About Laurell K. Hamilton: From Random House/ Ballantine Books: To read an interview with Laurell K. Hamilton click here Laurell K. Hamilton was born in Heber Springs, Arkansas but grew up in Sims, Indiana, a hamlet with a population of about one hundred souls. Laurell's mother died in a car crash in 1969, after which time her grandmother held the household together. Her mother's death, her grandmother's role in raising her, and having grown up with no men in the home are "the three things that made who I am," she says. She still believes she would have grown up to be a writer regardless.

Laurell says that it was her grandmother, Laura Gentry, who was responsible for Laurell's interests in things that go bump in the night. Mrs. Gentry related tales of horror originating in the hills of Arkansas, the state where she grew up. From those stories Laurell got this lesson: "Rawhide and bloody bones will get you if you aren't good."

When Laurell was 13, she discovered a short story collection titled Pigeons from Hell. "It was the first heroic fantasy I'd read. It was fights, swords, monsters. I decided not only did I want to become a writer, it was this I wanted to write." She chanced upon another book in the high school library, The Natural History of the Vampire. She read it so many times she nearly memorized it. It was sometimes suggested that her choice of creepy films and stories were unseemly since, after all, her girlfriends played with dolls.

To that Laurell says only: "I wasn't like most girls. "

Laurell does not shy away from sex or violence in her books. "I want a kiss to be so believable it give the reader shivers. Two things I do well in books are sex and violence, but I don't want gratuitous sex or violence. The sex and violence are only as graphic as need be. And never included unless it furthers the plot or character development."

Before her writing career kept her so busy, Laurell volunteered at an animal shelter. She also has a degree in both literature and biology. Laurell is a self-admitted technophobe, though she is learning to use email with help from her friends.

In 1994, Laurell published her first Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter book, GUILTY PLEASURES, and she hasn't stopped writing since. She has written nine additional Anita Blake books, and in October, 2000, began the New York Times bestselling Meredith Gentry series for Ballantine Books. She says she writes because to not write -- even for her own enjoyment -- would be like not breathing. It is just something she has to do. She now resides in St. Louis, Missouri with her husband, her young daughter, three pug dogs, and an ever-fluctuating assortment of fish.

In order from most recent: Incubus Dreams Cerulean Sins Narcissus in Chains Obsidian Butterfly Blue Moon Burnt Offerings Killing Dance Bloody Bones The Lunatic Cafe Circus of the Damned The Laughing Corpse Guilty Pleasures

Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter In the course of the last few years, Anita Blake has had to deal with falling for the furry (werewolf slash junior high school teacher Richard) as well as the fanged (luscious vampire Jean-Claude). She's also a vampire hunter and part-time police consultant on all things macabre. But politics, furred, fanged or otherwise, are less of a struggle for Anita to deal with than her own growing abilities as a necromancer, one who can control the dead. What sets the Anita Blake books apart from most vampire fiction/ fiction with a high sex-and-voilence quotient, is Anita's own struggle to not become one of the monsters. In Obsidian Butterfly Anita encounters the extremes that power such as hers can encompass. Which is a lot to handle when, to aid a friend, she confronts an ancient evil, all the while being forced to wonder if, in battling the monsters, she is losing grasp of her humanity. And her sanity. In the second hardcover in the series, Narcissus in Chains, Anita must deal with the possibility of becoming furry with the next full moon as a result of being wounded in the rescue of one of here wereleopards. Someone is targetting the occassionally furry and to protect those she cares about Anita must come face to face with her own worst nightmare - actually, several of them! Read an excerpt, courtesy of Amazon.com. In the third hardcover in the series, Cerulean Sins is more about getting down and dirty. Enter at your own risk! Gruesome is a catch phrase here, adult is another — Anita deals with issues of morality peculiar to this alternate history. (Not familiar with the phrase? Don’t you people read Heinlein?!) Don't let the plethora of previous volumes give you pause. Though Laurell Hamilton creates a brave new world here that may take some getting used (vampires, werewolves, and the whole crew of creepies that Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans enjoy watching the Buffster open up a can of whipass on each week are real here too) the novels can stand alone. For a gentler entrance into this world, try volume 1, Guilty Pleasures.

Anthologies Cravings From the Publisher: Four favorite authors [Laurell K. Hamilton, Rebecca York, Eileen Wilks, Mary Janice Davidson] present their favorite characters in all-new tales of bloodlust, appetites that must be sated again and again, and the passion that feeds them.

