Babel Clash

It took nearly eight hours, two air planes, an emergency fire crew, some excellent flight crews and pilots, and the on-board fire extquinshers to get us from from St. Louis to Chicago two days ago. I’m phobic of flying due to a flight years ago, that went pretty badly wrong. We all walked away from it alive, so it could have been worse, but once you’ve sat strapped in a seat listening to people pray and scream around you, while the flight attendant is plastered to the ceiling by the centrigual force of the plane headed for the ground, well, you just never feel the same about flying, or at least I didn’t. That one flight years ago left me phobic of flying, but in the last two years I started trying to get myself over the phobia by flying for fun reasons. My husband, Jon, and I visited friends. We all went on family vacations. I actually visited one friend last month by flying all by myself without Jon. It was the first flight I’d taken without him in over a decade. But when a sinus infection kept Jon from getting on the plane yesterday to join me for the tour for Hit List, that one fun trip by myself helped me think I could do this; I could fly by myself without anything bad happening. I wasn’t completely alone, Meerkat and Chica were sitting across the aisle, and Shawn was behind me. Meerkat as my assistant and Shawn for security, and back up of various kinds. Chica, because we had a free night in Chicago and she helps lighten me up, like a little sister is supposed to. I missed Jon at my side, but I thought, I can do this. Then a funny thing happened, something bad did happen.

The plane took off from St. Louis like normal, but as we cleared the runway, and started to gain that first rush of altitude, the landing gear only starting to slide into the belly of the plane, there was a tremendous bang, a very mechanical, and very bad sound happened. My first thought was the landing gear had malfunctioned and it was broken so we’d be looking at a belly landing in Chicago. It was so not the way I wanted the plane to have to land, but then I noticed something. The plane was too quiet, much quieter than it should have been. Into that strange silence Meerkat and I both said aloud, “That’s not a good sound.” We sort of looked at each other. One of the engines wasn’t working, that was the difference in sound, we’d lost one of the engines on the plane.

I waited to be afraid. I waited for the phobia to wash over me and steal my courage away, but nothing came. I wasn’t afraid. It was just one engine I knew that a plane this size could operate just fine with one engine. It would be a bit tricky to land, but I knew our pilot didn’t want to die either, so he’d put his best effort into getting us down safely, after all if we went down he hit the ground first. Honestly, this reasoning helped me stay calm. It would be fine. Years and years of being terrified in the air, and now when something had finally gone wrong, I wasn’t scared at all. I have no idea why, but I simply wasn’t. Maybe it was years of waiting for it to happen, so that the actuality was strangely calming. Or maybe it was all the travel for fun and frolic these last few years, so that I no longer associated air travel with only grueling business trips. I honestly don’t know why, but I do know that I honestly wasn’t frightened. Shawn is a none-practicing marine and police officer; he’s seen scarier in the air and on it. Chica faced it with her usual sense of adventure. It was Meerkat who gave me wide eyes, because she could see the flight attendant strapping herself in, and looking panicked. It’s never good when the flight crew is scared, because that means something serious is happening, and by serious I mean potentially life threatening, but I had faith. It would be all right, and if it wasn’t all right, I’d be afraid when there was no alternative, until that moment, I sat there and listened to the strangely quiet engine.

The plane didn’t start picking up the altitude that it usually does when it leaves St. Louis. I’ve now flown out of our airport enough to know the routes, and we were too close to the ground. We were far too low to be flying out, so I wasn’t surprised when I saw that we were indeed circling back towards the airport. Other passengers began to remark on it. We’d know in a few minutes how bad the damage was, and how the landing would go. I was still calm. It wasn’t the steely calm of nerves held taunt. I was just calm, I know, weird. I remember thinking, I hope we don’t land in the river. I do not want to try and swim the Mississippi, and all our stuff will be ruined in the water. I was still hoping for landing back at the airport. The plane kept it’s crippled alitude, and the airport came into sight.

We landed, and it was a touch rough, but not bad. I’ve had worse landings when all the engines were working. I saw the flashing lights and the emergency vehicles headed across the tarmac and I hoped it was a precaution. We didn’t smell the smoke, or see flame, and it wasn’t until our pilot came on the speaker and told us they’d used their on-board extinquisher, but the emergency crew was looking at the engine to see if the smoke was completely out, that we realized for certain that the engine had caught fire.

The emergency crews, two trucks worth just looked at the plane at first, not approaching, and I thought,”I’d really feel better if they got out and looked closer.” It was like going to the doctor and having him just walk by the exam room and glance in, and think that was enough to make you well. I realized later that they were waiting minimum safe distance in case the smoke turned not to open flame, but an explosion. I’m sort of glad I didn’t think of that at the time. When they were pretty sure the plane wasn’t going to anything that dramatic, they got out and used foam on the engine. The pilot said something about us taking off again with the foam on the engine. If the passengers had a vote, I’m certain, we were voting new plane, please. Finally, the pilot told us that we were indeed headed back to the gate and we’d be getting out while they fixed the plane, and the flight would be delayed. I think we all knew the plane wasn’t going back in the air that day, and in the end they grounded it, and completely cancelled our flight.

