A mid-90s interview with Hamilton
Dec. 28th, 2009 09:50 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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lkh_lashoutsI've been going through the old Lashouts entries and tagging blogflogs and fixing links (you may delete any comment notification emails you get titled "Link fix" as it's only me!). In the course of fixing links, I found this very old interview with Hamilton that brings to light just how long she's been saying the same stuff. Does the 70/30 rule sound familiar? It should! Hamilton's been telling us how it goes since at least '97!
Thrill of the hunt
By Corey Stulce, Lifestyle Editor
July 23, 1997
Some people are unaware that a license is required for vampire hunting in Laurel Hamilton's world.
It's true, though, vampire hunters must be licensed through the state, just as doctors and teachers are. They must also have a court order of execution, otherwise it's considered murder. It's really the only way to be civilized in her world.
"The Killing Dance" is the sixth novel author Laurel Hamilton has released starring her heroine ( and possible alter ego) Anita Blake. Blake is a vampire hunter, and in "Dance" she is dating both a master vampire and a werewolf. Confused? Well, it's all just a part of the vast world Hamilton has created for her characters, and it just happens to be smack dab in the middle of St. Louis.
Hamilton has taken a very original stab at the world of vampires taking away some of their mystery and making her main character a human.
"To my knowledge, I'm the only one who has a world where everyone knows that vampires and werewolves and zombies are real and you just have to deal with that," Hamilton said.
Anita Blake is mortal, but she also uses necromancy, which Hamilton describes as someone who has the power to raise the dead. "For Anita, though, it goes back to the old legend, that they [necromancers] have all power over the dead," Hamilton said. Since Hamilton writes her Anita Blake books in the first person, it is easy to assume that some of Hamilton might be in Anita and vice-versa.
"We were more alike when I started the series. Anita's voice is very much like mine. Her mannerisms and speech are very close to mine," Hamilton said.
"I get more like Anita as I write. I don't cuss [but she does], and after a book it takes me about six weeks to stop. And I have a two and-a-half year old, so I really have to work on that because she can pick it up," she said.
Hamilton started writing when she was very young, and was lucky enough to sell the first book she ever wrote. With "Dance" she recently made the USA Today's bestseller list.
This has opened up many new doors for Hamilton, but she's taking the whole thing in stride. "The readership has grown, so I'm getting to play with more people now, which is nice. I recently had a signing and there were actually people waiting in line...[Success] lets me know that I'll be able to write Anita for as long as I want," she said.
Hamilton has finished the seventh Anita Blake novel and is working on the eighth, so she has gotten her writing process down to a science.
When she finishes a novel, she either makes notes for the next or even writes the first chapter. "When I start a new book, I don't have a blank screen staring back at me," Hamilton said.
Hamilton has done tons of research for her novels in the past so now she only has to do minimal research when starting a new book. She has always written her books the same way and she advises new authors to try it.
"When I wrote my first book...[I learned] the biggest thing to do is don't rewrite as you go, just do it. It can be the biggest pile of crap you saw, and after you're done you can fix it. If it's not real, you can't fix it," Hamilton said.
"The Hamilton rule of first draft is, 70 percent of any first draft is garbage, and 30 percent is keeper. But, you'll never get that 30 percent without the garbage," she said.
Hamilton writes with a lot of physical detail and paints the reader a very vivid picture of what characters and locations look like.
"I'm very visually and character oriented," said Hamilton. "It really bugs me in books if I don't know what a character looks like. I start with a name, I'm very name oriented. Once I have the physical description and the name, I can tell a lot about them. A good main character attracts good secondary characters and attracts good plot. I'm a character-oriented writer. Everything comes from characters," she said.
With horror novels, fear and gore are going to come naturally, but Hamilton does not want gore to overshadow her stories.
"It has to be necessary gore, but it is in there. The best clue is the body at a murder scene, and they're pretty gory. It has to be necessary to the plot and necessary to the characters. Gore has to earn its place just like everything else in the book," Hamilton said.
She also discovered, doing research, that the things she was writing were not nearly as disturbing as some of the real things she was reading about.
"I could tell you some true crime stories that would scare you," Hamilton said. "Anytime I think what I'm doing is out there, and then I read what people are really doing, I'll think, 'I'll never top this.'"
With her new-found success, Hamilton is considering many things for the future. She has pondered about movies (her fans have even given her casting ideas) and comic books starring Anita Blake, but nothing is certain yet.
The only real certainty is that books starring Anita Blake will continue to surface.
"I have 15 more plots and each new book gives me ideas for more things," said Hamilton.
Apparently vampire hunting has become a very lucrative business.