Sex and the Nervous Giggle
by Laurell K. Hamilton
An Amazon.com Exclusive!

In Laurell K. Hamilton's fictional St. Louis, vampires have equal rights, which can make life a little tricky for the living. Thankfully a few fearless mortals have been given special dispensations to eradicate the rogue undead, including Anita Blake--vampire slayer extraordinaire. In her ninth noir thriller, Obsidian Butterfly, Anita faces an evil like no other--a creature that skins its victims alive. Abounding with mordant wit, steamy sex scenes, and loads of vampire violence, the Anita Blake series is not for the faint of heart. In this exclusive essay, Laurell K. Hamilton gets down and dirty, and explains why she has reduced many a New York publisher to fits of nervous laughter.

Since I write dark fantasy/horror, it was something of a surprise to me to be invited into a romance anthology. [This collection will be published in 2001]. But the next sentence out of the editor's mouth was more of a surprise. She was thrilled to have me in the anthology, but, "None of your medically detailed sex scenes."

Medically detailed? Me? Surely not. I challenged her to find a single medical term in any sex scene I'd ever written. I go to great lengths, no pun intended, to avoid certain words. She laughed and agreed with me that I didn't use anatomically correct vocabulary, and maybe medically detailed was a bad phrase, but she still cautioned me not to go too far.

What really bothered me was that the book she'd just finished reading was Obsidian Butterfly, the newest in the Anita Blake series. There is no sex in this book. Honest. She continued, saying, "You're such a sensual writer that it makes people think of sex."

Well, yeah, but isn't that part of the fun? She agreed with everything I said, but was still concerned that I would "go too far." I don't write pornography, honest I don't. When it seems appropriate I do sex scenes, but the sex like everything else must justify its existence. Every scene must either further the plot of a book, help build the world, develop character, or just be too fun to pass up. My sex scenes to date have met at least two out of the three conditions, if not all three, every time. I do not do gratuitous sex, or violence.

Before you think, "Oh, but it's romance and they're soft in that genre," let me tell you a conversation I had with a horror editor. (Besides, anyone who thinks romance is a "soft" genre is reading the wrong books. Try Diana Gabaldon.) The horror editor invited me into an H.P. Lovecraft anthology. He was very excited that I was thinking of doing a story for it, and really looked forward to seeing what I'd do in Lovecraft's world, and then he said, "But don't get carried away."

I looked at him. I asked him what he meant by that. He was more vague than the romance editor, but he finally managed to make it clear that he was concerned that I would do sex in my story, or rather that I'd go over some sexual taboo limit. One of the things I love about horror is there are no taboos, right? Wrong! I had one mystery editor tell me that if my Anita Blake series was a straight mystery rather than a dark fantasy that I'd never get away with the level of violence or sex with a female protagonist. Now, with a male detective, you could do the sex, but might still have to tone down the violence. One of the things I love about writing horror is the violence can be as bad as it needs to be. You don't have to flinch with horror like you do with some genres, though maybe that's not true. The horror editor for the Lovecraft anthology was certainly wanting me to flinch. But not about violence, only about sex.

I have reduced New York editors and publishers to nervous giggling with my books. That junior high giggling when you're old enough to get the jokes but can't quite believe that this inelegant process is really where babies come from. What is it about my writing that can reduce intelligent, sophisticated adults to pre-adolescent nervousness? I think it's the fact that my characters enjoy sex. I am a woman writing in a woman's first-person narrative voice about enjoyable sex. One male reader paid me the compliment that after reading my book, Blue Moon, he finally understood what sex felt like for a woman. Men have been writing male sex for years, but good girl sex is rare. I write sex where the woman enjoys herself, and it isn't effortless, you see some of the process that gets to the pleasure. You don't just have fireworks. It doesn't work that way. Or at least very, very rarely. That is a male fantasy that most women do not share. I write women's fantasies. I make sure that everyone enjoys themselves, male and female. Equality for the sexes means everyone gets what they want. Good safe sex, the mystery solved, the villain punished--and the heroine lives, learns, and gets to fight another day.

Interview with Laurell K. Hamilton
From Random House website:

Del Rey: You must have been pleased with the reception of the first book in the Meredith Gentry series, A Kiss of Shadows ; it's not every series that starts off making the New York Times Bestseller List! Success like that is a dream of many writers. Was it one of yours when you were starting out? How has success changed you as a writer...or has it?

