Meet The Author - Laurell K. Hamilton

The vampire genre has enthralled readers ever since Bram Stoker introduced a certain Transylvanian count over a century ago.
And at the time, that WAS urban fantasy. Lessee - vampires in a big city, conflict with humans, eroticism, suspense, horror... yup, it deserves the urban fantasy tag more than LKH's does now.
And if Stoker had known what vampire fiction/movies would turn into, he might have taken a vacation instead.
Since then vampires have been used as vehicles for everything from romantic novels to erotica to humor to the expected tales of terror.
Tragically, not enough of the last two. Currently most are treated as Very Serious/Angsty Hot PrettyBoys of Blood & (Mostly) Lust.
However, very few writers have combined all of these facets of the never-say-die vampire quite the way that Laurell K. Hamilton has.
Right, because her books are known for their vampire-related horror and humor. If you count the hilarious descriptions of JC as a mermaid, maybe... and all the parts where Anita insists that she's super-tough... and all the long anime hair... and the constant triumph of orgasms and Disney-style "love"...
... on second thought, the "hilarious" and "horrific" stuff in this book tends to be the same stuff.
Hamilton has not always been under the spell of undead things that go bump-and-grind in the night. 
Okay, I admit, that was kind of funny.
When she was a young girl, her literary tastes were a bit more on the traditional side. "I wanted to be Louisa May Alcott, who wrote Little Women, because I had never read any science fiction, fantasy, or horror," she confessed in a podcast on Mayor Slay.com. 
# I'm pretty sure there are no other Louisa May Alcotts in this wide world of ours. Why does she have to tell us that Alcott wrote Little Women?
# Oh wait, because she assumes we're all really stupid.
# Because of course you SIMPLY CAN'T like a traditional family-saga book (oh dark and angsty YUCK) if you also like Teh Dark And Angsty And Edgy Horrorz Of Blood And Thicker Things. It's not allowed! You'll be fined! Nobody could ever read sci-fi, fantasy and horror while STILL liking Little Women!
"Then at 13 or 14 I found Robert E. Howard's short story collection [Pigeons From Hell]. It was the first horror, the first heroic fantasy, the first science fiction I'd ever read, and the moment I read that I knew that not only did I want to be a writer, but this is what I wanted to write."
... she wanted to write a confusing muddle of incompatible genres? Wait...
Furthering Hamilton's burgeoning fascination with the fantastic, she discovered Anthony Masters's The Natural History of the Vampire at her high school library. 
And given LKH's research methods and apparent literacy, I assume that she discovered it, got bored with reading and tried to absorb its constants directly into her skull.
Coupled with the ghost stories her grandmother had told her when she was a child and heavy doses of Hammer Horror movies from Great Britain, 
Guess how many ghosts there are in this series.
As for Hammer Horror...
Hamilton was well on her way to creating a character that would only be rivaled by Buffy in the field of vampire slaying.
Uh, if you mean that they both have titles involving vampire hunting/slaying, then yes. Otherwise, no. I will admit that Anita has gotten more vampires horizontal than Buffy, though.
Hamilton first introduced vampire huntress Anita Blake in her third novel Guilty Pleasures. Blake is an unlikely combination of action hero, federal marshal, "necromancer," and lusty dame. 
Let's examine those qualities:
# Action hero - wears a lot of weapons but hardly ever uses them. Only triumphs with asspull powers.
# Federal Marshal - dudes, don't humor LKH by pretending that her Sue actually is a REAL marshal. She's not. She had it handed to her because LKH wanted Anita to be James Bond With Boobies. ("However can I give my precious Anita even MORE authority without any pesky rules or work?")
# Why is "necromancer" in quotes?
# Lusty dame... I'm sorry, did we get transported back into a medieval ballad? Maybe a RenFaire?
Her exploits between the sheets and in the graveyard won Hamilton a rabid following hungry for something new in the well-traveled vampire genre.
Or for furry sex, Mary Sues, and hostility towards the entire male sex if you aren't a bisexual hairless prettyboy who always does what the heroine says.
Along with the kinds of scares normally associated with vampire stories, Hamilton's books are notable for their unflinching eroticism. 
"Oh, Long-Haired Bishie With A Tragic Past, my inner wombat craves your anatomically impossible penis!"
"Anita, you're so kind and loving! And wet and tight!"
