Skin Trade Release

Anita Blake 17 - Skin Trade - is due for release tomorrow (June 2, 2009) and I have already pre-ordered my copy. I am very excited. With The Harlequin and Blood Noir, Laurell K Hamilton got back to what made the series great in the first place and I cannot wait to see where Skin Trade will take the story.

I curious to see what will happen now that Jason is Anita's wolf to call and also what develops with Haven and Crispin. Hopefully my copy, will be in my hands within a few days so I can read all about it.

Post your comments and let me know where you think the story is leading now.

My Anita Blake Obsession

My first glimpse of Anita’s world came when I borrowed Guilty Pleasures from my cousin about 5 years ago. I fell immediately in love with the storyline. Anita is such a tough and dramatic character. She, and the fact that her world is filled with magic and supernatural creatures, hooked me from chapter one!

My love of the Anita Blake series was a given. I have always had a love for horror fiction; and Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and Anne Rice got me started in that genre. Books about the supernatural, monsters, and scary tales have always been right up my alley.

Vampires have always been my favorite supernatural creatures. There is something so seductive about them. The myths, and most novels, portray them as living on the fringes of human existence - being of the world, but not really part of it. The focus of the Anita Blake series is preternatural creatures living alongside humans, with jobs, families, and emotional baggage to boot. Laurell K Hamilton portrays them as monsters, yes, but also as people. To me, that premise is fascinating, and is what attracted me to the series so strongly.

My favorite aspect of the series is learning more about the vampire and lycanthrope communities. Vampire politics and grandstanding, and the wolf pack hierarchy are so interesting to read about. Laurell K Hamilton blends them into the story so seamlessly and the characters seem so real. The series is an alternate reality storyline that is so believable and entertaining.

Well, that’s how my Anita obsession got started. I do have to say, when I first started reading the Anita series, the books were a cross between horror, fantasy, and science fiction, with a little hard-boiled detective mystery thrown into the mix. Since the tenth book, Narcissus In Chains, Laurell K Hamilton has broadened her mixed-genre novels to include a more erotic storyline.

Many fans feel that this has detracted from the original premise and tough characteristics of Anita. I agree with that to a certain extent. The wonderful storyline is still there. It is just thrown in with all the erotic scenes. Anita Blake 15, The Harlequin, was more like the early novels (less sex and a lot more action) so I still have a lot of hope for the series. While I do wish Laurell K Hamilton would tone the gratuitous sex down, I still think the Anita Blake series is the best one of its kind and I will continue to read it for as long as the books are being written.

I’m patiently waiting for Anita Blake 16. Through Laurell’s blog, I’ve learned it will be about my favorite werewolf in the series, Jason. I hope we get to learn of Jason’s past and more about the inner workings of the pack.

If you are interested, I have been busy creating some new Anita Blake fan sites. Told you I was obsessed! LOL You can find the links in the sidebar to the right. I hope you’ll visit these sites and let me know what you think!

Happy reading,

~ Crystal Booth

Announcing a Guilty Pleasure

Article by: Colleen Mondor - www.chasingray.com

So in the midst of all my reading and writing about Sylvia Plath and after reviewing Seth Kantner's impressive Ordinary Wolves for Bookslut, along with the very political photojournalism book Unembedded and the very literary collection Writers on the Air, I took a break for a delicious guilty pleasure: A Stroke of Midnight.

That's right, I've been reading Laurell K. Hamilton.

Here's the thing about Laurell K. - she has been writing her Anita Blake Vampire Executioner books for over a decade now and started the Meredith Gentry dark fairy tale series several years ago as well. She gets a ton of flack because a lot of the stuff that goes on in these books is either really really violent or really really sexy. I think I need to emphasize that sexy part - we're talking full on erotica type sexy here. When I worked in a bookstore the employees always had their little jokes about the folks who bought Hamilton's books (or any book with any kind of romance in it that wasn't literary enough to impress them) but I was buying her stuff even then. I think it's great that people in dark leather pants with guns and swords are whacking people's heads off and then getting it on - I can't help it, Laurell K. Hamilon is officially my guilty pleasure!

(Why do I feel like I just stepped out of some sort of closet or something?)