Laurell K. Hamilton: It never occurred to me to think about it. I don't believe a writer can set out to have a New York Times Bestseller List book. By the time I sat down for my second series featuring Merry Gentry, my first series, Anita Blake, had done well enough I could hope it would be a possibility. I was thrilled when it did happen.

Has success changed me as a writer? It hasn't changed the way I write, method or topic. I had about two weeks where I freaked about my second time on the New York Times Bestseller List. I let it overwhelm me. Then I had to put that aside and return to work. I began to see where this level of success could derail a writer.

DR: One of the things you do very well in the Anita Blake series is raise the ante with each book. It's not simply a matter of topping yourself, coming up with scarier monsters or steamier sex, though you do that, too; it's more that you open the fantasy world wider and bring readers deeper inside along with Anita, and when you do that, the stakes, so to speak, go up. I wasn't sure you'd be able to do the same thing with Merry and her very different world, but I'm happy to report to fans out there that indeed you have... and then some. Without giving away any tricks of the trade, is this something that happens sort of naturally, as you explore your characters and their situations in each book, or is it something that you've carefully planned and plotted out beforehand over a number of books?

LKH: I have my plot planned out for each book. For Merry, I have the overall series plotted out. But how I get from point A to point B is often as big a surprise to me as it is to the reader. When I know it is a major decision for a character that will change relationships, perhaps for all time, I write out more than one scene with the different choices made. Like one of those "Choose Your Own Adventure" books, except with the characters making the choices. Entire plot lines will rise and fall with a character's choice, as happens in real life when we make a decision.

I think if the world is sufficiently real and the characters sufficiently alive, then this expanding depth of the world is just a natural outgrowth of the process.

DR: Back to the question of topping yourself each time out. Do you feel any pressure to do that, whether from fans, your publisher or yourself? I'd imagine that kind of pressure, whatever its source, could be both a blessing and a curse.

LKH: The two weeks where I freaked out about being on the New York Times Bestseller List and the hoopla of touring, was my time for letting it get to me. For a few brief weeks I let other people's opinions and demands interfere with my writing. Then I had to find a way to put thoughts of the fame and fan reaction and everything like that away. The biggest change I've made is I've had to stop reading reviews. For years I was happy when the review was good, and took it in stride when it wasn't. As of late they've begun to affect me more. So I've had to stop reading any of them.

DR: You've mentioned two influences that inspired the young Laurell K. Hamilton to become the writer she is today. It's obvious to anyone who reads your work that you have a deep affection for noir detective fiction. But I was surprised to learn that you were also inspired by stories of Robert E. Howard, the writer who created Conan the Barbarian. Why Howard?

LKH: Because he was the first writer I ever read who did grown-up fantasy and horror. I read Howard long before I had read anything by Stephen King, Anne Rice, H.P. Lovecraft or Edgar Allan Poe. Howard was the first glimpse I had of that kind of writing. He had a raw energy in the best of his stories: the characters alive, the world so very real. You could smell the blood and feel the aching muscles after the fight. I actually didn't begin reading hard-boiled detective stories until after college. I fell in love with it all. But it was a late arrival in my influence. My own ambition was to write heroic fantasy. Warriors, wizards, dwarves, dragons and elves. That's what I saw myself doing as a writer at the age of fourteen, and through most of my young adult years, too. Reading mysteries, especially Robert B. Parker's Spenser series, profoundly affected the direction I would take as a writer.

DR: What can you tell us about A Caress of Twilight?

LKH: It begins three months after A Kiss of Shadows ends. Merry and the Ravens are back in Los Angeles, working for Grey's Detective Agency. There is a mass murderer loose in Los Angeles, and they are trying to help the police solve it. There are deep political and psychological musings. A little mayhem and murder along the way. And a bit more than a medium dose of erotica thrown in.

This book is mostly about what it truly means to rule. What does it mean for Merry to be queen. Yes, she is in line for the throne, but if she doesn't set up the groundwork now, she will be but a figurehead. Merry doesn't want just to have a throne, she wants to be queen. She's beginning to discover the price and some of the sacrifices that will have to be made.

DR: Princess Meredith is in an unusual contest with Prince Cel, her rival and co-heir to the throne of the Unseelie Court: whichever of them first demonstrates fertility by producing a child will be the next Unseelie monarch. Why is fertility so important to the fey?