Repeated descriptions of the penis going into the huge yet "tight" vagina. Anita screams every few minutes.
"I'm worried that I'm a slut because I have sex with hundreds of men!"
"No, Anita! You're the only one I'll ever love! Can we talk about my tragic personal history now?"
Vampires have had a sexual lure since Stoker, but Hamilton particularly draws that aspect to the surface of her work as one of her creatures might draw blood from a victim.
# In other words: the vampires line up to be emasculated and to screw her screechy heroine.
# The writer for this article SUCKS. So, she pulls something to the surface... the way a vampire sucks blood. WHAT?
# Well, she DOES suck the actual sexiness out of her series like a vampire chugging blood.
"I [want] a kiss to be so believable it gives the reader shivers," she says on her website. 
"Of course, I don't really like kisses as much as biting, licking, and blowjobs. They're SEXY, not ROMANTIC."
"Two things I do well are sex and violence,"
Can I offer an alternate opinion?
"but I don't want gratuitous sex or violence."
Well, if your definition of "gratuitous" means "doesn't give Anita new magical asspull powers/new hot pretty manslaves."
"The sex and violence is only as graphic as need be. And never included unless it furthers the plot or character development."
Plot? Character development? What are these exotic mysterious words? I read books only to live vicariously through a violent, woman-hating woman who hops between enormous penises when she isn't bitching at the police for not being her.
Another unlikely trait of her books is humor, vampire tales classically being of the more solemn sort.
Having your heroine emphasize how tuff and insensitive she is at every opportunity is NOT humor. It's funny when Harry Dresden is mistaken for a drug addict, but now when Anita acts like a bitch to other women.
However, a writer weaned on a book titled Pigeons From Hell is not likely going to shy away from wit.
... I don't get it. Is that title supposed to be funny?
Consequently, her books have been consistently entertaining and fun, as well as creepy and sexy.
They also whiten your teeth, clean your tile floor and teach you ballroom dancing!
And if "consistently" means "for a ten minute window in 1995," then... yes.
Hamilton has also brought her delicious combination of sex, humor, and frights to another series, this one more ingrained in dark fantasy than horror.
It quickly turned into yet another cheap faerie porn series, where whole books would go by with nothing other than Merry screwing random multicolored men and causing things to bloom out of her vagina.
Her faerie princess/P.I. Meredith Gentry made her debut in Kiss of Shadows in 2001 and has since sparked her own crowd-pleasing sword and sorcery meets pulp series.
# Wow, a P.I. I'd almost forgotten. She spends maybe 2% of the series doing anything P.I.-related, and most of that involves her getting raped (and liking it) by a minor bad guy.
# Yeah, crowd-pleasing. I'm sure that's why she spent two years with no Merry contract, frantically dodging questions about it.
# Sword and sorcery? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING? Do you halfwits who RUN A BOOKSTORE CHAIN even know what that means?!
# And "pulp"? Do they mean pulp mystery?
# Because "pulp" in this context means stories released in cheap publications. It can mean fantasy, mystery, sci-fi, melodrama, whatever.
# So in other words, it just acknowledges that LKH's writing is cheap flashy substanceless stuff that can be instantly forgotten.
# Did I mention this article was written for a BOOK CHAIN'S WEBSITE?! Do they have NOBODY who actually knows anything about fucking BOOKS?!
Increasingly, the Anita Blake and Merry Gentry books have added more sexual content to their story lines,
Story lines? They have story lines? I thought they just had sex!
classifying both series in a new hybrid genre that blends romance, erotica, and paranormal fantasy.
# Because everything LKH does is the first! She's first at everything! It's a NEW genre that SHE ALONE made! SHE MUST BE FIRST AT EVERYTHING PLEEEEEEEEEE...
# That genre is not new or exclusive. It is called "paranormal romance."
To judge from Hamilton's consistent appearance on the bestseller charts, readers find the mix spellbinding.
Or, as evidenced by books like the Twilight series and the Inheritance Saga, people like to read about Mary Sues.
Good To Know
One thing you will never find in a Hamilton novel is a cliffhanger. 
You'll find dozens of unanswered questions, dropped plot threads, and important shit that is NEVER DEALT WITH. But you won't find a cliffhanger, and that's all that matters!
She believes that cliffhangers unfairly tease readers who would then have to wait six months to a year to have some sense of resolution. 
I'd rather read a cliffhanger in a well-written book than a shitty book that has no resolution anyway.