For the record, A Stroke of Midnight has a lot of very interesting fairy politics going on - I think it's one of the stronger entries in the Gentry series and I was probably more hooked on who was plotting to kill who then I was on the sex (shocking - I know!). But there's a good story here, good characters, cool folklore and imaginary world development. It's all very well done. I've been disappointed by the last few Anita Blake books but Hamilton has me back with this one, and hopefully she will get the Anita books back on track (at least to me) as well. Regardless how I feel about them though, she has a ton of fans and the one thing that always bugged me in the bookstore was that somehow these fans are not considered as respectable - or impressive maybe - as, say Michael Ondaatje's or Julian Barnes's. It bothered me then, but weirdly I still feel like I have to justify a Hamilton purchase. It's almost like I feel compelled to tell the clerk (or all of you now) that I also own (and have read) The Seven Pillars of Wisdom or Samantha Powers's A Problem From Hell. I want the world to know that I read Hemingway, and Zora Neale Hurston and I just got Rachel Carson for my birthday. I read books that matter, I swear! I just like the occasional fun, smart, sexy and violent book as well (not that T.E. Lawrence's book wasn't violent as hell - or Powers's as well).

Why do I feel like I have to explain myself? Why can't I just take my reading pleasure where I find it and to hell with everyone else?

You'd think I'd be over the need to impress anyone about books by now but still I can't seem to help it. Here's something funny - all my Hamilton books are behind a framed picture on my bookshelves, and the war books are facing out front and center. I didn't even realize I was doing that when I put everything a way 6 months ago. It's bizarre and embarrassing that I still don't feel grown up enough to "own" my reading choices.

So - it's official - I love Laurell K. Hamilton! I like vampire books! I like fairy books! I like sex!

gulp....I might need to take a break now. I think I have blogged too much........

Colleen Mondor is a reviewer for Booklist, Bookslut, Eclectica Magazine and the Voices of New Orleans. I also write fiction and listen to great music. This site is all about the literary world and my place within it.

Harry Potter Meet Anita Blake

Article by: Colleen Mondor - www.chasingray.com

Okay, I've admitted in the past to my deep and possibly sick love for world that is Anita Blake Vampire Hunter. I just finished reading the latest in the series, Danse Macabre, and as a longtime fan I have to say it is some of Laurell K Hamilton's best writing. I know, I know, it's all sex (I mean a godawful ton of sex this time) but it's also all about the politics of this strange little group of vampires, lycanthropes, necromancers and hey - this time we've got merepeople!!! - who populate Hamilton's alternate universe. Anita kills vampires, except the ones she having some mind blowing sex with, and she also runs a wolf pack with a werewolf whose in therapy and she lives with a couple of guys who adore her and love her and just have issues once a month during the full moon (wereleopard and werewolf in case you're wondering).

But I digress.

While I was reading Danse I was still thinking about all of this Harry Potter business and will Rowling kill Harry or not - or will she kill Ron or Hermione or the Weasleys or Hagrid or someone else that is going to make fourth graders all over the world break into tears. I'm still on the side of the happily ever after and in response to everyone (and my cousin) who say you need the real world and the violence and death that we find in the real world against real evil to bring this whole saga home, well - I say take a lesson from Anita Blake!

Anita's life is all about life or death and she goes up against a big nasty practically every time she gets out of bed. Someone's always trying to kill her or someone close to her and she carries guns and knives for a reason - because she needs them. There is a lot of violence in this series, (we're talking tons of body ripping violence) and Hamilton goes out of her way to show that vampires might be sexy but a lot of them are just plain nasty and need to die. But - and this is a very big but - the core group soldiers on. They get banged up and bashed around and have a lot of bloody bruised moments but they still come back to fight again. In Danse Anita finally has a moment where she realizes just how nasty her world has become:

When I was younger, I'd wanted someone to promise me that things would work out and nothing bad would ever happen again. But I understood now that that was a child's wish. No one could promise that. No one. The grown-ups could try, but they couldn't promise, not and mean it. I stood there between the two of them, and knew that I would do whatever it took to keep them safe, to keep them happy. I'd been willing to kill for the people I loved for a very long time; now I had to start living for them.

The point is that she always fights for them - they always fight for each other and now they just have to learn to live in the middle of all that fighting. Hamilton sees that the living is crucial because she knows she has a good thing going with this crew and she always brings them back for more. Now, before everyone screams at me that the two series don't compare and that Hamilton is a hack (or something equally vicious), just consider that maybe I'm not totally insane. I read heavy stuff all the time (The Seven Pillars of Wisdom baby and it was harder than hell!) and I know that Israel is getting World War III going as we speak, while Iraq is going to hell and Afghanistan is becoming the war we should not have ignored. I know this. But Danse Macabre is great escapist fiction. Its got wonderful dialogue, grown-up sexy fun and plenty of satisfying humor and violence. It's candy in a world that needs candy. And Harry Potter is the same thing for a younger crowd. Anita dies and it ruins every book that came before because all you will be thinking about is that she is dead. Do that to Harry and you have the same problem - you can't go back because you know he is dead. I'm telling ya, it won't work and to avoid it, Harry needs to learn from the master just how he should fight the big bad and survive.

