Mindy: Welcome to Writer Writer Pants on Fire, where authors talk about things that never happened to people who don't exist. We also cover craft, the agent hunt, query trenches, publishing, industry, marketing and more. I'm your host, Mindy McGinnis. You can check out my books and social media at mindymcginnis dot com and make sure to visit the Writer Writer Pants on Fire blog for additional interviews, query critiques and more as well as full transcriptions of each podcast episode at WriterWriterPants on Fire.com. And don’t forget to check out the Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire Facebook page. Give me feedback, suggest topics you’d like to hear discussed, and let me know if there is someone you’d love to see as a guest.
Mindy: Just a note for my usual listeners. Today's guest is Laurell K. Hamilton, and we will be talking pretty extensively about sex in the second part of this episode after the break. So, if you're someone that doesn't care to listen to that, or if you're someone that likes to listen to this podcast in the car with your kids or somebody you don't want to talk about sex in front of... Probably don't listen to the second part of this podcast.
We're here with Laurell K. Hamilton, author of the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series, as well as the Merry Gentry series, as well as the Zaniel Havelock series. So Smolder, which is the 29th Anita Blake novel, will be coming out on March 21st. Tell us a little bit about Smolder. I think my first question really is, how do you as a writer continue to be excited rolling into book number 29?
Laurell: It's like going back to old friends. But more than that, when I was first setting out to start writing the series, I started putting together the first story in the world in the mid-1980s, late 1980s, and I went and read long-running series. At that time, it was only mystery novels that had long running series, and what I noticed, even the best mystery series, there is a slump for at least one book between book 5 and book 8. You can see the writer is falling a little bit out of love with their world or their character, and it's across the board almost without exception. I think that Robert B. Parker’s Spenser series didn't have it, but it's almost the only one. Even if the book is good, there's just a little less joie de vivre in the process. So I thought, "Why are they falling out of love with their characters?" They usually get back on the train, and they're happy after that, but there's that little slump. So what would cause that? And I thought, "Well, if I had to write a straight mystery, and I couldn't play with anything else, I think I would get bored."
So, I decided I would add my love of the supernatural and folklore and myth into our modern world. That's how Anita Blake's world was created, and I thought I won't get bored with this. If everything that goes bump in the night is real, and I have mystery and murder and all that cool stuff mixed together... If I can mix all the genres, I think I won't get bored. And you know what? Here I am - book 29 and I am never bored. I have the best time because I keep learning something new with every book. I've learned something new about my world, about my characters. The other thing I think for some long running series, especially mystery series - they try to keep the tone of every book the same. I thought, again, that would not interest me as a writer. One of the reasons I have such a big character growth. My character arcs for growth are unusual in how much characters can grow and change over the life of the series, and that again, helps me stay interested. If I've shoved my characters in a box and said, "No, this is your area. This is your box. Stay in your box." I think I would have been bored by now, but because I let them grow and change just like real people. My imaginary friends get to have a life too. I think that's one of the reasons I come to every book excited and learn new things, and that's really I think the secret.
Mindy: I agree. I think it is important, like you're saying... You said my imaginary friends have lives too. I love that. I have a book coming out next week. My main character, the narrator... I had a very distinct way that I wanted her to be, for her to bounce off of the other main character, and it was very imperative to the plot and the growth of both of them that they be the way that I wanted them to be in my head. And then I started writing, and it was Chapter 1. I started writing this character, and she was supposed to be just very type A. Really Good. Never does anything wrong. Always striving to be the best, and also actually be good. And I started writing her, and her internal monologue... She was pissed. She was angry. Her exterior was, "Yes. What can I do to help you? I'm here." And her interior was, "What am I getting out of this?" And I was just like, "Oh my God! No, you're not. What are you doing?" Okay, you're much more interesting now and I let her be that person. And it ended up changing the plot, and it changed so many things about the book. And it made it a better book.
Laurell: It does. Now, you have to be careful because if my characters come up with a better idea that actually is in line with them as people, then I will throw out a third of my plot because they are just better than I thought they were and the villain is not powerful enough. Or they think of a totally different way out of the situation that is more logical for them as their character, I will explore it. And most of the time, they're right. Every once in a while, it's a rabbit hole and it doesn't lead to wonderland. It leads more to like... That is just rabbit poop. We need to back 'er up and find the other exits. But most of the time, like you said, the characters know themselves. And once you create a character and you start writing them, the process of putting them on the page often changes them, sometimes in small ways and sometimes in big ways, but the process of writing is where you explore a character. Especially a new one. It's like a coffee date. You're sitting down across from them and going, "Okay, who are you?" Here's who I think you are, but once you start writing, sometimes they're not who you thought they were.
