Burnt Offerings - Laurell K. Hamilton [178]
I never intended Nathaniel to be Anita’s boyfriend, of any description, let alone her live-in lover. Surprised the hell out of me. The only relationship that ever surprised me more was Micah, but he’s new in the book he appears in; Nathaniel just sort of crept into our minds and hearts.
He is that person who has had everything go wrong for him, almost. He’s one of those people who should be dead by now in some tragic way, but in the world of fiction I could save him. He is in part based on people I interviewed or knew of in real life, and some of them have vanished. But Nathaniel has not. He has remained in the series, in my world, and he has grown as a character and a person. Anita loves him. He has changed for her, because she demanded it of him. But when you are in love, really in love, you are changed by it. In trying to help Nathaniel change, Anita has changed herself. They have grown together.
I love Asher and Nathaniel, and I never intended either of them to be major players. I certainly never intended them to be Anita’s lovers, let alone for her to love them.
I think that this is what I do differently from most other writers of series: I create characters with each book that are new, fresh, and exciting, and that intrigue me. With each book new people come on stage to fascinate me and my characters. I am never afraid to add to my cast.
Now, as a writer that makes my job harder in some ways—it’s quite a job to juggle everyone. But as a reader, it keeps me happy. It keeps me interested. It keeps me guessing. When I finish this essay I will go back to work on the sixteenth book. I am a little more than two hundred pages into it, and already I have learned new things about a character who has been in the series since book four, The Lunatic Café. Which character? Jason, who is introduced in that book and is on stage in every other book from that point on except for book nine, Obsidian Butterfly. See, my characters are like real people to me. If you’re really paying attention to your friends and the people you love, they grow, they change, they shock and surprise you. Your fictional friends should be that real, too. Real enough to make you say, “Oh, my God, I didn’t know that!”
That’s the magic, that my imaginary friends surprise the hell out of me over and over again.
Table of Contents
Cover
Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter novels by Laurell K. Hamilton
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Afterword