Interview with Laurell K. Hamilton

This inter­view posted on June 22, 2010 at Pop Syndicate’s Book Addict blog.

Direct link: http://www.popsyndicate.com/books/story/bullets_vamps_zombies_and_hot_sex_hamiltons_latest_has_it_all

Bul­lets, Vamps and Hot Sex

Lau­rell Hamilton’s nov­els have had a pro­found impact on the pub­lish­ing industry.

Her Anita Blake series proved that read­ers are hun­gry for com­bi­na­tion gen­res — but it took two years and hun­dreds of rejec­tions before any pub­lish­ing house would take a chance on it.

It’s been a long, fan­tas­tic, jour­ney for the writer, who was kicked out of her col­lege cre­ative writ­ing pro­gram. Today, Hamil­ton, a fel­low Mis­souri native, sits down to chat about her lat­est in the Blake series, Bullet, strange things fans share with her and the craft of writing.

What’s in store for fans of Anita Blake in her next roman­tic thriller, Bul­let?

Bul­let is about look­ing at your­self, look­ing at the abyss, the darker half and see­ing who you are and how that works in your life. It’s about try­ing to have a nor­mal life while also being a U.S. Mar­shal and hunt­ing rogue lycan­thropes and vam­pires and also being involved in pol­i­tics with vamps and were animals.

One of the things I wanted to point out about real police­men was that while hunt­ing the bad guys, while doing the paper­work and solv­ing crimes, they have to come home at the end of the day to their fam­i­lies. I tried to show both the crime solv­ing and how Anita has peo­ple who count on her at home.

It is a very, very thick book.

How did you keep track of it all?

I orga­nize by sticky notes. I have sticky notes up over my com­puter and that is how I orga­nize a book as I go along. I have char­ac­ter descrip­tions, plot points and I move them around — like how you use a sto­ry­board for a movie.
It’s a real chal­lenge to keep track of every­thing when you have many dif­fer­ent plots enter­twin­ing.

How dif­fer­ent is Bul­let from the ear­lier Anita Blake novels?

With Guilty Plea­sures, I hon­estly didn’t know much of any­thing. I really just kind of threw the idea out on paper and jumped into space and hoped my ideas and char­ac­ters would catch me. I knew what the mys­tery was, but hon­estly didn’t know how they did it until I was half way through (the manuscript).

That’s always been a con­stant. I always have my char­ac­ters sur­prise me now — even when I plan. My plot is impor­tant to me, but I will change my plot if my char­ac­ters are smarter, braver and more will­ing to sac­ri­fice them­selves for the plot.

I have to write about their lives. They have to live it.

Fans were inti­mately involved in the process of writ­ing Bul­let, thanks to social media sites like Face­book and Twit­ter. What was that like for you, as an author? Did it make the process more dif­fi­cult? More fun? Do read­ers truly under­stand that some­thing you post in draft may not look the same when it is in print?

I started doing Twit­ter for the first time about a book ago, but this was the first book begin­ning to end where I was com­fort­able using it.

I tweeted a lot. I was too com­fort­able, I think, in some ways, with Twit­ter. I would have some­thing hap­pen on paper and I would imme­di­ately write down the emo­tional impact of it — say some of it, but try not to give the emo­tional impact away.

I’m not sure that was good. I’m not sure it was bad. I haven’t decided yet. It made the fans imme­di­ately involved in some of the emo­tional and day to day (writ­ing). It made them more invested, but it always made it so that I had to be care­ful and not over­share and not let plot points out that I didn’t want to share. I had to really police myself on social media.

I recently added Face­book and I’m doing a lot more there.

I see why peo­ple are addicted to social media. Writ­ing is very iso­lated work. Until I go on tour, I don’t get a lot of feed­back. The social media gives me that imme­di­ate feed­back. I have that illu­sion that there are peo­ple right there.

I love get­ting on and in 140 char­ac­ters say what I’ve done and talk about the scenes I’ve writ­ten. I’m begin­ning to enjoy Face­book, but it did change the process of how I write. I began to feel com­pelled to post how I write. It didn’t change any­thing I did in the book, but it did change the process of how I wrote it.

I’ll have to do more books with this level of social inter­ac­tion and see how I feel about it. I’m always leery of any­thing that changes my writ­ing process.

Social media is a cul­tural phe­nom­e­non. It is a very dif­fer­ent way of look­ing at social­iza­tion. I think we are not at all caught up with the changes it is mak­ing in soci­ety and peo­ple and how we inter­act.

What changes have you noticed?

When your online, some peo­ple feel more free to be crit­i­cal, be more mean-spirited, but some peo­ple think that is the same as look­ing you in the eye.

Peo­ple will some­times con­fuse the two.

There is some­thing about being a celebrity of any kind … I can­not imag­ine what actors and singers go through. Being famous seems to make some peo­ple feel as if they can say any­thing to you and you don’t have the same kind of feel­ings to be hurt as reg­u­lar peo­ple -  and that was before the Internet.

It’s just more weird than any­thing now. The shock has kind of worn off. 99.9 per­cent of fans are won­der­ful. It’s the frac­tion of per­cent­age that say that stuff.

What do you think of the some of the neg­a­tive thoughts of fans — espe­cially those who sim­ply don’t seem happy no mat­ter what hap­pens in the Blake novels?

If I read some­thing or watch a movie and I don’t like it, I don’t go see it again. I don’t read some­thing so I can hate it.

