Laurell K. Hamilton doesn?t dress as a vampire or pose with her pugs for photos anymore. Like her heroine, sexy vampire slayer Anita Blake, Hamilton?s power has increased: Her latest paperback, ?Micah,? hit No. 1 on several best-seller lists, and her hardcover books make the lists, too. A comic book series featuring Blake debuts next month, and the hardcover ?Danse Macabre,? goes on sale Tuesday.
With 10 new or reissued publications this year, (Berkley Publishing alone is printing more than 1 million copies of her books), Hamilton?s husband calls 2006 the Year of Laurell.
So, she doesn?t have to wear costumes for newspaper photos. In fact, she probably doesn?t even have to let reporters into her home in St. Louis County, but she graciously does, even though she?d probably rather be working, conjuring a 15th erotic tale of werewolves, zombies and succubi for entertainment and profit.
She also has a comparatively ?new? series about Merry Gentry, a faerie princess; the fifth book in that series comes out in December.
?I?m a very odd writer,? she says. ?About the time everybody else gets bored with a series, I?m just settling in. Oh, cool: Now I know the characters, now I know ?the world.??
The work of Hamilton, one of the nation?s first ladies of horror, is so well-known that it lends itself to parody on the Internet and some criticism over how the series has changed. But Hamilton follows her instincts.
Born in 1963, she was reared by her grandmother after her mother died in a car crash. She grew up poor in Sims, Ind. She has a preteen daughter and is married to her second husband, Jonathon Green, who is 12 years her junior.
At home, a new two-story addition, painted sky blue, awaits office furniture and provides a sunny, if somewhat empty, setting to talk about dark tales, in particular the new one about St. Louis? most famous vampire slayer. Here are excerpts from an interview with her:
Q: Let?s start with the basics: How do you characterize your Anita Blake books?
A: It?s structured like a hard-boiled mystery series, but at this point it?s dark fantasy-horror-romance-mystery all in one. Some books are more one genre or the other. It?s a mixed genre, and it?s meant to be. I like reading mixed-genre, and I like writing mixed-genre. I figure, why pigeonhole myself?
It made it difficult to sell the books in the short run. Over a decade ago, no one wanted to buy it because they said mixed-genre doesn?t sell. My success opened up the idea that mixed-genre can be popular.
Q: Did you have any predecessors?
A: I am to this field what Tom Clancy was to his. There were two people doing something like I wanted to do, mysteries with vampires in modern day, (P.N. Elrod and Lee Killough) but I purposely did not read them.
Q: Do you plan far in advance?
A: I am a long-term thinker: hundreds of pages. I always have huge story arcs. I like a big story. I like a world I can walk around in and settle down in and know I can play with it as long as I want.
I don?t think I could sustain a series if I had played just in the ?real? world. If I didn?t have vampires and werewolves to play with, too, I don?t know if I would still be having as much fun.
Q: Is that part of the attraction of fantasy ? it gives you unlimited things to imagine?
A: It was always what I was interested in. I did not read mysteries until after college. I read the female and male hardboiled detectives. Male detectives got to cuss like sailors and they got to have casual sex. The female detectives didn?t get to cuss. And if they had sex, it was off-stage. I thought this was unfair. I set out to create a character to level the playing field. I think I over-compensated a little (smiles).
Q: She gets to cuss and have sex, doesn?t she?
A: Yes, she does. The first five books are foreplay. She doesn?t have sex.
Q: Doesn?t that demand a lot from the reader? To hang in there?
A: No, I was never intending to have sex on paper. I was never going to do it. So that every kiss, every caress was going to be so amazing that you wouldn?t need it.
Of course, I wrote myself into a corner. With book six, when they were going to do the ?dirty deed? on paper, I couldn?t do that 1940s pan to the sky. For five books and every crime scene, the camera had never flinched. So what did that say about me that when it came time to have sex on paper I wanted to flinch? It says I?m very American. We?re fine with violence; sex makes us uncomfortable.
A portion of the fans were very unhappy we actually had sex.
Q: Since then, Anita Blake has gotten over her inhibitions. Is it easier to write sex scenes?
A: Yes. The early ones were hard. For one, it?s hard to write sex scenes. You just have little printed words on paper to make that whole experience come alive.
Jean-Claude (the vampire) had been a ladies man for over 400 years. And he?s French. After five books of buildup, it had to be good. That first scene was the hardest.
Q: Now Anita has several lovers and lives with two men. But she doesn?t have any interest in settling down. How has her mindset changed?
A: She doesn?t see any one person that her life would work with. It also would be a matter of giving up. something. Now, her life works better than it?s ever worked before. ... For research, I interviewed some households that have three people in a ?couple.?
Q: Are you still compared with Anne Rice?
A: I have been compared to her quite a lot. If you?re writing anything with vampires in it, it?s inevitable. My vampires and her vampires are very different.
Everyone knows vampires exist in my world. That seems to be the contribution I made. In my books, if you call the police and say there is a vampire in your house, they believe you. Ms. Rice is more traditional: Nobody (in her world) knows they exist.
In her books, her vampires are very unhappy with their immortality. My vampires are unapologetic about it. ... Other than that we have both written about vampires, the books are very different.
Q: Do you have to write? Do you feel like it?s something you need to do?
A: Doesn?t everybody feel that way about they love best? I love what I do, and it?s all I ever wanted to do.
Q: Is St. Louis an exotic enough city for these stories?
A: I really like St. Louis. To me, sitting in an empty room. Inside my head is entertaining, no matter where I am. To me, there is no such thing as a un-exotic location.
jhenderson@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8107
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Laurell K. Hamilton
When: 7 p.m. Tuesday
Where: Barnes & Noble, 320 Mid Rivers Center Drive, St. Peters
How much: Free
More info: 636-278-1118
Et cetera: The author will sign two books per person. For more information on signings or to find her blog, go to www.laurellkhamilton.org
Source: http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/entert ... enDocument
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