We were suddenly all scrambling to try and find a way to Chicago. Shawn finally got through to the airlines and we were all rescheduled on a much later flight. Five hours later we had eaten, visited, talked, and were finally getting back in a plane. Was I scared? Strangely, no. We made at least three almost take offs and then the pilot would stop, and each time he would explain. There was a weather delay due to weather in Chicago, our destination. The third time the pilot had to come on and explain why we weren’t taking off again, he said, “I can’t make this stuff up, folks, looks like we’re going to be here awhile.”

Six and a half hours late our plane was finally airborne. The landing gear went up, and there was no horrible noise this time. I think we were all listening for it. Both engines kept doing their noisy best, and then we finally gained more alitidue and began to ascent that the planes normally take on that runway out of St. Louis. I let go of a breath I’d been almost holding, and settled back. We were on our way to Chicago, at last.

We landed with no more excitement, other than the fact that our luggage had apparently gotten there on an earlier flight and no one told us, any of the passengers from that ill-fated flight. So, add nearly forty-five minutes of luggage search, and we were on our way to our hotel. I was slap-happy, laughing at things that weren’t all that funny by this time, we all were. It was part nerves, but mostly just a long, damn, day catching up with us.

We had the kick-off event in Chicago last night. It was great to see everyone, both old friends, and new faces. I never get afraid, or have an attack of nerves about the plane mishap, and I’m writing this blog as I fly to Portland, Oregon for the next event on the “Hit List” tour. It seems almost strange to be okay with what happened, and okay enough to write about it on yet another plane, but apparently, I’m fine. Have I finally conquered my fear of flying? Maybe, but I guess I’ll let you know at the end of the tour. See everyone in tonight 7:00 PM at The Mission Theater 1624 Northwest Glisan Street, Portland OR 97209.

Well, since it’s Monday, he’d probably be writing a goodbye post. Since he’s got a sick child at home, it falls to me to regrettably say goodbye to our guest for the past two weeks, Laurell K. Hamilton.  It’s been a lot of fun having her here on Babel Clash and I’d just like to wish her good luck on her new book, Hit List, available tomorrow at your local Borders or right here on Borders.com.

Ms. Hamilton, please feel free to follow our last day tradition of plugging yourself, your books and any other projects you desire! Our sincere thanks to you for taking time out of your schedule to spend with us and we hope to have you back again before book 21 arrives.

Of course, we will have two new authors here tomorrow and I’m pretty excited to be able to introduce them. First up, with his first novel coming up tomorrow, is Daniel H. Wilson. Robopocalypse is a perfect book for beach reading: filled with action, thrills and plenty of heart. It’s basically a summer movie in book form. No surprise then that Steven Spielberg has optioned the rights and is looking to bring it to the big screen in 2013. I can’t wait! This is the story of humanity desperately fighting against a robot uprising and how we are able to persevere and, ultimately, overcome. No spoilers there, as the book is presented as an oral history, similar to World War Z. This is one of my favorite books of the year so far and I’ll highly encourage all of you to go check it out tomorrow when it arrives in stores. Oh, wait, it’s also available on Borders.com right now for 46% off!

Joining Daniel is the author of my favorite forthcoming title, Ready Player One, Ernest Cline. While this book won’t be available until August 16th, I’ve been lucky enough to get an advance copy and I have to say, this book is awesome. An adventure story set in 2044, Ready Player One takes place in a world where we never really pulled ourselves out of the recession. Most of humanity escapes into OASIS, which is pretty much the best MMO ever. Deep within the realms of OASIS, its creator has left behind puzzles that, when solved, lead to untold riches. Wade Watts, our hero, must race against fellow players and an evil corporation, bent on using OASIS for its own profit, to find and complete the puzzles that will let him save OASIS. Ready Player One is a love letter to geek culture and growing up in the ’80s and Ernest Cline has some serious geek cred as the screenwriter of the underrated comedy, Fanboys. Everyone here should definitely check this book out. You can preorder it now at Borders.com for 30% off!

Welcome, Daniel and Ernest!

Today is the day that I fly out to begin the tour for “Hit List”! I am almost over my phobia of flying. The word “almost” seems pertinent today. I can now fly for fun to romantic destinations, or family vacations, or to visit friends, but today I fly out for tour and I find my stomach is knotted, my chest is tight, and that first bubbling of fear is trying to climb up my gut. Maybe I’m not afraid of flying, maybe I’m afraid of tour.

That would be interesting. I mean is that even an official phobia? Does it have a nice fancy latin name? Tour-phobia; no. Tour-a-phobia; better. I love meeting all you guys. I really enjoy answering your questions for those surprisingly fast two hours on stage. I love the energy and seeing everyone face to face, but the process of touring, apparently, I’m not so fond of it.

