St Louis- Laurell Hamilton was watching Walt Disney's "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" at home with Trinity, her 2-year-old daughter. The horror writer panicked: Was Hunchback going to die? "I was thinking, 'Please don't let me have to explain permanent night-night,' " Hamilton groaned.

If she finds it tough to explain death to the toddler set, it is clear that she is having no trouble explaining the facts of life- and death- to grownups. In fact, Laurell Hamilton is giving birth to a new genre of fantasy-horror-mysteries with a quirky, original heroine, Anita Blake, a licensed vampire executioner who also raises the dead.

In Hamilton's world, the dead can be raised- at least temporarily- from their graves with a little assistance from a chicken or something in the form of a blood sacrifice. Hamilton's zombies- the people raised from the dead- then answer questions about disputed wills and estate conflicts or identify their murderers to the police.

Throw in a werewolf and a master vampire vying for Anita's love and it is the stuff of this new genre of fiction that is getting hot these days.

Anne Rice may not be in danger of getting pushed off her throne in the vampire world but Laurell Hamilton is one of the new, original writers pushing for a seat next to the queen.

Hamilton's books are gaining readers and going into multiple printings, benefiting both from a momentum built up over the continuing series, a repackaging of her books (earlier covers featured cheesy-looking monsters) and a popular stint answering readers' questions on-line with Compuserves's author forum.

Laurell Hamilton has made herself quite a comfortable niche. Uncle Hugo's Science Fiction Bookstore in Minneapolis put "Bloody Bones" on his 'recommended' shelf. Last month it was the top seller at the mega-store.

Book No. 6 is due out in 1997, and New York-based publishing house Putnam Berkely has already bought the next three.

To Hamilton, 33, random cruelty is scarier than any invention of her imagination.

"You can't arm yourself against a quirk of fate," she said. "We are a dice roll away from disaster for no reason. I find that very hard to accept. The world is so harsh that I prefer to see it through a patina of fantasy and horror, where the monsters are not as savage or grim as the monsters in real life."

She knows the cruel twists fate can take. Hamilton's father deserted her and her mother months after she was born in Hebrew Springs, Ark. Hamilton's mother was killed six years later in a car crash in Sims, Ind.

After the family was notified, Hamilton remembers walking to an uncle's house through tiny Sims with her grandmother hysterically "wailing and keening."

"When the neighbors asked what had happened, I was the one who said, 'My mommy died on the way home from work.' "

Hamilton's uncle subsequently took the 6-year-old to see the wrecked car. She remembers crawling inside, "touching the bloodstains. No one protected me from that. I did not flinch. I remember all the details."

The trauma taught her immediately that adults could not protect her from disaster, Hamilton said.

"It made me who I am today. The false sense of safety that all children have, the idea that their parents can protect them from everything, was taken away from me at such a young age. It leaves a hole that is never filled."

Next
Home

---

This page hosted by Get your own Free Home Page