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 a a guest.
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Mindy: We’re here with Laurell K. Hamilton, the best selling author of gosh, let's see how many books at this point?
Laurell: Well, I'm writing my 41st, so 40 novels.
Mindy: Wow, that is, that is seriously impressive. I'm on 12 and that feels good. So I can't imagine 40.
Laurell: My goal is to have the same amount in one series that the Nero Wolfe books by Rex Stout, which is 70 something.
Mindy: Your newest series is coming out for the first time in 20 years - a new series, which begins with A Terrible Fall of Angels, is the title of the first one. It deals with angels and demons and angelology, which just draws me in immediately because I am a huge fan of angelology and just kind of got pulled into that when I was in college actually. So if you'd like to talk a little bit about the new series and about the new book, A Terrible Fall of Angels.
Laurell: A Terrible Fall of Angels is set in modern America. It's all over the world. But this book is set in America. The main character is detective Zaniel Havelock who is a member of the metaphysical coordination unit, also known as the Heaven and Hell squad. If you have a crime that has angelic or demonic overtones, that's who you want to call. Especially Daniel because Daniel is an angel speaker. He was trained at the College of Angels to be able to communicate with the highest order of angels, not everybody can train up with the highest order of angels and survive intact. He was one of their shining stars as a pupil, but something tragic happened and he felt he could no longer serve there. He left at age 20. And he lived there since he was seven. It's like a cloistered order. So he left. He could speak with angels and do all sorts of wonderful mystical things. But he'd never seen a computer, didn't know how to fill out a job application.
So six ft three walks past a recruiter station for the Army and the recruiter goes, young man, may I speak with you? So he joined the Army, did a tour there and now he is a police detective, but he can still speak with angels because this is a world where everyone knows that heaven and hell have a treaty. They have agreed not to do Armageddon and destroy the world. But there are rules, how many demons can come up, how much tormenting can they do. There are ways both sides can break the treaty, but it's primarily on hell's shoulders, what will break the treaty and what will not. And if the treaty is broken, then literally the end of the world happens. So the metaphysical coordination unit and other units like it around the world helped keep this from happening. But Zaniel was the only angel speaker to be fully trained and to leave voluntarily to go out in the larger world.
That old saying you don't know you're in a cult until you leave? Well, Zaniel didn't realize that the College of angels really is a cult, or that's how other people see it. There's been a tell all documentary on people trying to get their Children back. It's very interesting to have him be my eyes on the world. One of the other detectives, she says - you say things like you're in all old fogey, like you should be somebody's grandpa. And he says, well, I was raised with people saying things like that. Because working with the angels lengthens your life. So some of the people teaching have been up there for a very long time and nobody talks about it. Nobody talks about it much at the school. You're not supposed to talk about it outside the school that dealing with the angels and living at the College of Angels actually lengthens your lifetime a great deal. If you look at the old testament, you have several people that are living over 100 - that's mentioned more than once.
Mindy: And so what brought you to this idea of working specifically with angels and demons? Because you've obviously worked in those areas before in the realm of the paranormal and the urban fantastical elements. Why this time angels and demons specifically?
Laurell: You know, I've been asked that and I don't have a good answer because literally the idea for this book - I was, to my knowledge, I was not reading, watching or studying on angels. I had like one book, one or two books on it, but it wasn't an area of study. I'm not into angelology, I wasn't raised Christian or any of the other religions of the book. I really didn't have a background in it. But suddenly out of nowhere, almost 10 years ago a line came to me - there were angel feathers in the dead woman's bed. I thought, wow, that's a great first line. So I wrote it down on a sticky note and I put it up on my wall in my office. And what I find is that if I put something in a note and put it on a piece of paper and I put it in a file, if I don't periodically go through the files, I forget about it. But if I put it up on my wall where I pass by it every day - if I pass by too much, I don't see it anymore. So you have to move it around a little to make sure every once in a while that it refreshes.