Mindy: And it can take you to great places. It can also derail you, as you said. But ultimately, if you're treating them like real people, you're just getting to know them better. And even if you might not allow them to go directly in the path that they were aiming for originally, you might find a nice little halfway between that is exactly the right place for both of you.
Laurell: And the people that are my magic friends that I've written for all these many years... People say, "well, how do you keep them straight? How do you keep what they look like and stuff?" And I go, "Well, how do you keep your friends straight?"
Mindy: Yeah.
Laurell: You just know what they look like. I will add one caveat. Height, for some reason. I don't know why. Height. Height and eye color. If it's a new character, whatever eye color they started with, it's a roll of the dice whether I change it the next book. And if you're tall in my books, you'll get taller. If you're short in my book, you'll get shorter. I don't know why but those are two things I have to watch out for.
Mindy: Well, this is why we have copy editors.
Laurell: They don't always catch it.
Mindy: Oh really?
Laurell: Really. That's why I've started policing it myself. Sometimes they catch it, and sometimes they don't. And it's just those two things. It's the eye color and the height. I think that's why I noticed it, because I think the copy editors catch everything else.
Mindy: I have trouble with linear time. That never works out well for me. I have come to the point where I will not say specific days, months, even in my books because I always mess it up. I give them a general, this is the season. Like it's summer, winter, spring, fall. Or school just started. Or it's summer break. But I will never use specific dates. I'll never say what day of the week it is. I typically am never going to say even what month it is, because I will mess it up.
Laurell: I'm usually good on months, but yes, I'm vague on days.
Mindy: My book that comes out next week is a murder mystery, and timelines are really freaking important in murder mysteries. I had a character... There was photographic evidence of her doing something and still being alive after a point where she was actually dead. And so it's like... The copy editor's like, "Hey, she was dead when this photo was taken of her hanging out of this party." And I'm like, "God damnit!"
Laurell: The one thing early in the series that nobody caught - my editor didn't catch it. Copy editor didn't catch it. I didn't catch it. Readers didn't catch it. My writer's group didn't catch it. Fans didn't catch it for years. It was years after that book came out before somebody caught the fact that in Circus of the Damned, Anita has a car that she drives. It gets wrecked. She's driving it the rest of the book. It happens.
Mindy: It sure does. The people may be very real, but the details can get foggy.
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Mindy: One of the things that you and I were talking about before I started recording that I think is an interesting thing to bring up for everyone else to be a part of the conversation. Your books do tend to have some spice to them. Like they're sex positive. They're fun to read. As I said before, I write YA. I have been getting hit with the censorship wave that is rolling through education and libraries right now. Sex is one of the biggest things that is a trigger. Violence usually is actually okay. It's really weird to me. The tiers of what is unacceptable. Language is kind of a medium. Violence usually gets a pass. And sex? No. Never ever. Don't even think about it. If you're under 18, you don't have genitals. I also will say, I do not put sex on the page because I worked in a high school for 14 years, and it just makes me personally feel a little bit icky.
Laurell: I have never had a character that is under the age of 18 have sex on paper on stage. So, I also have consent age as well. I've had one character that was legally of age but under 18. They had sex, but it's never shown. That is the one rule I have on sex. It's just an iffy subject. Under 18? I treat my books like if you're under 18, it won't be on stage sex in my books. It just won't. One of the interesting things about traveling internationally for events is that in America, people have trouble with the sexual content of the Anita Blake series. But when I traveled to Italy, the reporters there said, “Why did I wait so long for her to have sex?” Especially with Jean-Claude. She's not a modern woman because she waited so long. They had a problem with the violence. I traveled in France and Italy for that. They both had more trouble with the violence as readers than the sexual content. That didn't bother them. But in America, it's always the sex that bothers and not the violence. And it's a cultural difference. If you'd never travel outside of this country, you don't know that.