The neg­a­tive is what sells papers and mag­a­zines. It’s not news if it’s nice. I try to focus on the pos­i­tive. I try not to put any energy into the neg­a­tive. I believe that what you put out there comes back to you.

Con­sis­tently, I see com­plaints from some fans who say they hate the sex in the Blake nov­els. Oth­ers have a prob­lem with the vio­lence. How do you respond?

We are cul­tur­ally divided. It’s not that they hate the sex; it’s that they are uncom­fort­able with the sex. In Europe, they are uncom­fort­able with the vio­lence as opposed to the sex.

What about read­ers who con­sider Anita a bit of a lit­er­ary whore, rather than the kick-ass hero­ine she started about to be?

Well that very ques­tion implies that a woman can’t be sex­ual and enjoy sex and still be tough and I haven’t found that to be true — not in my life and not on paper. Sex is part of your life; it doesn’t change who you are. It should be an exten­sion of who you are.
One of the rea­sons I think we stopped being as vio­lent (in the books) and had more sex is that I got tired — and Anita got tired — of killing things. We were killing peo­ple on paper and that really can eat at your soul. I’d rather make love than war.

Only in Amer­ica would read­ers rather I kill these peo­ple than have sex with these peo­ple on paper. Some of the Richard fans can be most intense about things. Who­ever they don’t like, they want killed and Anita ride off into the sun­set (with him).

Just like in real life, there is no sun­set to ride off into. Prince Charm­ing is not com­ing and the rea­son he is not com­ing is that we don’t need him to come. We can save ourselves.

You need to own your own life and make it as good a life as you can. Love who you actu­ally love. As long as you are harm­ing no one, why is it anybody’s busi­ness who you are hav­ing sex with?

I never under­stood why it makes peo­ple so uncom­fort­able that peo­ple are hav­ing sex — that they feel some­how slighted or insulted by the fact that my char­ac­ter is hav­ing sex with peo­ple they don’t approve of.

One rea­son they are uncom­fort­able with it is it’s a woman. If Anita was a man, they wouldn’t have a prob­lem with it.

Anita Blake has been around for a long time. How has she evolved through the series? Are you com­fort­able where she is today? Is she com­fort­able in her own skin?

One of the inter­est­ing things about look­ing back at the first books is doing the comic books for Marvel.

I hadn’t remem­bered how unhappy she was at the begin­ning of the series. She was not com­fort­able in her skin, in her life. She had noth­ing but the job. She had almost noth­ing, but the blood and vio­lence and crime fight­ing. It was bleak, actu­ally. She is much hap­pier as a per­son now as she was then — hon­estly, so am I. I am com­fort­able where she is and with what we are doing.

What type of research do you do for the books?

I do a lot of research with police work and crime. I am pretty unflinch­ing in my world view on paper. If it’s vio­lent it’s going to be show that way because if you pull away from the vio­lence and soften it, then peo­ple think that vio­lence doesn’t hurt.

There have been some read­ers who really learned about sex­u­al­ity and other impor­tant issues from Anita.

When we have a reg­u­lar sign­ing, peo­ple will say the most inti­mate things. Some­times it is really good stuff. They say, “Your books helped my hus­band and I renew our pas­sion for each other,” and that’s good. Some plop down pic­tures of their kids and say, “That one’s yours!” They say they were read­ing my book and they got car­ried away and that’s how they got the child.

I have women in their 20s and 30s who said they didn’t know sex was sup­posed to be fun. Young men in their 20s and 30s say that one of their biggest com­plaints is that women don’t know what they want in bed and won’t help them know what they want to please them. Some men in their 20s and late teens say that women are so aggres­sive that it’s not flat­ter­ing and it’s not attrac­tive. It’s a change that has hap­pened over the last few years.

One young girl wrote in to us and said that because Anita uses a con­dom, she told her boyfriend that with­out a con­dom, there was no sex.

Another teen girl wanted to be like Anita. Anita always wears a seat­belt because her mother died when she was thrown through a win­dow dur­ing an acci­dent. She said she decided to wear a seat­belt, got into an acci­dent that day and the police offi­cer said that if she had not been wear­ing it, she would have died.

I’ve had peo­ple say they got out of abu­sive rela­tion­ships because Anita would not have taken it.

Is there an end in sight for the Blake series?

There’s always that rumor. Always. With every book I write, the series is going to end. It is so rare for a series to get to 20 (books).

That is part of it.

With new fans read­ing the series each day, how dif­fi­cult is it to talk about new books with­out giv­ing too many spoil­ers to series newbies?

It’s really, really hard. I am hear­ing from peo­ple who are going to be at the Q&A ses­sion who are only on book 6 or 8, and I don’t know how we are going to do ques­tions with­out spoilers.

With 19 books in, how do you do it? It’s going to be a real trick to try to answer a ques­tion with­out giv­ing stuff away.

What writ­ing project will you sink your teeth into next?

I am actu­ally work­ing on the next Anita book — book No. 20. Usu­ally I go between Merry and Anita, but I was hop­ing it would make the tour eas­ier if I’m writ­ing in the same world. I’m hop­ing it will make the tour less dis­rup­tive and enable me to get back into the writ­ing process.

What else would you like to add?

With Bul­let, I enjoyed Anita and my world more than I did with the first book. It is like hav­ing old friends or a long-term rela­tion­ship. It just gets better.

http://www.laurellkhamilton.org/

Lau­rell K. Hamil­ton photo credit: Ste­fan Hester