As she said during an interview with Bill Thompson of Eye On Books, "Every book is a full meal. All the way from the appetizer to the dessert, so that you come away feeling that you've had an experience... and at the end you have that satisfied, full feeling."
... followed by a violent double-punch of diarrhea and vomiting, and a lingering case of food poisoning.
And notice that she doesn't say that this is what she WANTS to happen, she TELLS you how you will feel after it.
Before Laurell K. Hamilton made a full-time career of blood, guts, murder, and mayhem, she had more humane pursuits - she volunteered at an animal shelter where she played with unwanted pets.
So you can't write urban fantasy with lots of death and carnage without also leaving behind "humane" pursuits? Quick, tell Jim Butcher - his books include cannibalism, demons, vampires and murder, so tell him to stop anything not related to death/gore/angst/etc.
In our interview, Hamilton shared some fun and fascinating facts about herself with us:
"I like to eat paste.
On second thought, we've decided to stop talking about those fun and fascinating facts now.
"I am incredibly stubborn. Telling me I cannot do something, especially if you cite the fact that I am a girl, will make me want to do it more and do it better."
"I'm sorry, Ms. Hamilton. But you simply cannot get another person pregnant. You don't have a penis. You're a WOMAN."
"OH YEAH? I'LL SHOW YOU!"
Apparently LKH considers this to be an undiluted good point, but the simple fact is that NO character trait is all good all the time. A LOT of people would react that way (yes, LKH, you are NOT UNIQUE in terms of stubbornness and contrariness) but most of them know when you're supposed to buckle down and do what others want anyway. Honoring commitments is one of those time.
"I am not my characters. We have some of the same traits in common, but we are very different people."
 	Laurell K. Hamilton 	Anita Blake
Background 	Her mom died in a car crash when she was little. Raised by demonized grandmother.	Her mom died in a car crash when she was little. Partially raised by demonized grandmother.
Appearance 	Curly dark-brown hair, fair skin, big boobs, claims
to have an hourglass figure. 	Curly dark-brown hair, fair skin, big boobs, claimsto have an hourglass figure.
"True love" 	Gary Hamilton, a strapping muscular guy with pretty brown hair. Pissed LKH off by liking pretty blondes and refusing to join the Anita LARP that
LKH's life has become.	Richard Zeeman, a strapping muscular guy with pretty brown hair. Pissed Anita off for many books
by refusing to join the harem and having sex with
pretty blondes.
Clothes 	Mixture of Hot Topic goth, unattractive leather
and mom-jeans 	Mixture of Hot Topic goth, unattractive leatherand mom-jeans
Dislikes 	Girly feminine stuff, "white picket" people, cops,
blondes, skinny women, manly men, doing stuff
around the house for herself, children	Girly feminine stuff, "white picket" people, cops, blondes, skinny women, manly men, doing stuff around the house for herself, children
Weapons 	Talks about all the weapons she doesn't use
anymore as if she needs them 	Talks about the weapons she doesn't use EVER
as if she needs them.
1950s
housewife	Claims she needs one. 	Has Nathaniel to be one.
"Her people"	Talks endlessly about "her people," how she takes
care of them, protects them, blahblahblah.	Also talks about "her people" and how so many
people are relying on her. Yeah, like her personal
assistant.
Center of
the world	Every group, person and villain revolves around
Anita 	LKH makes sure everyone around her revolves
around her
Yeah, they're only "very different" because LKH can't actually make herself a twentysomething necromancer in real life, and reality doesn't actually revolve around her.
"Everything inspires me. Getting up in the morning, walking the dogs, watching a music video. Inspiration comes from everywhere."
... other urban fantasy authors' books, movies with hot men that I want, my PREVIOUS books, random boring shit that logically has nothing to do with my main characters' lives....
And yeah, music videos. Wonder which ones.
"I like spending time with my family and friends. Something I often feel I do not do enough of. But there are only so many hours in a day."
Except for Jon, her husband Jon, who is her husband, and because he's her husband (whose name is Jon) she talks about him nonstop and even has a place for him in HER OFFICE.
"I like to read other people's works. I love reading cozy or historical mysteries when I can."
"I don't anything in MY genre, because I made it and everyone else is just copying me!"
In the winter of 2004, Laurell K. Hamilton took some time to talk with us about some of her favorite books, authors, and interests.