Mindy: I never know the temperature of the room. Whether it's because I write YA or if it's, like you're saying, this is just the way our country operates, and it sounds like sex, in the United States, is the thing that's going to get you possibly in trouble or ruffle feathers.
Laurell: I've actually never been censored. I've never been told I can't. I had one book where they wanted me to take out one scene, not because of sexual content, but because they just thought there was too much. I've only been told once that something was questioned on the polyamory. I was writing polyamory before non-monogamy was cool. And my answer to that was to write the book Jason, which was a small book in between the larger books. It's all poly. It's all poly. It is the only book I've ever written that's not a mystery. And since I am polyamorous, that was like saying, your sexual orientation is not okay.
Mindy: Yeah.
Laurell: And so I wrote Jason which is all about polyamory and sex and BDSM. It is all about that and how relationships work. And it was the number one best selling book in the country. So, you know, I'm good. I have never had anybody question me. I've never had anybody say no. I have had my editors twice come back and want a sex scene. Once upon a time when I started the series, my goal was to not have sex on-screen. Was to have every kiss and caress so good you wouldn't need the sex. Which was incredibly naïve of me. But when I finally realized that I had written violent crime scenes and serial killer books with plot lines with no compunction about the violence. But writing a sex scene between two people that have known each other for years and care about each other, that bothered me? It bothered me that it bothered me.
Mindy: Yup.
Laurell: And so I just said, "Okay, if I do not look away. If the camera does not look away from the violence, then I will not look away from the sex." Because the sex is a positive thing. The violence is not. It deserves its own camera, and that is why when Anita finally had sex, we had it on stage and we didn't look away. Positive sex with someone you care about deserves as much attention as violence and crime, and if it doesn't, then what did that say about me as a writer? As a person? Well, it said, I'm very American. I don't know why we are like this, but we are as a cultural thing. Violence is okay. Sex is not. And this attitude has regulated God to be the sex police. God is not the sex police. I do not know where we came up with this idea that sex is more important than anything else to regulate. It is a very American ideal.
So, book 10 is where the polyamory comes in, and I had people upset with me because Anita didn't just pick one. I researched it. I researched polyamory. I researched BDSM. I researched everything. I ended up being part of the community, but even before I was part of the communities, I did my research. And one of the things that is my big bug-a-boo is I'm reading somebody, and it's obvious they've done no research on alternate culture. Alternate culture of BDSM. Alternate ways of living. It always shows. And if you're part of that community, if that's your sexual orientation, and you always know that it rings false. Why does it matter as long as the person is in committed relationship with one or more people, as long as everybody is consenting adults, why does anybody care who they're sleeping with and what they're doing behind closed doors? Why does it matter? I don't understand that. That is a question I've actually asked people, and they never have a good answer. "Just because it's wrong" is not an answer.
Mindy: I think I, in a way, came into writing YA fairly naive as well in that I did not quite realize the level of antagonism that I would face. I don't have sex on the page, and I don't have sexual assault on the page either. But it happens. People get extremely uncomfortable with that very quickly. I don't understand that. I find that with sex in general, like you said earlier and I could not agree more, positive sex... Take out the teens 'cause like I said, I won't put it on the page. Writing a positive sex scene, people who are expressing their love to each other physically, how is this a bad thing? But you're okay with someone's head being completely sheared off? We can put that on the page and we can describe it and it's fine. As soon as we have people taking their clothes off, you've verged into a place where the camera should not go.
Laurell: Okay, so I had one-on-one sex between people who care about each other, and most people were okay with that. Added the poly, some people not. There is no sex in the first four books. There's adult situations, but no sex. I had people starting to complain by Book 5, and I had to go back and read Book 5 because there's no sex in Book 5 in my head. But there is sex, just the main character doesn't have sex. Jason... I won't give it away what happened, but let's just say it went horribly, horribly wrong. And it was a horrific scene. I've had a couple of men say that now I have ruined certain fantasies for them forever. I had some people have trouble just with that. I started asking people that were complaining about sexual content... I said, "Okay, where do you want it to stop?" And when they would say, "Well, it's just the middle books. It's just... There was so much in this book." But everyone has a different point where they wanna say, "No. We're done." I can't please everybody.
Mindy: It's so interesting what the cut-offs are for people as well. I will never forget. When I was in high school, I went to go see the movie Wild Things in the theater. Do you remember that movie?
Laurell: No.