Harry Potter, I think it's time you got to know Anita Blake. One way or another, she will rock your world. I guarantee it.

Colleen Mondor is a reviewer for Booklist, Bookslut, Eclectica Magazine and the Voices of New Orleans. I also write fiction and listen to great music. This site is all about the literary world and my place within it.

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Colleen Mondor has really captured the feeling of Laurell K hamilton in this article. A special Thank You goes out to her for allowing me to use this article.

Laurells Biography

Laurell's grandmother, Laura Gentry, was responsible for Laurell's interests in things that go bump in the night. Mrs. Gentry related tales of horror originating in the hills of Arkansas, the state where she grew up. From those stories Laurell got this lesson: "Rawhide and bloody bones will get you if you aren't good".

When Laurell was 13, she discover a short story collection titled "Pigeons from Hell". "It was the first heroic fantasy I'd read. It was fights, swords, monsters I decided not only did I want to become a writer, it was this I wanted to write". She chanced upon another book in the high school library " The Natural History of the Vampire". She read it so many times she nearly memorized it. When it's suggested that her choice of creepy films and stories were unseemly when her friends' companions were dolls: "I wasn't like most girls" she said.

Laurell was born in Heber Springs, Arkansas but grew up in Sims, Ind. A hamlet with a population of 100. Laurell's mother was killed in a car crash in 1969. Laurell's mother Suzie Kline and her grandmother had been the other's strength with Mrs. Gentry the one who kept the household together. Her mother's death, her grandmother's role in raising her and growing up with no male in the home are "the three things that made who I am," she says. Though she still believes she would have grown up to be a writer regardless.

Laurell K Hamilton resides in St. Louis County in Missouri with her family.

Burnt Offerings

Book 7 of the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter Series

"You can't trust anyone who sleeps with the monsters."

That's what I've always said. That's what I've always believed. But now I'm the one sharing a bed with the Master Vampire of the City. Me, Anita Blake. The woman the vampires call the Executioner. From part of the solution, I've become part of the problem.

So it hits close to home when an arsonist begins to target vampire-owned businesses all over town -- an arsonist who seems to want to destroy more than just property. It's the monsters who are in danger now. And it's up to the Executioner to save them from the inferno ...

---

As Burnt Offerings unfolds, Anita agrees to help track down a possible psychic firestarter. She's also policing the local werewolf pack, though she's split up with their alpha, Richard. Then Jean-Claude, the vampire Master of the City and her lover, needs her help to confront a visiting delegation of the vampires' ruling council. They wonder how he got the power to destroy a council member and believe him dangerous to the hierarchy.

The Killing Dance

Book 6 of the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter Series

"These days my life is a cross between a preternatural soap opera and an action adventure movie. Sort of As the Casket Turns meets Rambo."

The first hit man came after me at home, which should be against the rules. Then there was a second, and a third. Eventually, I found out that the word on the street was that Anita Blake, preternatural expert and vampire killer extraordinaire, was worth half a million dollars. Dead, not alive.

So what's a girl to do but turn to the men in her life for help? Which in my case, means an alpha werewolf and a master vampire. With professional killers on your trail, it's not a bad idea to have as much protection as possible, human or otherwise.

But I'm beginning to wonder if two monsters are better than one ...

---

Anita Blake, vampire hunter, is now herself a hunted woman. Who put the $500,000 price on her head--a man or a monster? It's not just her own skin she needs to save; the rivalry between her werewolf boyfriend, Richard, and Marcus, the other alpha werewolf in his pack, has come to full boil. And there's always Jean-Claude, the vampire who's been waiting for just the right moment to slip inside Anita's head and heart.

Dating both a vampire and a werewolf isn't easy. But just to complicate Anita's already messy life, someone has put a price on her head. Love cannot save her this time, so she turns to Edward, hitman extraordinaire, for help. But finding the person behind the threat won't be easy, because as both a vampire hunter and zombie reanimator, Anita has made a lot of enemies-both human and otherwise.

Bloody Bones

Book 5 of the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter Series

"When the monsters are involved, it's never just one dead body. One way or another the dead multiply."

First, there were the dead in the graveyard, two-hundred years dead. I'd been hired to raise them to settle a dispute over who owned the land they were buried in. Then there were the three dead teenagers in the woods, slaughtered in a way I had never seen before. And then they found the dead girl, drained of blood and left in her bed.

I knew what that meant, all right. It didn't take a degree in preternatural studies to figure out that something was very wrong in and around Branson, Missouri. And I was right in the middle of it. My name is Anita Blake. Welcome to my life...

