By Christina Radish
Quickly gaining popularity with each new novel, fans of best selling author Kim Harrison have been anxiously awaiting the release of her latest, A Fistful of Charms. The fourth installment in her highly successful Rachel Morgan series (the others of which are Dead Witch Walking; The Good, The Bad and The Undead; and Every Which Way But Dead) finds the witch and freelance investigator getting into all sorts of trouble.
Since partnering with living vampire, Ivy Tamwood, and a pixy named Jenks, the former bounty hunter has survived assassination attempts, been marked by a demon, unknowingly turned her ex-boyfriend into her familiar and fallen for an undeniably sexy vampire. As she learns what she’s capable of, and how to negotiate her relationships, Rachel fast becomes a force to be reckoned with.
“In A Fistful of Charms, Rachel and Jenks go on a road trip,” Harrison tells MediaBlvd Magazine in an exclusive interview. “I had to get them out of Cincinnati. There were a few dynamics between the main three -- Rachel, Ivy and Jenks -- that I had to take care of, and getting them out of Cincinnati was the best way that I could think to do it because then it would eliminate outside influences that I didn’t want to have to deal with. So, they go on a road trip and find there’s trouble, even outside of the big cities.”
Having grown up in the Midwest, Harrison, who grew up as the only girl in a large family of boys, has a 4-year degree in the sciences, which she finds quite useful for her writing. “I took the bare minimum of English classes that I needed to graduate, never having a clue that this is what I would end up doing. But, I read voraciously and I picked things up along the way. I’ve been writing for about 11 years now. I read two books, in a row, that I did not like the ending to. At that point, I sat down and said, ‘Oh, gosh, I can do better than this.’ Well, I couldn’t, but I tried, and I found out that I really loved putting down ideas and thoughts, and seeing where things could go. With just one different little inflection, you could take a new path. And, I fell in love with it. So, I worked on that for about four years before we moved, and then I found an absolutely spectacular writer’s group. I got to know an already published author through that, who helped me improve my work. When my work was ready, we got it in front of an agent -- Richard Curtis -- and he picked me up.”
{quote_top}Desperate to break into print, Harrison opted to take a year off from writing novels to try the short story route, which is where Rachel originated. “I was looking at the short stories that were in the market at the time, and they were really weird. I thought, ‘You want something weird, I’ll give you something weird.’ I wrote the most bizarre characters I could think of, melding them with the girl-next-door, which was Rachel, and I got what became the first chapter for Dead Witch Walking. It made the rounds and didn’t sell, and I shoved it in a drawer. Then, about a year later, I took it back out and realized that the reason it didn’t sell was because it wasn’t a short story, it was the first chapter of a novel. So, I worked it into a full blown novel, and it’s been growing like a monster since then.”
Only moments after Harrison began to develop Rachel, she says that Ivy and Jenks followed right behind. “They were a group of three and they’re going to stay a group of three. I can’t break them up. They are a unit. Rachel is telling the story, but all three of them are intertwined so closely that, if you take one out, it’s going to fall apart. I can’t write without all three.”
With four Rachel novels on store shelves, and currently under contract for at least five more books, Harrison is thrilled to be writing the open-ended series. “I’ve fallen absolutely in love with the characters and the world, and a lot of that had to do with my editor. She just brought out the best in me. The manuscript that she bought is nothing like what’s on the shelf right now. She really helped me with it. I swear, I know my characters better than my real neighbors. They’re facets of people that I see around me, and a lot of facets of myself, and things I’d like to be. I like to say that Jenks is me, cursing at the guy who cuts me off in traffic. Ivy is the way I organize. Rachel is the way I live my life.”
Drawing much of her inspiration for the characters from the music that she listens to, instead of from books, Harrison admits that she was not very well read in the paranormal and dark/urban fantasy genre. “I mostly read science fiction, with some traditional fantasy. I was not aware of what everybody else was doing. I just wrote what I wanted to, and if it started tending towards what someone else was doing, my editor would say, ‘This has already been done. You might want to do something else.’ But, that didn’t come up as often as you might think, which is part of the reason why my editor picked my work up. It was coming from a fresh, new perspective without being tainted with the little things that all the other books are just taking for granted.”