Mindy: I can't remember her name. Charlie Sheen's ex-wife, Neve Campbell, and Kevin Bacon. Two teenage girls and two adult men. And there's sex with a teenage girl and an adult male who's her teacher. There's sex between the two girls. There's group sex. There's all these things going on. And it's on screen. Everybody's sitting there. Everybody's cool. Everybody is getting through the movie. I'm not hearing disgusted reactions. Everything's fine. Towards the end, there's full frontal male nudity, and people got up and left. That was what broke it for them. Kevin Bacon, like getting out of the shower. It wasn't even a sexual situation. He's just getting out of the shower. Everything else... Nobody had a problem. But show us a penis and they were just like, "Oh! Oh dear!" and they had to leave.
Laurell: Was their full-frontal female nudity?
Mindy: I don't believe there was.
Laurell: I don't know why they clutch their pearls then.
Mindy: I don't either. Really, guys? This is the thing? This is what's gonna make you go, "Oh, this is unacceptable"? Okay.
Laurell: I thought that we were doing a better job in our country educating people on sex. On their bodies. On comfortable-ness with themselves. Boy, was I wrong. Okay, you worked in a school system, and I know that kids can't always talk to you. But I am hearing a new generation of women are being told that they don't have to enjoy sex. That they have to do sex with their boyfriends. It's not about your pleasure. It's about their pleasure. If you look at media, what media shows us like on TVs and movies, it is so much easier to film a pretend intercourse scene and hide the bodies than it is to show foreplay without showing the rest of the body. I am told for most movies that if you do foreplay for a woman, even if it's not shown, even if the camera doesn't show body parts, you're more likely to get censored for showing foreplay on the woman than more male-oriented sex. We are structuring our entertainment. And what I've learned through writing the series is that people come to their entertainment to learn how to live their lives.
Mindy: Yes, they do.
Laurell: And I don't know, maybe this has always been true, but I certainly know that's what I'm hearing from other people. That reading my books was the first time they realized that women could enjoy sex. That reading my books was the first time they understood that it was supposed to be reciprocal. That it was mutual pleasure and not just about his pleasure. It's not older women telling me this. It is all ages telling me this.
Mindy: Yeah, unfortunately, I think that that has always been the case. The concept of the male being the one that's gonna benefit from the situation and the woman sometimes just taking one for the team. I read really widely and very freely when I was growing up, but there was definitely female pleasure in it. I mean, I was just fortunate. I live in a conservative area. I don't know why, but for whatever reason, I grew up aware that women enjoy this shit and that we should. I was just lucky in that way. I knew that that prism existed. I just wasn't seeing the world through it. In terms of today, what I see more than anything, and I don't work in the school system anymore, but I do move through it as a substitute... What I see more than anything is no one should be doing this period. Don't have sex, kids.
Laurell: Abstinence is what's being pressed, but by teaching abstinence, the teen pregnancy rate's going up. It's not just hurting women though. That's the interesting thing that I finally realized. In doing research for Zaniel Havelock... It's a male first person narrative. I ask questions of my husband and every male friend I had. Every boyfriend I had. Everyone. I'm polyamorous, so I have husband and boyfriends. I asked questions. I read books. There is a societal pressure and expectation that men just want sex, and when I say they just want sex, they just want intercourse. And that men don't enjoy giving or receiving foreplay. And I don't just mean blow jobs. Foreplay for men and foreplay for women. We are taught, still being taught, that men don't want it or need it. And we are still being taught that there's this idea of conquest so... Just get in there. Get out. Get your intercourse. Get your orgasm. Get out. The best sex for men and women is not that. That is not the best sex you're ever going to have in your life. I have dated men that love gentle touch... That love for you to run your fingers over their bodies. Men have a whole body. They're not just their genitals. Just like women do. I know that there are men that like just as much foreplay as the women. And I know that there are men out there that are also oriented, so they need a emotional connection to have good sex. Society doesn't give them the room to say that. Men aren't allowed to say that they need an emotional connection and that they don't want just a rut. Men are treated by other men as if that is a weakness and somehow makes them less manly, and that is so not true. The best sex is after you get to know each other. There is no such thing as the best sex you will ever have is a one-night stand. That is a fallacy. They've actually done studies on that. Best sex comes from partners that you see regularly, and you learn each other's bodies.
