Laurell K. Hamilton's Blog

I wrote over 400,000 words in 2024. I published over 20,000 words in 2024.  10,639 words of that was a novelette that appeared in the 100th anniversary of “Weird Tales” magazine. Thanks to Jonathan Maberry who edited it and put my name on the cover right between H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, two of my early influences as a writer. Reading Howard’s short story collection, Pigeons from Hell, when I was fourteen was what made me finally decide that not only did I want to be a writer, but I w...

 

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​I’m sitting in my office listening to the dry, sharp sound of sleet hitting my roof. It sounds like sand being poured out, except wetter. Somehow my brain knows its nothing as dry and warm as sand from just listening to it. I grew up in Northern Indiana where winter is much more serious than it is here in St. Louis, Missouri. I’ve been in blizzards in a car and out of it. I’ve stood in the middle of an open field as the white out barreled down on me like a solid wall. Until that moment, I thou...

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I don’t usually make resolutions for the New Year, but I have made a goal of doing a blog a day for 2025. Is it too much? Will it fall by the wayside like gym memberships, diet plans, vows to give up smoking, or whatever we all decide we will be better with or without? This will be the third blog in three days; so far, so good. I admit that I’m beginning to worry a little that I’ll feel inspired every day for the next 362 days because today I was feeling very uninspired. Of course, I’m feeling ...

I’ve been trying to write a roundup of events for 2024, but can’t seem to manage it, because the biggest loss of the year looms too large to put it on a list with anything else. We lost my father-in-law, Art this year to Parkinson’s. It’s a terrible disease, because before it takes your life it takes pieces of you away. First the physical; Art was one of those big, strapping men who rarely got sick. He retired from the Air Force National Guard as a major. He was who taught me that the weekend so...

​I woke on New Year’s Day 2025 and was almost nervous about what bird I would see first. It’s unusual for me to feel anxious before I look to the skies for that first omen of the new year, but as I looked out the windows there was nothing. No birds, no squirrels (that was my animal of the year twice) in fact the winter bare yard was utterly quiet. I paced through the house the only human awake with the three kittens trailing me, I’d learn later that Magnus, our oldest rescue at 6, was tucked up ...

I’m so excited to answer all your burning questions for SLAY and Anita Blake!I  will be a guest of The Big Thrill on December 2nd and 4;00pm PT / 6:00pm CT !This will be a Zoom webinar and only the first 500 attendees will be able to get in.The link is HTTPS://bit.ly/4684JHV and the passcode is :058572This link will become active on the 2nd of December. [image error] If you’d like to submit questions ahead of the event, reach out to [email protected] with the subject line “SLAY VIRTUAL EVE...

Episode 214: Vampires, Werewolves, and Shapeshifters with Laurell K. Hamilton

The post Podcast Update: That Witch Life Ep. 214 appeared first on Laurell K. Hamilton.

To all the Veterans and those who love them, 

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My cousin’s war was Vietnam. I don’t know what happened to him, but from things I heard he came back earlier than expected. I don’t truly know why, just bits of my uncles talking when they didn’t think I was old enough to remember or understand. He seemed sad, that I remember. Whatever happened while he was gone it changed him, but like my uncles before him about their own wars no one talked about it at least not with little girls or women in gen...

[image error]“My first Anita Blake novel, Guilty Pleasures, was rejected over two hundred times.”[image error]

            October of 1993 Guilty Pleasures hit the shelves. It was the very first Anita Blake adventure. After over two hundred rejections from almost every publisher possible and moments when I wasn’t sure I’d ever publish another book, I finally had the first book in my series published, and better yet I knew there’d be at least two more, because I had my first multi book contract. When I signed ...

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I saw my heart on a monitor today. It was beating away, keeping me alive. I got to watch the red, blue, and yellow flashes of my blood flow while Emily, the technician, took still photos to show my cardiologist. Green doesn’t mean go here, and red doesn’t mean stop. Red and blue are indications of speed and tell Emily  if the blood is flowing towards her or away. It’s mostly all red and blue, but the flashes of yellow are where the blood is flowing fastest, speeding through the valves of my hea...