So this blog is dedicated to everyone on tour this summer. To all the authors on their book tours; the actors and cast touring for musicals and plays; the musicians touring for the latest album; all entertainers for whatever reason you are out there on the road in the growing summer heat, my hat is off to you. The most I’ve toured at one time was twenty-six cities in twenty-eight days. That was the tour for “Narcissus in Chains”. It was the October just after 9/11 and traveling anywhere by air was an adventure. Jon and I were on our own that tour, just us and more luggage than I’d ever traveled with, because there was never time to do laundry or have anything dry cleaned, so we had to pack for the entire trip. Dear God, that was a lot of luggage. This was the tour that broke me from ever wanting to tour again. I’ve toured since, but never for so long. “Narcissus in Chains” tour lives in infamy for us as the most grueling tour we ever did. It haunts me still. *laughs*

I’m only on the road for a week this time; that’s nothing in the grand scheme of things, but the tight knot in my stomach doesn’t believe it. The bubbling anxiety that’s trying to slip up from my solar plexus is pretty sure I’m lying to myself. Me, lie to myself about work, or something challenging that we have to freaking do anyway? Would I do that? Moi? You’re damned right I would. I do tour the way I used to jog before I messed up my ankle so badly that I’m not allowed. I would jog to that stop sign and then I would be able to stop jogging, but when I came to the stop sign, I’d pick a tree just down the road, once I reached the tree, I’d pick another goal farther down the road. Each time I would say, this is it, you can stop when/if . . . I just have to finish this blog, then I can stop. Well, then I have to finish getting ready for the day, and eat breakfast, and then I can . . . pack my briefcase and check that I have a smaller purse to use once we arrive, and then I can stop . . . oh, wait the plane. I have to get on the plane, and then I can . . . Never mind.

I’ll see everyone in Chicago, which I’m told is sold out for tickets, but there are still tickets available for the Portland event, not sure about Dallas and Cedar Rapids. Check my website for the tour info, because I have no idea how to put the link in here. I am having a tech fail moment of complete bewilderment. I’m off to see if I can find a metaphorical stop sign to use as my next intermediate goal; maybe breakfast.

Tomorrow we fly out for tour. Frantic packing is finished. Yay! I’ll see all of you in Chicago on Sunday, then Portland on Monday, and Dallas is Wednesday, and Cedar Rapids Friday. I’m so glad I don’t do the six week tours anymore. Yes, more of you got to see me, but it was playing heck with both my personal life and my writing schedule. Shorter tour is better for both of those.

There will be a change for this tour. Jon has a sinus infection, so will not be flying out with me tomorrow. It will be the first tour I’ve done without him at my side in eleven years, and only the second time we’ve slept apart in ten years. Yes, you read that right. Jon and I have only slept apart once in ten years, and that was so he could accompany a friend who had mobility issues and had an out of state funeral to attend. It’s going to be very weird not having him at my side on tour. We’re hoping he can get better and join us part way through the trip, but can’t count on it.

On the good news side, my new website is up and live! And my Face Book site has a new welcome video, plus videos of me counting out some of the favorite villains that Anita has faced in past books. It’s all very cool, and wait until you see the commercial for Hit List, and the long video is even niftier.

Hit List tour here I come! Ah!

The cicadas have emerged here in Missouri. Their “singing” fills the early summer heat with a high-pitched, incessant drone. There are entire summers without them, and when they’re not here, we don’t really miss them, but when they do come out to play, it’s like having that old standby song playing in your head. You didn’t miss it, until you heard it again, and then you think, “Oh, yeah, I love that song.” That’s how I feel about the cicadas. They are a sound that is tied to summer heat, and growing up in the Mid-West. The cicadas that sang in Northern Indiana where I grew up, seemed to have a slower, or at least lower pitched song, and the sound makes me think of heat, and lazy, summer days. I grew up in a house without air conditioning so we kept the windows open, and the singing of night insects is still a comforting sound to me. The cicadas are on most of our trees, shrubs, and flowers. The dried, brown exoskeletons cling to the seed heads of the columbine like macabre Christmas ornaments. They march up the sides and branches of trees like an army of discarded skins, an empty zombie army, too dead to want to eat anyone’s brains. They’ve been living underground for years, munching on the roots of plants drinking the juice like little Buniculas, and then at some magic signal they all start digging for the surface of the ground. There are thousands of holes in our yard near the roots of the trees, holes smaller than a dime, but so many of them it looks like the ground has been bombarded by tiny missiles, except these missiles never fell from the sky, they crawled from the ground like a surprise graveyard emptying it’s contents in one mass exodus. They have spent the last decade and some change below ground, growing, and waiting for this moment of freedom in the above ground world. They are periodical cicadas, which simply means that they emerge periodically. *grin* Sometimes science really is that straight forward. This particular brood, is the Great Southern Brood, brood 19. They are 13 year cicadas, and the last time they emerged in 1998 a brood of 17 year cicadas joined them, so the summer was one constant hum of buzzing song that year. I’d actually forgotten about all the noisy, happy, cicadas and their singing until this batch reminded me and made me start researching them just so I could refresh myself with what the heck was going on, as they crawled upward, and the brown nymphs began to split open, and their adult form began to fight their way free of the shape they’ve lived in for thirteen years. It’s like a movie version of a werewolf splitting the skin of it’s human body, to stalk wolfish, and ravening to bay at the moon, except the figure that emerges from the cicada nymph is actually a large dapper insect with round, red eyes, a black-green body, and graceful, curving wings, formed of clear cells lined with bronze and copper. They’re big, meaty insects, the size of my thumb, and if you catch one they make a horrible racket that always scared me as a child, and would make me let go any that I caught. They put up such a fearsome struggle that I was always afraid I’d get bitten, but pretty much any damage from cicada is accidental. They have only a few weeks to mate and lay their eggs back in the soil they just escaped from so the eggs can grow into nymphs and stay underground for another thirteen years until it’s their turn to have their short flight in the sunlight, and the cycle begins all over again.