Moments later, we lapsed into a coma.
What was the book that most influenced your life or your career as a writer?
Pigeons From Hell by Robert E. Howard -- it was the first heroic fantasy/horror novel I ever read. I read it and knew that not only did I want to be a writer, but this was what I wanted to write.
# How many times is she going to name-drop Pigeons from Hell?! This is the third time in ONE PAGE.
# It's not a novel. It's a short story.
# It's not a heroic fantasy either. Heroic fantasy is a form of HIGH fantasy, and the story takes place in New England.
# And it hasn't got much in common with LKH's works, except it has voodoo.
# And this is the second time she's said this. HELLO?!
Andre Norton was important both for her science fiction and fantasy novels, and the fact that she was a woman.
So she was an important writer because she was a woman, rather than because she was actually a good one? 
Before I became enamored of fantastic literature, my first writing hero was Louisa May Alcott, as in Little Women, and many more books. When I began writing horror and the like, I thought I'd left her far behind, only to discover that Ms. Alcott had also written gothic horror stories.
Obviously she wasn't THAT enamored of Alcott. Especially since having found something that allowed her to act as the angsty outsider of woe, she considered herself as having "left her behind." After all, NO ONE who is truly dark and angsty could enjoy Little Women! Pah, all those happy well-adjusted people!
It's like one of those kids who makes friends with someone, but then drops them when they want to impress some cooler kid.
But don't worry, dark angsty outsiders! You can still read Alcott, because she wrote "blood and thunder" tales! Your street cred will be unsullied by anything wholesome and uplifting! Edgy cool people only read edgy cool literature that reflects their edgy coolness! If you read Little Women, they will strip you off your status!
What are your favorite books, and what makes them special to you?
Do her own count?
Charlotte's Web by E. B. White -- E. B. White was one of the writers who taught me to be concise and descriptive at the same time. It is one of the great classics of American Literature.
It is from him that I learned to use descriptions such as "like a sucking thing" or "evil chocolate" and other tortured similes and metaphors! Yes, I owe him a lot. What's that spinning sound from the graveyard?
101 Dalmatians by Dodie Smith -- One summer, I read and reread this book 25 times. It left me with a lifelong love of the book -- and Dalmatians.
Guess what kind of dog she pretty much never talks about. Guess what book she never mentions other than here.
The Robert B. Parker Spenser novels -- Robert B. Parker was my introduction to good hardboiled detective fiction, and where I learned how good dialogue is done. Spenser books still remain a delight after all these years.
What are some of your favorite films, and what makes them unforgettable to you?
Bell, Book and Candle -- This movie combines three of my favorite things: publishing, Halloween and Christmas.
Vampire Circus (Circus of Fear) -- This is an old Hammer vampire film. This film probably influenced my writing more than even I know. I saw if for the first time at age seven and then again when I was in my twenties. The film stars a master vampire with long black hair and a frothy white shirt, a vampire who becomes a leopard, and more sexual innuendo than you can shake a stick at. Oh, and some not-so-sexual innuendo. It wasn't until after I started the Anita Blake series that I got to see it again. Talk about your subconscious absorbing something.
What types of music do you like? Is there any particular kind you like to listen to when you're writing?
Tori Amos is a perennial favorite, but I have listened to everything from Nine Inch Nails to The Veggie Tales Christmas album.
If you had a book club, what would it be reading?
Any Nero Wolf books by Rex Stout -- because we (my husband and I) started reading them a year ago. They are clever, charming and the quality of the writing is consistently high. They are a wonderful hybrid of hardboiled detective and super-genius detective.
What are your favorite kinds of books to give -- and get -- as gifts?
I try to pick books that the recipient will actually read. I find most folks give books that they want to read or ones they hope will expand the mind of the recipient whether they like it or not. Books can do all that and still be entertaining. Books should be about the person you're giving it to rather than the gift giver.
As to what kind of books I like to get, I tend to like animal books -- ones with lovely pictures of dogs or other animals.
Do you have any special writing rituals? For example, what do you have on your desk when you're writing?
I don't really have any rituals. And my desk needs to be an uncluttered space for me to work. So most likely I will have a cup of hot tea and the music I have chosen for this book. Much else and I tend to get distracted.
Many writers are hardly "overnight success" stories. How long did it take for you to get where you are today? Any rejection-slip horror stories or inspirational anecdotes?
