by Jennifer Harrison

Created on: March 02, 2010

Laurell Kaye Hamilton is best known for her New York Times Best Selling Anita Blake series, featuring the scintillating life of Anita Blake, Necromancer /Federal Marshal and the Vampires and Were-Animals in the city of St. Louis, Missouri. 

In 1994, Hamilton brought us her Vampire Huntress, Anita Blake, in her third novel Guilty Pleasures.  Though it wasn't hugely popular at first, Blake's witty humor, no-nonsense attitude and exploits between the sheets earned Hamilton a fan base grasping for something new in the largely covered vampire genre. Hamilton has now penned seventeen Anita Blake novels.

Her interests didn't always involve Vampires and the macabre.  "I wanted to be Louisa May Alcott, who wrote Little Women, because I had never read any science fiction, fantasy, or horror," she said in a podcast on Mayor Slay.com.

Hamilton says on her website, "[I] Found the short story collection, PIGEONS FROM HELL by Robert E. Howard the creator of Conan the Barbarian when I was thirteen, or fourteen. It was the first dark fantasy and heroic fantasy I'd ever read. In that moment I knew not only did I want to be a writer, but this is what I wanted to write."

What many may not know is that at the age of thirteen or fourteen, Laurell K. Hamilton had also read Charlotte's Web where she then gained a love of language.  She admittedly still uses techniques learned from that book.   

Hamilton attended Marion (Indiana Wesleyan University), and by the end of her sophomore year had been kicked out of the creative writing program due to the nature of her stories.  Rather than accepting her for who she was, the head of the department told her she was a corrupting influence on the other students.

After leaving the creative writing program, it was another two years before Hamilton was able to write another story.

In 2000 Laurell K. Hamilton penned another, just as fascinating series, focusing on the life of Meredith NicEssus, a Faerie Princes/Private Investigator.  Merry, the only Sidhe (pronounced "shee") royal to have ever been born on American soil, fears the continuous assassination attempts on her life thinly disguised as duels.  She flees the Unseelie Court in a final act of self-preservation and takes on the name Meredith Gentry.  In this series, Faeries are not only known to the general public, but are also highly fashionable.

Hamilton has published thirty-four novels to date, several Anita Blake comic books and continues to work on more. 

Today, Hamilton resides in St. Louis, Missouri with her husband, Jonathon Green, her daughter Trinity and their dog, Sasquatch.

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