The birds are eating cicadas as fast as they can, but there are simply too many of them to eat them all. The big, buzzing insects are everywhere. The corpses of the adults that have mated and laid eggs litter the ground like plague victims waiting for some little fairy cart to come wheeling by, with a tiny elf calling out, “Bring out your dead, bring out your dead.” Apparently, with so many live ones the birds prefer to chase them down and munch on them alive, rather than scavenge the dead.

In 1998 I was near the end of my first marriage. My marriage to my college sweetheart had become disillusioning to say the least, and all during that hot, cicada filled summer, I was trying to decide what to do about an unhappy marriage, a shared toddler, and my life in general. The only things going well that year were my daughter, my friendships, and my writing. Not a bad list of good things, but when the only man you’ve ever loved is suddenly not the love of your life anymore, well, no list of good quite outweighs the sense of loss.

Like the cicadas themselves I was about to emerge from the suffocating darkness of my first marriage to a whole new world of sunshine and freedom. I was about to be single again after sixteen years of marriage. It would take me until 1999 to actually move out, and be officially separated, and another year of trying to get my almost ex-husband to sign the divorce papers, but by 2000 I was divorced. I’d had a year of dating again for the first time since college. I was better at dating than I had been back in college, but then I knew what I wanted, and what I didn’t want, more than I had then. By 2001 I was engaged and would be married to Jonathon, and we will celebrate our tenth anniversary this fall. I am happier now than when we began, which so wasn’t true of my first marriage. Yay, for that!

The thirteen year cicadas are back and it’s another year of transition and growth for me. Jonathon and I have grown as a couple, because we’ve learned you either grow as a couple, or you grow apart, but you will grow and change in a decade, you just can’t help it. I am not only happier in my marriage, but happier as a myself than I have ever been. I have never understood who I am as a person, and a writer, more than I do at this moment. I look forward to more self-discovery and personal growth, because evens with the growing pains we are having the best time.

I wonder what our lives will be like the next time the Great Southern Brood of cicadas emerges? What new adventures await us? For me the droning, buzzing, song, means summer, heat, and some of the pleasant memories of childhood, but I know there’s another reason I like cicadas. Have you guessed? The insects start underground, then claw their way to the surface like a zombie rising from the grave, and there are thousands of them with their little round graves on nearly every piece of ground like a surprise cemetery raised in a single night. Then they crawl up onto trees and plants, clinging to the sides of things, while their skin splits and a totally new form emerges, as if there were suddenly thousands of tiny little werewolves slipping their skins at once, but the form that emerges isn’t wolfish in the lest, it’s shiny, and winged, and grotesquely beautiful, very old-school fairy. The summer day is full of the buzzing, clicking, fluttering, flying, of thousands of shiny wings, and then they fall to the ground like some massive death spell until the bodies crunch underfoot and you can’t avoid walking on the dead. On top of all that this is a thirteen year locust, thirteen, really? *laughs* No wonder I loved these guys as a child, and love them still: they rise from the ground like zombies, split their skins like werewolves, sparkle and fly like fairies, and fall inexplicably dead like some fantasy army, every thirteen years. It just doesn’t get better than that for a budding writer of horror and fantasy, and it’s still pretty darn cool for this career novelist of paranormal thrillers.

I had planned to behave myself on this blog. I would never have been tempted to write about sex, or other questionable topics, but a funny thing happened when I was talking to the nice people about this guest blog. Among the normal talk about possible topics, they said, very politely, “And could you please keep the blog PG; no R.”

I was taken aback. I didn’t think I’d ever done a blog that deserved an “R” rating, but I realized that the nice men hadn’t read all my blogs, they’d read my books. Could I really complain that they might be worried I’d step over their rating boundary if all they had to go on were my books? Not really, I suppose, and yet . . . and yet . . . It’s hit a perverse streak that I’ve had since I was a child. My grandmother used to tell me that I was independent as an old widow woman; it was another way of saying I was stubborn, but I suppose it’s more than that. You tell me I can’t do something and I’m more determined to do it.

When the Anita Blake books first came out, journalists that interviewed me told me that the violence bothered them because the main character was female and the writer, me, was a woman, too. A number of them actually told me that if I’d been a man, they wouldn’t have had a problem with it. The violence level was appropriate to the crimes depicted in the books from the real crime research that I did. I didn’t add violence, but I didn’t shy away from it either, and the more people told me it wasn’t appropriate for a girl to be doing it, the more violence became necessary in the books. Then, I finally did on stage sex in the books. The violence hadn’t bothered me, but the sex made me uncomfortable. What did it say about me that dismembered bodies hadn’t bothered me, but sex between two adults that cared for each other, after five books of build up, made me uncomfortable? It said, I’m very American. *laughs* Violence is fine, but sex, is naughty. In most of Europe it’s the other way around, by the way. Again, the American interviewers were bothered not by the sex, but that I was a woman writing from a first person narrative about sex. I’ve even had people bothered that my female protagonist enjoys sex, as if women aren’t allowed to do that. These aren’t older people asking either, but thirties and twenties. I was shocked about that, at first, now I shrug and just accept that we haven’t come as far in the sexual revolution as I had thought. But the more people told me a woman wouldn’t do that, the more I thought, then why is it okay that a man can do it? I mean if you’re hetrosexual isn’t that who the woman is having sex with? It just made no sense to me. I’ve always hated a double standard.