Nearly fourteen years ago when I was first trying to sell Guilty Pleasures, I had one publishing house reject the book on the grounds that the market couldn't bear another vampire book, and the week they were going to make the decision another vampire novel came out from another publisher. They used that as a reason to reject me, and Anita. They said that the vampire market was dying out, and no one wanted to read about vampires anymore.
I was told by a prominent mystery editor that if my Anita Blake mysteries had been straight mystery, no horror elements, or fantastic elements at all, that I'd have never gotten published. Because I am a woman writing from a first person woman's point of view, that no one would have touched it. Maybe that's true. Maybe it was one of the things that sent Anita around to nearly every publisher before it found a home. I don't know. No one complained about the sexual content of the first book, but then, there wasn't any.
I don't know if I'd have had more trouble if the first few books had had a higher content or not. I do know that by using the tropisms of several different genres, I get to play exactly the way I want to play. I get the tough as nails attitude of a hardboiled-mystery, the monsters and gore level of horror, the sex and sensuality of romance, the sheer wonderment of fantasy, and the feeling of reality that the best science fiction gives to amazingly odd facts. If I hadn't chosen to mix genres I might have had a harder time. Though most people told me that mixing genres this badly would doom me. Just goes to prove that you have to believe in yourself and your vision.
If you could choose one new writer to be "discovered," who would it be?
Rett MacPherson. The Victory O'Shea mysteries are delightfully different. First, the main character, Torie, is happily married, has more than one child and a mother who has been wheelchair bound most of Torie's life. The books are set around a small Missouri town that is a concentrated version of several historic towns here. Rett makes good use of Torie's extended family in the books and explains dramatic versions of some of the problems we all face with blood relatives. The series began in 1998 with Family Skeletons and is now in it's eighth book with the just-publishedIn Sheep's Clothing.
They are fun to read and I don't think enough people have found them yet. Rett is also a personal friend and member of my writing group.
What tips or advice do you have for writers still looking to be discovered?
Write. You'd be surprised how many wanna-be writers never seem to do that. Write, then finish it. Finish the story. Finish the book. Do two pages a day, every day. Do not revise as you go. If you come to something you don't know, like what does 14th century underwear look like, put a note, skip it, and keep writing. I hear the wailing and gnashing of teeth, but trust me I've met too many writers that have the perfect three chapters of their book, but nothing more. Three chapters isn't a book, it's a beginning -- finish it.
Once you have hundreds of pages on the other side of your computer, then go through and fill in those blank spots with research. Now, you can look up how to undress your 14th century heroine. Now you can chorography that fight scene. If you spend more than a week on a scene, maybe two days, skip it, write a note that says, fight scene here. You know who wins, just move on, keep going. The second draft is just filling in the blank notes. The third draft is where you begin to edit, and polish the writing. I did seven drafts of my first book, and I wrote it just like I've described. It sold. Most first novels don't. My way is not the only way, heaven knows, but it's the way that allowed me to write my first five to six books.
I've gotten better at my job, and I no longer need seven drafts to get it where I want to be. But I find even today, as I write my seventeenth novel, that if I spend more than a week on a scene, I'm stuck, and I need to move on. Perfectionism has set in, and I'm trying to make it perfect. Perfection is an unattainable goal -- trust me on that. Just write, try not to worry, and when it's done, send it out. Try to sell it. For money. Not copies, not for friends to read. Sell it. This is a business, not a charity. Remember that. Your goal is to earn a living writing what you most love, right? Well, if that's your goal, act like it.
I always started at the highest paying appropriate market for my short stories, and then worked down as they got rejected. I'm assuming that you have researched your markets and aren't trying to send vampire stories to magazines that don't even buy fiction. It's a business, remember. Sending your stories to inappropriate markets is like showing up for a job interview because you really want to edit fiction books, but you've walked into a computer-engineering firm. They don't edit fiction books there. Sending your story to the wrong market is the same deal.
Here's another important piece of advice: send the story, or book out, then get started on the next one. Don't fret, and hover around the mailbox angsting over that one story. It's like a mother with one child -- you worry more. So have more literary children, that way when one is rejected you know that there are others out there, that haven't been. It takes some of the sting out of the rejection process. Not a lot, but some. You've got to want this more than any other job, and you've got to toughen your ego, so that the business doesn't crush you. Be tough. Believe in yourself and your dreams.