Then, of course,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dwg and I were talking about vampire hunting licenses and wondering exactly what's involved in getting one. Do you have to renew? Do you have to go have your eyesight checked periodically like with a driver license? Imagine if your eyes started to fail and you hammered a stake into the wrong corpse in the morgue? Or into the right corpse, but in the wrong place. You could be letting a vampire limp away with oak in his shin!
Thrill of the hunt
By Corey Stulce, Lifestyle Editor
July 23, 1997
Some people are unaware that a license is required for vampire hunting in Laurel Hamilton's world.
It's true, though, vampire hunters must be licensed through the state, just as doctors and teachers are. They must also have a court order of execution, otherwise it's considered murder. It's really the only way to be civilized in her world.
"The Killing Dance" is the sixth novel author Laurel Hamilton has released starring her heroine ( and possible alter ego) Anita Blake. Blake is a vampire hunter, and in "Dance" she is dating both a master vampire and a werewolf. Confused? Well, it's all just a part of the vast world Hamilton has created for her characters, and it just happens to be smack dab in the middle of St. Louis.
Hamilton has taken a very original stab at the world of vampires taking away some of their mystery and making her main character a human.
"To my knowledge, I'm the only one who has a world where everyone knows that vampires and werewolves and zombies are real and you just have to deal with that," Hamilton said.
Anita Blake is mortal, but she also uses necromancy, which Hamilton describes as someone who has the power to raise the dead. "For Anita, though, it goes back to the old legend, that they [necromancers] have all power over the dead," Hamilton said. Since Hamilton writes her Anita Blake books in the first person, it is easy to assume that some of Hamilton might be in Anita and vice-versa.
"We were more alike when I started the series. Anita's voice is very much like mine. Her mannerisms and speech are very close to mine," Hamilton said.
"I get more like Anita as I write. I don't cuss [but she does], and after a book it takes me about six weeks to stop. And I have a two and-a-half year old, so I really have to work on that because she can pick it up," she said.
Hamilton started writing when she was very young, and was lucky enough to sell the first book she ever wrote. With "Dance" she recently made the USA Today's bestseller list.
This has opened up many new doors for Hamilton, but she's taking the whole thing in stride. "The readership has grown, so I'm getting to play with more people now, which is nice. I recently had a signing and there were actually people waiting in line...[Success] lets me know that I'll be able to write Anita for as long as I want," she said.
Hamilton has finished the seventh Anita Blake novel and is working on the eighth, so she has gotten her writing process down to a science.
When she finishes a novel, she either makes notes for the next or even writes the first chapter. "When I start a new book, I don't have a blank screen staring back at me," Hamilton said.
Hamilton has done tons of research for her novels in the past so now she only has to do minimal research when starting a new book. She has always written her books the same way and she advises new authors to try it.
"When I wrote my first book...[I learned] the biggest thing to do is don't rewrite as you go, just do it. It can be the biggest pile of crap you saw, and after you're done you can fix it. If it's not real, you can't fix it," Hamilton said.
"The Hamilton rule of first draft is, 70 percent of any first draft is garbage, and 30 percent is keeper. But, you'll never get that 30 percent without the garbage," she said.
Hamilton writes with a lot of physical detail and paints the reader a very vivid picture of what characters and locations look like.
"I'm very visually and character oriented," said Hamilton. "It really bugs me in books if I don't know what a character looks like. I start with a name, I'm very name oriented. Once I have the physical description and the name, I can tell a lot about them. A good main character attracts good secondary characters and attracts good plot. I'm a character-oriented writer. Everything comes from characters," she said.
With horror novels, fear and gore are going to come naturally, but Hamilton does not want gore to overshadow her stories.
"It has to be necessary gore, but it is in there. The best clue is the body at a murder scene, and they're pretty gory. It has to be necessary to the plot and necessary to the characters. Gore has to earn its place just like everything else in the book," Hamilton said.
She also discovered, doing research, that the things she was writing were not nearly as disturbing as some of the real things she was reading about.
"I could tell you some true crime stories that would scare you," Hamilton said. "Anytime I think what I'm doing is out there, and then I read what people are really doing, I'll think, 'I'll never top this.'"
With her new-found success, Hamilton is considering many things for the future. She has pondered about movies (her fans have even given her casting ideas) and comic books starring Anita Blake, but nothing is certain yet.
The only real certainty is that books starring Anita Blake will continue to surface.
"I have 15 more plots and each new book gives me ideas for more things," said Hamilton.
Apparently vampire hunting has become a very lucrative business.
Then, of course,
dwg and I were talking about vampire hunting licenses and wondering exactly what's involved in getting one. Do you have to renew? Do you have to go have your eyesight checked periodically like with a driver license? Imagine if your eyes started to fail and you hammered a stake into the wrong corpse in the morgue? Or into the right corpse, but in the wrong place. You could be letting a vampire limp away with oak in his shin!
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Date: 2009-12-29 06:31 pm (UTC)