Was the above why the sexual content went up in the books? Not entirely, but it didn’t help me tone it down. Tell me not to do something and it’s just so tempting. I was never one of those people that did something bad for them in real life to spite other people, but on paper, the consequences are less. I could write about murder, monsters, and sex, and my life was still safe, sane, and consensual. *grin*

So, I was told to be PG, not even PG-13, and definitely no R-rated material. Which of course made me think what the heck would be R-rated for a blog anyway? Outside of talking about sex in detail, I couldn’t think of anything, and I don’t really see the point of doing that in a blog. I don’t do sex on paper just for shock value and that’s what it would be, but if only they hadn’t told me to behave, I wouldn’t even be tempted, but because they did tell me to behave myself, I am tempted. *rolls eyes Heaven-ward*

To behave, or not to behave, that is the question?

I guess, in the end, I am a guest at Babel Clash, and as a guest I owe my hosts respect and to obey their house rules. I am polite, and I play by the rules, so I won’t misbehave, but when I finally get back to doing my own blog in my own “house” don’t be surprised if there’s a blog that crosses boundaries of propriety where none of my blogs have ever gone before! My perverse streak will need an outlet. *laughs*

In the beginning, there is the blank sheet of paper. Most writers fear that white empty space, but I’m not one of them. I love the blank emptiness. I love the pristine, untouched, surface of a new piece of writing. Something I’ve never thought of before, never tried to write, because it has no boundaries yet, no paths are cut off, no ideas discarded, I can put anything and everything into the mix and cut it away later, or not; depending on how it reads. I’m not saying I don’t have moments when I don’t know what I’m going to write, and it can be frustrating, but I just keep throwing ideas at the paper until something sticks and the muse and I know we’ve caught an idea. One that just might make a whole blog, or a whole story, or even, an entire novel.

I love throwing myself into that emptiness, like jumping off a bridge on a bungie cord. I fling myself into the great, shining blue of the sky, the dizzying flash of the ground below, and I jump. I jump with the utter and complete confidence that my idea will catch me, or my characters will catch me, that my muse and I will not fall flat on our face, because between that moment of trust, and the ground, my imagination will give me that magic needed to fly. I guess in a way it’s like love. Love is like a cliff. Some people are cliff jumpers, throwing themselves off into empty air, arms out, smiling, in a perfect swan dive, in the utter conviction that the person they love will love them back and catch them. Then there are those that go to the edge of the cliff and peer over the edge and think, “Wow, that’s a long way down. It doesn’t look safe; I better not.” They draw back from the possibility of love and let it escape for fear of falling. Some would-be writers are like that. They have a great idea, but they don’t trust it. They don’t have faith in themselves and their own muse enough to follow that bright, shiny idea, over the edge and into the abyss. They don’t believe that their imagination will catch them, and they’re too frightened to jump. Their new idea escapes, and is dead before it ever has a chance. Caution in love, or writing, can be deadly.

Then you have the people in the middle. The ones that sidle up to the cliff, look over, see it’s a long way down, and then get their safety gear, helmet, rope, and tie themselves off at the top and start climbing down. They’re taking a chance, but they want a safety backup, and there’s nothing wrong with being careful, but . . . You knew there would be a but, didn’t you? Sometimes while they’re climbing carefully down the side, trying to see the bottom, and find that idea, and follow it all the way down, it gets so far ahead of them that they lose the thread of it. The idea slips away for lack of trust. Sometimes it’s lack of conviction in the idea itself, but usually it’s more like this: what if the idea isn’t big enough to be a book, or it sounds like it would take too much research and I don’t know anything about X or Y, so how could I do a whole book on it, or I bet it’s been done before, or . . . It’s not really lack of faith in the idea, it’s lack of faith in themselves that stops a lot of writers before they ever really begin. You have to believe in yourself. You have to believe in your ideas, your hopes, your dreams, even sometimes your nightmares. You have to believe in you, all of you, the light happy and the dark raving parts. Writing, like all the arts, to be done well must be a thing of grief, joy, madness, and any other emotion running around inside you. It’s scary stuff to follow that idea off the cliff and believe it will catch you, because really it’s not the idea that catches you before you go splat, it’s you, that catches you. At some level every writer understands that, and that’s why it’s so damn scary to stare at that blank white piece of paper, or empty computer screen, because you know to fill it up, you’ve got to pour yourself out on that paper. You’ve got to mine your own psyche, your monsters, your inner demons, your greatest joys, and most intimate sorrows, the things you love, hate, or fear, most paraded before the world on paper. Not all ideas are equally personal, that’s true, but to finish almost any piece of writing is to go hunting in places that make the deepest, darkest, scariest jungle look like a pre-school birthday party, though admittedly the jungle is quieter than the birthday party, but in all other ways much scarier.