LKH: For the same reason it is important to anyone. If you do not have a next generation to follow you, you die out as a people. It's traditional that the fey do not reproduce as readily or quickly as humans. It is where we get the changeling and captives-taken-to-fairyland stories.

DR: I can see how important this aspect of Merry's world could be controversial in ours. In order to prove her worthiness, Merry must sleep with a lot of different males (I can't really call them men, even though most of them resemble men, at least some of the time). This infuses the new book with more sensuality - and sex - than the first one had...and it had a lot. In our first interview, you expressed some mixed feelings about the attention paid to this aspect of your work in the Anita Blake books. How do you feel about the response to the sexual atmospheres of A Kiss of Shadows ? Do you think that the success of the Anita books might have smoothed the way a little bit for the prominence of sexuality in the new series, or is there a difference between the way sex and sexuality can be expressed in the horror and fantasy genres?

LKH: There is a vast difference in how sex is handled in fantasy versus horror. In most horror, if you have sex, you end up dead or something horrible happens. In my books, if there is sex, we have fun with it and we're not punished for it.

I can't really bring to mind any fantasy that has on-stage sex and deals with it in a positive way. If there is sex, it is very vanilla (traditional), handled off stage or handled on stage very politely. Some romance books have more well done explicit sex, but I don't read that genre enough to speak to it.

As to the response to the sexual atmosphere, I don't know how I feel regarding it. I kind of had to put away whether I was bothered or not in order to write the next book.

DR: Social, political, sexual and magical hierarchies among the fey are dizzying even to the fey themselves, but any misunderstanding or mistake is potentially deadly. Luckily, Merry was well-schooled by her father. At the top of the ladder are the pure-blooded sidhe, then come the various admixtures of the sidhe and other magical species or races, such as brownies, goblins, demi-fey, and so on, provided the sidhe portion is dominant, followed by the pure-blooded of the other types, and last of all (apart from humans) those mixed bloods with the misfortune to have insufficient sidhe blood. Is this more or less correct?

LKH: More or less. There is also ranking by magic or power. Merry and almost everyone respects power. If someone can come in and clean your clock, then you must treat them differently.

DR: Why are some Sidhe Seelie and other Unseelie? Did all varieties of fey come into being at the same time, from the same source, or did they emerge at different times, from different sources? Are the sidhe the most powerful because they came first?

LKH: There are a lot of types of fey which are put in different courts by different writers. I just had to choose where I wanted mine. The fey are taken from a wide set of beliefs and cultures that are not nearly as similar as one would expect. The Sidhe were not the first to "arrive"; they are based on the Thuathe de Danaan, who had fierce battles with the Firblogs. The Firblogs were here first.

DR: One of the scarier creatures in A Caress of Twilight is the Nameless, a beastie worthy of H.P. Lovecraft himself. I don't think I'm giving away anything by saying that the Nameless was created by the Seelie and Unseelie Courts as a condition of their being admitted to the United States. But why was this act demanded of them, and why did they agree to it?

LKH: The Nameless is one of the spells the Courts did to rid themselves of their higher and weirder magicks. After they had been cast out of Europe due to the human and fey wars, the United States offered them a home, but only if they gave up some of the powers that had caused problems in the past. They had no other place to go, so they had no choice but to do it.

DR: Any movie or TV deal in the works for Merry? I bet actors would be falling all over themselves to play some of these roles!

LKH: There are no deals in the works at this time.

DR: What are you working on now? Are you on an alternating schedule with Merry and Anita? How well do they take to it; I mean, do they cooperate, or does one keep interrupting when you're trying to work on the other?

LKH: I am working on Anita number 11 right now. Yes, it is an alternating schedule between one Anita book and then one Merry book. I find that whatever book I wrote last, the voice does intrude on the current work. Especially where I have to do final edits on the last one while starting on the next book.

DR: Okay, I've got to ask: Do you watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer? As an expert in all things vampiric, what's your professional opinion?

LKH: I watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer when it first came on. I have not had the time to watch much television in the last couple of years. I've lost track of the series. Friends inform me of some of the events that occur in the series. And I got a tape from a friend of the musical episode, which I found wonderfully fun. Since I haven't been watching the show regularly, I cannot speak as a vamp expert on it. I qualify as a vampire expert in my own world, and I've done research into folklore, mythology, and historical accounts of vampires. I might do well at a vampire trivia game, but I do not read widely in vampire fiction. So I am by no means an expert on other people's worlds.

DR: Thanks, Laurell!