But this one I kept coming back to, I thought it was a short story. In 2014, I was still actively writing the Merry Gentry series and the Anita Blake series. But this idea wouldn't leave me alone. So I thought you know what, I'll sit down, I'll write it. Maybe it's a short story I can get out of my mind and the creative logjam will be undone. I almost wrote the first chapter At one setting and I thought this is a book, not only this is a book of a series and I think I cannot do three series. I want to, but I cannot do it. Please.
So I put it in a file and then I wrote the ninth Merry Gentry book, A Shiver of Light. And then in 2020 I picked it back up. I thought I'm finally ready. I've done Suckerpunch, which was the 27th Anita Blake novel, and finished it up. Now I can go to it. And then 2020 happened. And I've never had a book so interrupted partly because of everything that was happening in the world, partly because I sent Suckerpunch off to be edited just as lockdown happened. And my editor and everybody at my publishing house was barred from their building. Everything changed, the edits took longer.
So it interrupted the book and I had to put it aside for A Terrible Fall of Angels. And then I went back to it and then I had this great idea because one of things all the fans told me is one of things that was helping them through lockdown was reading my books, giving them a refuge. It gave them a place to be when they couldn't leave where they were. I contacted my editor and said, can I do an extra book, like a small book like Micah or Jason? She says, well can you? Can you do that and then meet your other deadlines? I suppose I think I can, that's how we got Rafael. Unfortunately, or fortunately Rafael ended up being long enough, it could have been a main book. It was not short like Jason and Micah , the way I was hoping it would be, I loved Rafael, I love the world building with the where rats and Rafael has been a character from the beginning. He deserved a bigger book. It was great. But again, delays. Went back to A Terrible Fall of Angels then had to stop for edits on Rafael finally sat down with it. The world is still in chaos.
And I believe that all the stops and starts and all the delays helped make this book a much lighter book. It's a dark book. I mean, you have demons and you fight demons and everything, but you also have the angels and the angels are very present and positive magic, not just the angels, but positive magic. In Wiccan you have spirit guides and you have totems and you have all this positive spiritual help that is around all of us. And it's this idea that we are not alone. We are not isolated. There's help at hand and that you know, the deity, the universe, they really do want us to be happy and to feel positive and to be uplifted instead of down with this heaviness that we all seem to be fighting against lightly.
Mindy: Very, very true. I know that a lot of writers really struggled over Covid. I think I discovered that when I am moving out in the world and interacting with people, I'm drawing energy from them. And when I come back to sit down, that energy is coming back out in the form of my writing. And when I couldn't go out and move among people and draw energy, I would sit down in front of my laptop already drained, unable to produce something. Motivation wasn't necessarily a problem. I would just literally sit down and be like, I am too tired to do this.
Laurell: I think that a lot of us, even those of the introverts, have found that that little exchange of just going out and doing errands and exchanging with real people really is more of a social exchange than we thought it was. I didn't have any trouble writing at the beginning. But then I had just finished like I said about 27 and I brought book 28 and this is a series I've been writing for for decades. So that helped. But then in writing A Terrible Fall of Angels, you know, the impetus of the deadline helped light a fire under me. And also exploring a new world was both very much harder than I remembered it, and also energizing at the same time that it's hard and I was doing pretty well. I was giving people extra stories and I wanted to do that. I was reaching out to people through my writing. And I also edited my first anthology during all of this Fantastic Hope with my co editor, William McCaskey. And you know, there's an original Anita Blake story in it and there's a lot of great stories and boy did we need an anthology of hopeful stories.
And then it's now. Now I'm having more trouble. I'm writing the next Anita Blake novel, book 29. I've never had so much trouble writing Anita in my entire life. I thought we'd be out by now. You know, I thought we'd be back to some semblance of normality and now I am drained, now because all the things I normally do between books I haven't been able to do. I usually go and visit certain friends that I haven't been able to because of where they are. I go to the ocean and I was able to go briefly. But then well where I was, it was like - get out before the airport's closed! It wasn't that bad. It felt that bad. It felt that kind of urgency. As much as I love my house, my office and my beautiful garden and yard. And may I just say the garden and the water garden has been a godsend because I'm beginning to understand why people had walled gardens and spent some time with it. Because most people for most of history. If you traveled 20 miles away from home, that was a long way. Your garden really was a refuge, a place where you could go and relax.