There are writers that make perfectly good careers of putting on their safety gear, tieing off their rope, and carefully easing over the cliff of ideas, but that’s not the kind of writer I am. I’ve tried it, but as in love, to pick your way down the cliff is to hold back, to always hold back. You don’t get as hurt, true, but you also don’t get those wonderful breathtaking moments that you can’t plan, you can’t even imagine the happiness you’ll gain if you just take the chance. Take the chance on your idea, believe in yourself, and follow that book idea from the first word to typing the words “The End”. Do it, and I promise you that you will know more about yourself at the end than you did at the beginning, and that the next time will be easier and a little less scary.

Now, I’ve got a great white emptiness to jump into, and I know that my idea, my characters, my muse, and me, will catch me before I hit bottom. I believe; you should believe, too.

One of the hardest things about writing an on-going series is that you have readers at different points in the books. I have readers that have been with me from the beginning in 1993 with the first Anita Blake book: Guilty Pleasures. You guys were reading me back when I was classed as urban fantasy, or horror, because the term paranormal hadn’t been applied to my “genre” yet. I really appreciate all of you that have buckled in for the whole ride. But I also hear daily from people that have just discovered me, some of them are mainly romance readers, or mystery readers, or even just mainstream fiction readers that find something in my books that appeals to their main love in reading. Since I genuinely write in all the genres mentioned, usually in the same book, that makes sense. And let’s face it vampires, were animals, and zombies, just keep getting more popular and mainstream, so new readers keep coming in for that reason alone. So, some of you have read all nineteen books, and some of you have just finished book one. The challenge for me as a writer is how do I keep entertaining my long time readers, and not confuse the hell out of the new readers? How do I put in enough information for the fresh eyes, so they understand the world, the characters, and don’t feel lost, while at the same time not boring the blazes out of the people who have read every book? If you give too much information then the familiar readers will feel like they’ve read all this before, and I admit, that I have to put in some of that for the new readers, but I always struggle for the balance between the two groups.

Hit List is the twentieth Anita Blake novel, and I have done my best to make this book stand alone so it can be used as an introduction point for new readers, while at the same time, entertaining the old readers. I also want to entertain both groups, without bewildering anyone with so much background, or world building information that it bogs everything down. When you first start writing a series, it’s so much easier, but I admit that with each subsequent book I struggle more to find that mix of enough, but not too much information. I want to reward long time fans, and not confuse the new fans. How do I do that?

First, ever character as they step on stage in a book is treated as if they’d never stepped on stage before. It’s for the new readers, but it’s also because there’s usually at least a year between books and I never assume that everyone remembers all the cast. At this point in the series, it’s impossible to get everyone on stage in any given book, so if you haven’t seen a character for a few books, then everyone needs the refresher, but even if you’ve met the character last book, I still introduce them as if you’ve never met them before. I try not to reinvent the wheel, and I’ll go back through how I’ve introduced, or described, the character in the last few books to see what I can do to make it different. Sometimes I’ll introduce a long term character with new information that I’ve never mentioned in any book before, so I can establish them as a character, and give a treat to both fan groups. I try for different clothing, or a setting that I’ve never used to introduce the character, but let’s face it twenty books deep there is a limit to what you can do to not repeat to the long term readers, and not skimp on details for the new readers. It is a balance.

I’ve read some series that are really good series and I have read them for years, but I do find that on some books the author has skimped on details. It’s obvious that they’ve written these characters so long, and have them so clearly in their heads, that they don’t realize that they didn’t describe them in the first chapter and sometimes it’s ten, or even thirty pages in before you are told the main character’s hair is dark, or short, or much of anything. As a long time reader, I have a clear picture of the main character, and of their work place, their best friend, etc . . . But I do pause and wonder what a first time person would think of the book. Frankly, if I had never read anything by this author and I picked up this book I’d put it down, because I’d be lost. When you write a series you can’t get lazy and think well everyone reads me, they know what such and such looks like, or worse yet, does the author simply see all the details in their head so clearly they think they’re already on the paper? I’m never sure, and I’ve never wanted to ask the writer in question, because I can’t figure out how to ask without it sounding insulting, but something has gone wrong. Then the book after that will have enough detail and be a more complete book. I find on the books that the author skimps on detail for first timers, the book is also lacking in meaty bits for us long time readers, as if they rushed the book, or in some cases are getting bored with their characters. It turns into a kind of short hand, so it’s still good and I still read it, and I’ll still read the next book in their series, but it’s not a completely satisfying meal, as if I got the main course, but no appetizer, and certainly no desert.

I try to make sure that every book I write is a complete meal. I want you to have that tasty appetizer, a great main course, and feel like desert has been rich, creamy, and satisfying.

I was paid a high compliment by my agent the other day. She told me that Hit List was so complete that it was a great introduction to my world and my characters. Twenty books deep and I’ve got a book that’s strong enough to stand alone. Not bad, not bad at all.

There are some days when you can’t get the writing done. No matter how organized you are, how dedicated to your craft, or inspired by deadlines, there come days when you just have to throw in the towel. If you hadn’t guessed already, today is one of those days for me.

