On November 7, #1 New York Times best-selling author Laurell Kaye Hamilton, the empress of paranormal noir, will publish Slay, the 30th novel in her ongoing series about Anita Blake. Anita first appeared 30 years ago, and after decades as a single vampire hunter, she’s now planning her wedding despite her father’s disapproval. Paranormals—they’re just like us.
Hamilton is partly to thank for the genre-spanning approach that encompasses Twilight and True Blood. Hamilton helped pioneer the mix of urban fantasy/horror/supernatural/erotic/romance mysteries. Her characters come from all social classes and backgrounds, and they have varied relationships with gender and expression. “Who is the real monster,” Hamilton asks during an interview with SLM, “those who look different or those who behave poorly?”
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Having sold more than 22 million copies of books that have been translated into 16 languages, the 60-year-old author is among the top-earning writers, but the money doesn’t show. Her home in an old leafy neighborhood in St. Louis County is understated. Pride of place is given to a garden with a large lily and lotus pond.
Hamilton hides nothing about her childhood. She keeps in her living room a photograph of a dilapidated old house in Heber Springs, Arkansas. She was born there. Her father left when she was in diapers, and the last time that she saw him was at her mother’s funeral, when she was 6. “That picture reminds me of where I started,” Hamilton says. “It’s dangerous to forget what you are made of, because then you can’t fix the wound. When my mother died, my grandmother, who raised me, never recovered. I was raised haunted.” (It’s worth noting that Anita Blake is a necromancer who can raise the dead—and the character’s mother died when she was 8.)
Hamilton’s first name is a tribute to her grandmother, Laura Gentry, who the author says was tiny but stood up to her abusive husband and taught her granddaughter to always fight back. The lesson took. Hamilton studied martial arts in college and continues the practice. “I specialize in weaponry,” she says, nodding toward the sword hanging over the dining room door. “I want to be able to defend myself.” She does meticulous research, so her descriptions of violence read true. Readers tell her: “You saved me.”
“Anita helps them see they can protect themselves, as she does,” Hamilton says, “that they’re not helpless.”
Hamilton typically publishes two books per year, sometimes more. She also wrote a best-selling Marvel graphic novel series. What makes her continue working so hard? “I have to get my stories down,” she says. “How long do I have?”
For more on Hamilton’s novels and series, visit laurellkhamilton.com.