Mindy: Yes. And I've always felt that way about my own, my own home. I live in Ohio. I live in the middle of nowhere. Just put a deck on before Covid hit. Have a good place for a hammock and I have a pond and I have all these wonderful little nooks and crannies all around my property where I can kind of go to recharge. But when I can't leave my property, it starts to all look the same and feel, like you were saying, when you walk past something that you see every day you don't see it anymore. I love my home. I love where I'm from. I love living in the middle of nowhere. But I had already experienced true isolation by choice. And when it’s enforced isolation... I haven't been on a plane since March of 2020. It's hard. I'm used to traveling a lot, traveling for school visits and library visits and talks and speeches and keynotes and that's, that's all gone. And that has really shown me how much of an extrovert I actually am.
Laurell: Under normal circumstances for A Terrible Fall of Angels, I would have been traveling all across the country. But I made the choice. They didn't let me, but I made the choice for, I love my fans. They are so devoted. I've had people come straight from the hospital after abdominal surgery, one woman was in labor and she insisted on coming and oh my God, I have fans that I know are immunocompromised. I have fans that I know are ill. I'm not going to tempt them. I am not going to tempt them to a large group gathering under these circumstances. I just made the call for safety and caution for everybody that I would meet. Not just for me.
We tried to go to theaters as much as we can because I'm afraid they're not going to make it. And I love going to the movie theater, the whole shebang. I love getting popcorn and soda and sitting there in the space. I don't care how big my big screen is. Just like we try to, you know, get out and support our local restaurants. We were doing take away during lockdown.
Mindy: I had a book come out right at the beginning of March in 2020 and I was supposed to be gone the entire month of March, and like half of April I was not going to be home and of course that all got canceled. Good reason. We didn't really know what all was going on at the beginning. It was just like having your candle blown out. I was like, oh. I came home and kind of tried to launch a book from home, which it did fine. I think the reading has really come back. I think a lot of people have rediscovered reading. A lot of people that I know are usually big readers actually had trouble reading during COVID.
Laurell: I did too. I have trouble reading for a lot of reasons. If I'm in the middle of writing a book or editing. Oh my God, if I'm editing a book, that's where I'm at, I can't read because I edit and everybody's books I'm going well that I'd have done that differently. I can't get out of my editor mode to be able to read. If I'm writing a book, I have to be careful because I would rather read what I'm writing. So it's hard to settle, or I don't want to get up from my computer and read exactly the same kind of thing I'm writing. Every book I write pretty much is genuinely a mystery, genuinely horror, genuinely fantasy. It is genuinely magic. It is genuinely all these things. I write all my favorite genres. So it's like, what, what's left to read? I'm trying to get back to finding fantasy that is different enough from what I write that I can read it without feeling like it's a busman's holiday.
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Mindy: I have a Dalmatian who is very high maintenance and I love him very much. But he has to have a run every morning.
Laurell: Gus.
Mindy: Yes, Mr. Gus. I never used to be a runner. I started running during the shutdown because I knew it would get bad if I didn't.
Laurell: Congratulations.
Mindy: Thank you. It was a smart move. It was a good move. I was lucky enough to live isolated so I can and it's not a problem for anyone.
Laurell: I've wanted a Dalmatian since I was 12. I love the Disney cartoon, but it is so much better in the book. I read Dodie Smith's 101 Dalmatians 20 plus times. I'm not joking in the summer, one summer when I was 12. I wanted a Dalmatian from that time on. But I did my research. I'm not a runner. I'm not a jogger and it's over 100 degrees here and we're on pavement. It's too hot for the dog to run on. I am not a good owner for a Dalmatian. I know that I have to accept that the dog would be miserable. And in the right hands. I believe every breed in the right hands and the right family is a great dog. So many people, they treat the choice of a family member that is going to be with you, hopefully for at least 15 years, they treat it with less concern, less research, less thought than they do picking out an outfit.