---

When Anita Blake's boss at Animators, Inc., informs her that she's expected to raise 300-year-old zombies from a field of jumbled bones just to settle a land dispute, she's understandably annoyed. But as soon as she arrives in Branson, Missouri, to do the deed, the job gets more interesting. A psychotic sword-wielding vampire starts committing multiple murders in the area, and Anita must call on Jean-Claude, her powerful fanged suitor, for help. As always, Anita prevails over the undead, keeping Jean-Claude at arm's length, clearing the cemetery land of an ancient enchantment, and nailing the vampiric killer in one fell swoop.

Circus of the Damned

Book 3 of the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter Series

"Most women complain that there are no single, straight men left. I'd just like to meet one that's human."

I'm Anita Blake, expert on creatures of the night. I've dined with shapeshifters, danced with werewolves, and been wooed - but not won - by Jean-Claude, the Master of the City.

And now a darkly dangerous vampire named Alejandro has hit town. He wants me for his human servant. A war of the undead has begun. Over me.

---

Circus of the Damned finds Anita fighting a giant cobra and a rogue vampire, Alejandro, who wants her for his human servant. Anita is still resisting the advances of Jean-Claude, St. Louis's master vampire, but she does need him on her side, if not in her bed. Anita's reluctant involvement in the odd goings-on at the supernatural Circus of the Damned introduces her to Richard, the werewolf of her dreams, and Larry, her powerful but nervous partner in zombie-raising.

The Laughing Corpse

Book 2 of the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter Series

"The older the zombie, the bigger the death needed to raise it."

After a few centuries, the only death "big enough" is a human sacrafice. I know, because I'm an animator. My name is Anita Blake.

Working for Animators, Inc., is just a job - like selling insurance. But all the money in the world wasn't enough for me to take on the particular job Harold Gaynor was offering.

Somebody else did though - a rouge animator. Now he's not just raising the dead....he's raising Hell.

And it's up to me to stop it...

Harold Gaynor offers Anita Blake a million dollars to raise a 300-year-old zombie. Knowing it means a human sacrifice will be necessary, Anita turns him down. But when dead bodies start turning up, she realizes that someone else has raised Harold's zombie--and that the zombie is a killer. Anita pits her power against the zombie and the voodoo priestess who controls it.

Guilty Pleasures

Book 1 of the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter Series

"I don't date vampires. I kill them"

My name is Anita Blake. Vampires call me The Executioner. What I call them isn't repeatable. Ever since the Supreme Court granted the undead equal rights, most people think vampires are just ordinary folks with fangs. I know better. I've seen their victims. I carry the scars.

But now a serial killer is murdering vampires -- and the most powerful bloodsucker in town wants me to find the killer.

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Anita Blake may be small and young, but vampires call her the Executioner. Anita is a necromancer and vampire hunter in a time when vampires are protected by law--as long as they don't get too nasty. Now someone's killing innocent vampires and Anita agrees - with a bit of vampiric arm-twisting - to help figure out who and why.

Trust is a luxury Anita can't afford when her allies aren't human. The city's most powerful vampire, Nikolaos, is 1,000 years old and looks like a 10 year old girl. The second most powerful vampire, Jean-Claude, is interested in more than just Anita's professional talents, but the feisty necromancer isn't playing along - yet. This popular series has a wild energy and humor, and some very appealing characters - both dead and alive.

Overview of the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter Series

Anita Blake is an Animator and Vampire Slayer. Actually, she is a monster slayer. Though sometimes the monsters are human and even Anita is not sure she is not one of them.

Anita lives in a world very similar to our own. The difference: things that go bump in the night are real. Vampires, magic, zombies, werewolves, shapeshifters all exist and are active. Owning businesses, having love lives and living or unliving their day to day existence.

Anita works for Animators, Inc. She routinely raises zombies for a living. Have a questionable will and died? Anita can raise you for your heirs to find out what you intended. Need to tell someone how you really feel about them but they died first? Anita can bring them back long enough for you to have your say. Anita also works as a consultant for the Regional Preternatural Investigation Team (RPIT), a division of the St. Louis Police force that deals with supernatural crimes.

Of course Anita's boss at Animator's Inc, Bert Vaughn, will farm out his folks for all kinds of things; if the price is right. Though there are some things that even Bert is not willing to do for money. Unfortunately for Anita, some folks don't take NO for an answer.

Don't worry, Anita is a tough lady. She can handle a gun with the best of them. Of course some things even a weapon won't help her with. Like her love life. Too complicated for even her, she is being wooed by the Master of the City, and a Alpha werewolf. Have to be careful not to give away too much here!

Join Anita as she solves mysteries relating to all the scary things in the world. If you enjoy a good mystery, a tough female character with an attitude, spiced with creatures that only exist in the realms of fantasy, Anita Blake is what you have been searching for.

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