Our daughter, Trinity, graduated from lower grade, and will be in high school next year; regular high school. On one hand it seems like we’ve worked long and hard to get her here, and I will always maintain that parenting is one of THE hardest jobs on the planet. I actually love that she’s a teenager now, it’s much easier to talk to the person she is, then interpret the baby, and child, she was before. But watching our not so little girl graduate took up a good part of the day, as you can imagine.

Trinity and Jon’s mom, known as Grandma leave to join Grandpa some place warm tomorrow. So I’ve just finished helping Trinity pack to stay overnight with Grandma. Jon and I are leaving on a much briefer trip to visit our friend that I talked about in yesterday’s blog. We still have to finish packing, but first dinner.

All the above to say, this is why today’s blog is very late in the day. Years ago, maybe even just a year ago, I would have beat myself up about not doing the blog earlier in the day, and about not working at all on the new book. I would have made myself feel terrible about it, but I’ve learned a lot in the last year. I’ve learned that someday’s there’s nothing you can do. You can’t give up the fight every day, or even many days, not and write books, but we are about to go away for a fun trip, before we head out on tour. We are actually sandwiching tour between this trip, and a second trip to see other friends in yet a different state. So far, the prospect of so much fun is keeping the usual pre-tour nerves to a bare minimum; which was the plan. Yay, for it working!

One of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned in the last two years, was that all work and no play is a really crappy way to live. It steals the joy from even the best and happiest life. I’ve learned to play, and I’ve learned not to be as merciless with my work ethic, because I was merciless with myself. To be without mercy is a terrible thing, but to be without mercy to yourself means you are trapped, forever, with a person that treats you badly. Once, that person was me, but no longer. I am proud to say, that today I gave myself a break. I’ll do this blog, but I won’t try and do pages today. Once I would have worked late into the night to get a page count done, but tomorrow Jon and I leave to have a play date with our friend. You ever notice how adults plan play dates for their children, but never for themselves? Well, screw that, we have a play date, and we are going to enjoy ourselves. Then we’ll see you guys on tour, and then we’ll have another play date with other friends. We’ll visit, laugh, catch up since the last trip, and do things that help us relax, refresh, refuel. Because I do have a book due, and eventually I will have to get out that work ethic that has helped me write so many books in such a short number of years, and it will be a harsh ethic, but I hope that I’ve learned, at last, that I need to show myself the same amount of care and kindness I show the rest of the people I love. I hope that I have learned to love myself, at last.

Concentration is everything, and when the writing is going well it’s easy to concentrate. On days when the writing is flowing like the proverbial water from the cleft rock I can barely type fast enough to keep up with that glorious, nearly magical flow of words and ideas. The characters are alive and so vibrant that sometimes real people talking to me seem less concrete than what’s happening inside my head. It is for those moments of writer’s high that all writers live for, like a drug addict chasing another fix. I am a self-confessed endorphin junkie and one of the ways I get that fix is by writing, but like any addiction there are downsides.

There are days when the muse is not in the driver’s seat. There are days when inspiration is cold ashes that I can’t seem to stir enough to even see a spark. Today is one of those days. My concentration is scattered in a dozen directions. I can’t focus worth a damn. Too many thoughts crowd in on me. It’s like being in a room crowded with people all of them grabbing at me, but I never get to finish a conversation before the next person grabs for my attention, and there’s a small dog gnawing at my pant’s leg, and someone has just spilled a drink on me, and the noise is a cacophony, so loud and insensible that even words have become noise like the growling of the small, terrier that’s chewing on my jeans. It’s all just noise. Even my most beloved imaginary friends seem to be tearing me apart today, because they’re all there, all crowding close, and I can’t meet everyone’s needs. There isn’t enough of me to write it all. I must focus. I must find one idea to concentrate on, one thought, that’s all I need. One clear thought to ring out from the noise, one quiet face to stare into and with a glance he, usually he, let’s me know that if I’ll just tear myself away from the crowd and come find him, we can talk.

Today, it’s Jean-Claude, the Master Vampire of my fictional city of St. Louis. he looks at me through the pulling, almost mob of a crowd, and he is just suddenly across the room walking out a far exit. I just need to follow, and get away from all these demands. I have to leave that great short story idea with that very peculiar gold fish in it’s very special bowl. I have to walk away from Anita Blake’s job as a U. S. Marshal of the Preternatural Branch, and all the ideas I’ve been playing with as I’ve tried to start the next book. I have to leave Merry Gentry and her twin babies and all those fathers, “Later,” I say, and I mean it, but I still can’t get that emotion right on paper. I can’t seem to describe how it feels to hold her baby in her arms for the first time. How does it feel to watch the man you love hold your shared child in his arms for the first time? Sometimes words seem so inadequate. I keep walking past that new series idea and it’s main character so tall, so straight, and that brush of magic. I tell them, “I’ll get to you, I promise.” They press for when, and I leave without answering, because I have no idea. There’s so much; so many: how do I serve them all?