The sad thing for me is I'm still hearing so many women that are having bad sex... That never have an orgasm. One of the interesting things is men are expected to be able to know how to ride this bike without ever having touched the bike before. The first time they get to have sex, they are terrified they're going to do this wrong. Women are conditioned not to talk about what they want and what their desires are. And so here you have the poor guy. He has never been alone with a women. Now they get to have sex, and he is supposed to know how to do all of this with no practice run. And let me just say this right now, please do not use porn as your practice run. Porn teaches you nothing that is usable in real life.
Mindy: That's the truth.
Laurell: Soft core porn... They're doing positions where you can't actually have sex in them. It just looks good on camera. Regular porn also must look good on camera. Good real sex does not look good on camera. No good habits here. Where else can the young people go? People who've never had sex... Where else can they go but porn? Where else in America are they left to go? If they can't talk to their parents or any adult in a real way and ask questions. If they're continuing to censor books so that good positive sex is not gonna be in books anymore, what do you leave but porn? And that's a such a bad place. It doesn't teach you good, good habits. It doesn't teach you things that work well. The sole situation of ignorance is not helpful to anybody. And people say that men talk about sex. Men don't talk about sex. Men do locker room talk about sex. Swinging from the chandeliers... That tells you nothing about real sex. You can't go to your friends and say, "the sex isn't working."
Mindy: I have a really good circle of female friends. We will have very frank conversations with each other, and one friend that has not had as many experiences as the other two of us. And she'll be like, "Okay, wait. How do you do this? How does that work?" More than once my roommate and I have been like, "Okay, come here." My roommate and I will just be on the floor and we'll be like, "it's like this." We will just try to show her how certain things are done or different positions or things like that. And we're laughing and it's funny and we're having a good time. But at the same time, it's so lovely. We're comfortable enough with each other where it's like we're putting ourselves, our own bodies in these positions, but we're also just like teaching her. This is how you do this thing, and I can't imagine a situation where men get to do that with each other.
Laurell: It's been my experience that women talk in more detail about sex than men, and if you have good enough friends, you can ask those kinds of questions. You know, I had a friend come to me and say that her new husband was really well-endowed, and it was hurting. She loves sex, but it was hurting. And I had to ask, "Well, is it a length alone?" I knew positions for length - to help with length. Sadly it was length and width. But she could come to me. She could ask me these questions, and we talked about it. We talked about some positioning. I gave her what advice I had, but you're right. Men are not gonna go to another man and say, "Well, how do I do this?" They're just not gonna do that.
Mindy: No.
Laurell: They're not gonna do that with each other. The best advice I have ever gotten talking to men for another man... Most realistic advice I've ever heard. If you know you're only gonna last three minutes, then you make sure that the hour before those three minutes or two hours before that three minutes is the best hour to two hours she's ever had. I thought that is the most realistic advice I have ever heard.
Mindy: I agree. I think the way that we look at sex in the United States has just robbed so many people of actually having a good time or enjoying another person or persons company.
Laurell: Yes.
Mindy: It just... It makes me very sad. And like I said before, I was raised in a fairly conservative family but also weirdly sex positive. My mom and dad absolutely love each other, and it's obvious. And my mother let me read whatever I wanted to read and there was never any censorship. And it was very helpful to me. As someone that is creating, as you are, art for this world, you also just have to be like, "Okay. Some people are gonna be okay with this element of it," like we said earlier, and some people are just gonna be like, "This is where I draw my line." And I'm like, "That's cool. Then don't read that."
Laurell: One of the things though that I have changed is I put in more detail because so many people don't know how anything works.
Mindy: Yep.
Laurell: It really kind of shocked me how many people don't know how things work. There's hope for us to talk about things in a manner that isn't hostile to each other. I love my country, and when I was raised, one of the things that I was taught is that you could talk about anything and just agree to disagree. I think that somewhere along the way, we've decided that on every topic we will have our opinion and not move from it, and we will not talk together. We will just talk at each other.
Mindy: That's the dividing line that we've all been running right up to and hitting our heads on for a while now. So with all of that in mind and with Smolder coming out here soon, why don't you let people know where they can find you online and where they can find the book.
Laurell: On Twitter, I am LKHamilton. On Instagram, I am LKH underscore official. I don't remember my Facebook. I really honestly to God don't. On TikTok, I'm also LKH underscore official.
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