scene. I don’t feel a single hour at my keyboard was wasted today, because I know I needed every frustrating minute to finally break through what was clogging up the creative pipeline. Would I have rather had a day of twenty pages flowing like water from the proverbial cleft rock? Hell, yes, every writer would, but I’ve learned that the “bang your head against the problem” days are valuable to me as an artist. I don’t know why they’re necessary, but for me they seem to be part of my process especially early in a book. Tomorrow should be easier, because I planted the seeds of success today with those two hard won pages.

I’ve written and published over thirty novels, and I still have days when the words do not flow, the pages do not add up to much, so for all of you writers out there that have been watching me post my page count on line and despairing, I just wanted you to know that not every day is a home run, not even for me. Sometimes I’m just happy to get a runner on first base, and still be at bat. If you got any writing done today, give yourself a point, whether it was a few sentences, or paragraphs, or pages, if you sat your butt down and actually wrote – congratulations! Because writers, write, so you write your bad self into the next paragraph, or chapter, or short story tomorrow and think to yourself. Laurell K. Hamilton only did two pages yesterday, I can do two pages. You can, you know, you really can. Happy hunting!