But not all the “people” in this metaphorical room are imaginary. My daughter, Trinity isn’t there in the room, but the thought of her is very present. I’ve always been torn between being a mother and being a writer. She’s a teenager now, but there are still days when I struggle with that vague guilt, that maybe I’ve written most of her childhood away, and how will that effect her down the road. This is my issue, not her’s, but on day’s like today I find myself comparing my mothering to the mothering I received from a woman who didn’t work outside the house and had nothing but time and attention for me, to the point where I felt over-loved and quite suffocated. I wonder, on days like today, how much of my parenting model was in reaction to my overly involved mother figure, and do we ever slay all the demons of childhood before we have our own children to raise? Um, no, the answer would be no. We all try, and we all fail, and we all succeed in different measures, I think.

I had to leave my husband, Jonathon, in bed, still wrapped up in the sheets, so warm, so sleepy, so cuddle worthy, and I regret not having more time to spend this morning, but we had to get up, had to get Trinity off to school. Again, he didn’t complain, we’re both grownups and know that duty comes before play. Day’s like this are entirely my issues, and I own that.

We have a trip coming up in just a couple of days, and Jonathon and I are so looking forward to it. We’ll be visiting a good friend that we haven’t seen in person in months. Thank Gods, for texting and email for that daily contact. I’m excited about the trip, so much so that it’s distracting me a little like knowing that Christmas is coming soon. I feel like a five-year-old trying to concentrate on math when Santa comes in just two days! As a writer I foster this childlike attitude of joy and exploration, some of my best ideas and most inspired moments come out of such attitudes, but the balance between my inner child and my grown up is sometimes a tricky one. Every artist needs to be the most disciplined grown up they can, and the wide-eyed innocent still seeing the world as fresh and new. You need both, but on days like today it’s as if they’re quarreling, like having a grown child and a very young one, both with very different ideas of how to spend the day.

We spent a lot of yesterday in the basement between one tornado siren and another, and there are more storms due today, so that is in the back of my mind crowding in with all the rest. Worry for friends, family, property, and the stuff of our lives.

“Hit List” the latest book is coming out in less than two weeks, and the publicity is already happening, the travel plans for tour are being firmed up daily. Having a book about to hit the shelves always messes with my concentration; always has, and probably always will, especially when I know I’m touring for it.

There’s a house finch sitting on the hummingbird feeder at my office window, and I’ve been noticing all sorts of birds flying past: cardinals, gold finches, sparrows, and now the house finch coming very close and very rosy-red he is as he peers at me. The birds being this restless either mean more storms or we’ve got a hawk in the area. Wait, was I doing something . . . Oh, yeah.

Then there’s this blog I’m supposed to write for the next two weeks for Borders, as a guest blogger. *grin* I woke with no bloody idea what to blog about today, until I realized that might be the perfect thing to write about. So many people ask me, how do I get my ideas, and I’ve written blogs, essays, done interviews about that, but I realized this morning that I’ve never written about the opposite problem. It wasn’t that I didn’t have an inspired idea today, it’s that I had too many in my head all at once. Too many things in my head vying for attention, and once the attention goes that badly then old habits creep in, and usually not good ones.

Back to that imaginary room. I finally make it through the crowd of problems, ideas, imaginary friends, all special to me, all important, but they can’t all be important at once. It would be like trying to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner all at the same time and think that was a well-balanced eating plan. You can’t eat your steak and ice cream at the same time and enjoy either one. You have to pick one and enjoy every bite of that thick, hot, meat, or, enjoy every spoonful of that sweet, creamy, vanilla, and find that thread of fudge, and maybe a salted nut, or two. Trying to cover the steak in the yummy ice cream would make both of them not nearly as yummy. The texture war of hot, cold, meat, and ice cream in my mouth would make me not want to eat either one, so . . .

I’ve found Jean-Claude in a much smaller room, not much bigger than an alcove. It’s quiet in here, blissfully quiet. I begin to relax just from that. He’s sitting down, on a small couch, dressed in one of his standard white shirts with it’s overly long cuffs and a collar lined with loose lace, as if he’d worn the same style of shirt for centuries, and never saw a reason to change. I’ve always thought vampires would be like that, keeping some piece of the old to help ground them. But the old-fashioned shirt is tucked into very modern leather pants, and boots that climb the slender muscles of his calves, so that the line between boots and pants is hard to see at first glance. He holds his hand out to me, and I take it. I let him sit me down on the little couch beside him, and I hear him say, “How have you been?”

And just like that, I realize that I don’t need my characters to talk to me today, I need to talk to them. That I need to bring me, to them, not the other way around. Jean-Claude smiles at me, as if I’ve thought a very smart thing. I smile back, and begin to talk to the imaginary friend I’ve been talking to for almost two decades. I sit back against the dark, pink of the velvet couch, and begin to tell him what all I’ve been doing since last I wrote him. I’d forgotten that it’s not just my characters that grow and change, but it’s me, the writer, too. Once my concentration was pure, but that was before I had a child, before I was truly in love, before I understood who I was and what honestly made me happy. I sit and talk to my imaginary confidant and realize it wasn’t just Anita that was less happy in the early books of the series; it was me. I lean back against that over-stuffed velvet, feeling the carved, polished wood of the back of the couch press into my neck, and I know what I need to do now. Right now, I need to finish this blog, and then I’ll go talk on paper with Jean-Claude and get reacquainted with him, and with myself.