Mindy: It's pretty, I want the pretty one.
Laurell: Yeah, I know. All puppies are cute.
Mindy: Oh, they are, They're all adorable. I had done the research too and I had decided I did not want a Dalmatian. Well, I didn't even want a puppy. I was like, I'm adopting an adult from the pound. All my dogs have been pound dogs before. Well, this was during Covid and everybody had gone and adopted a dog and literally the only dogs left were like, has killed will kill again. Like there was nobody else. And I actually tried, I brought a dog home and one of my cats attempted to jump out of a closed second story window. It was just like, no, I'm, I'm just doing it. I'm leaving here any way I can.
And then my sister was, she was buying pigs from a farm family in the next county over. And they were like, we also have free kittens and Dalmatian puppies. My sister sent me pictures of the puppies and I was like, oh God, I don't think I can do it. I got him at eight weeks and we started running at eight weeks and he is so dang smart. When we're running he runs to my right side and when a car comes, he breaks his stride and goes single file behind me and then comes around and goes up to the right and like never clips my heels. Never, I don't have to break stride at all.
Laurell: Wow, that's impressive. He's so smart. I always say wonderful things about dogs. So I love my Japanese chins but they were never really jogging companions. I keep thinking maybe adopting an older Dalmatian. But we have small dogs and we have cats and some Dalmatians can have a very high prey drive. We rescued one of our cats when she was at least six and the vet thinks she may have been 10. So she's getting up there and I'm not going to bring anything into the house that could be potentially dangerous for her. She's a grizzly bear. Griselda is her name but she has a really deep throaty purr. Had she not answered to her name, I wanted to name her Eartha Kitty. She has this great throaty torch singer purr. But she answered to her name.
Mindy: Yeah, I mean if you are still interested in a Dalmatian at some point, I can tell you that Mr. Gus is very laid back. Yesterday I watched him run down like a bird that wasn't quite flying yet and it couldn't take off. But then it's like he caught up to it. He was just like mom, there's a thing over here, he was not going to put it in his mouth. Hey mom! I feel like there's no violence in this animal. There's none.
Laurell: You just never know though. Prey drive is a natural thing. You can work around it and train around it. But how much prey driving an animal has? That's natural. So you lucked out.
Mindy: Yep, I did. He is a perfect boy and he knows it. He's looking at me right now when I say the phrase perfect boy, he's just like, yep, that's me.
Laurell: Well you and Gus are meant for each other. Now, he's been raised with you not traveling. It's going to be really hard on him.
Mindy: It's gonna be super, super hard. I was actually gone two weekends ago. I had a ComicCon and then this past weekend I spoke at a library conference. So I was gone the past two weekends and he was devastated. But he stays with my mom, he has a second home, he has 2nd and 3rd homes actually, so he does okay. Last thing, why don't you let listeners know where they can find you online and where they can find the book A Terrible Fall of Angels?
Laurell: Well, A Terrible Fall of Angels is available pretty much everywhere. My website Laurell K Hamilton dot com and I am Official underscore K Hamilton for Instagram. Twitter, I’m L K Hamilton, L. K. H. Underscore official is also for Tiktok, I'm pretty active online. With the lockdown, everything online is now part of the job. It's like the business has changed and I really think this is going to be a permanent change. A Terrible Fall of Angels is out everywhere bookstores and online. I'm getting a lot of love from fans and new fans and a lot of people said they were intimidated because they Anita Blake series was like 28 novels so long, so big. They're saying, oh, thank you for starting a new one. It's like, okay, trust me, the water is fine, come on in.
Mindy: Writer Writer Pants on Fire is produced by Mindy McGinnis. Music by Jack Korbel. Don't forget to check out the blog for additional interviews, writing advice and publication tips at Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com. If the blog or podcast have been helpful to you or if you just enjoy listening, please consider donating. Visit Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com and click “support the blog and podcast” in the sidebar.