Aside from Rachel, the character that comes easiest for Harrison is Jenks, with Ivy being the most difficult for her to write for. “I hate to say it, but Jenks is probably the closest to my personality, apart from Rachel. I try not to show him very much. Ivy is so dark, so messed up, and has so many issues that she’s working through. I’m not like her at all. My short story in Dates From Hell, ‘Undead in the Garden of Good and Evil,’ is from her point of view, and that one really messed me up. I was not fun to live with, during the time that I was writing that. It showed me, right then and there, that if there was a spin-off series, it would not be from Ivy’s point of view. I love her to death. I want her to be happy. But, she has to figure it out on her own. I’m not going to be the one who’s going to write it because she’s too messed up.”
One of the things that makes Rachel so unique, as a character, is her mixture of vulnerability and toughness. “That was nothing I consciously planned out. I think it’s evolved from her character. She’s always had the toughness, and she’s always had the vulnerability, even from the first page, but as she’s been going along and gathering strength, wisdom and the tools to get through what’s coming at her, she’s had to become more tough, and that, in turn, has made her more vulnerable.”
As Rachel delves deeper into her darkside in A Fistful of Charms, her struggle to remain true to herself is something that she’ll be dealing with for awhile. “I am fighting her on this. I am trying to keep her as close to who she wants to be as I can. But, circumstances keep pulling her this other way. Even as the author, I can’t stop it. She’s sliding that way. The only thing I can do is start to give her tools to deal with it.”
{quote_middle}Preferring to plot out the stories, two to three books ahead of what’s available on store shelves, Harrison says that she likes to know where a story is headed, so that she can take advantage of the surprises when they come along. “About two or three times in the story, I get thrown a curve ball, and I curse, I shout, I yell and I throw my careful plotting into the trash and re-plot, from that point out. It usually happens about page 100, and usually somewhere around 300 or 400. I’m getting better at accepting it and working around it.”
Even with all of her plotting, the one thing that Harrison admits that she just can’t plot, even though she has tried, are Rachel’s relationships, which helps keep the series fresh for her, as a writer. “There’s two methods to writing: the plotting out, which is what I love, and then there’s by the seat of the pants. By leaving Rachel’s relationships to be written by the seat of the pants, that helps keep it fresh for me, and for the readers.”
It’s her unpredictable love life that keeps reader’s guessing as to who Rachel will give her heart to. Remembering, with a laugh, what it was like to write her first sex scene, in The Good, The Bad and The Undead, Harrison says that she had to learn to spice things up.
“My editor came to me and said, ‘This is nice, but can you punch it up a bit?’ Since then, I have found that I really do enjoy writing the sex scenes. I think they’re fun. It surprised the heck out of me that, not only was I able to write one, but I enjoyed it and, apparently, I’m hitting all the right buttons. I have found the level of bedroom play that I like with the series, and I don’t see any reason to change it. It’s just enough. The sex is not why I’m writing the books.”
While all of the multi-layered elements of Harrison’s work are attracting legions of devoted readers, it does make it tougher to know where to classify it on book store shelves. “I have heard from people who have found the books in the horror section, even though it’s not horror. I’ve seen it shelved in the romance and, again, there’s elements of romance, but it isn’t romance. There’s a science fiction bend. It takes place in the near future, but I’m clearly dealing with fantasy elements, with witches, pixies and elves. The genre is also not really paranormal. I was happy when they just put fiction on the spine. Where I would like to see it shelved would be the best seller rack, up front. Usually, they are put by Laurell K. Hamilton, which is great because the people who read Hamilton would like my work. But, I’ve seen them all over the place and I really, honestly, don’t know where they should be put. I describe my work as dark or contemporary fantasy.”
As book sales increase, and the positive reviews come pouring in, the pressure that builds would be enough to stress out any author. But, Harrison says that she’s been able to cultivate a mind-set where, when she sits down at the computer, she can focus on her writing and not let those outside factors figure in.
“I had somebody who would consistently read me reviews, right before I went to bed, which was really a problem. I couldn’t get to sleep because the pressure was on. So, we had a talk and I told him, ‘I know you’re doing this because you’re excited, but you don’t see what it’s doing to me,’ so he doesn’t do that anymore. I tend not to look at the reviews at all now. If a bad one comes up, I will look at that one because I like poking fun at them. It makes me feel better. I don’t look at the standings on Amazon. I will watch the numbers, for the first month or so, just because I’m interested, but after that, I stop.”
Although she’s thrilled that readers are responding to her work, Harrison admits to being a bit taken aback by the current popularity of her work. “The increase in popularity has absolutely, 100% freaked me out. I was not expecting it, I was not planning for it and it’s not in my personality to be even looking for it. I have tried to get over it, by my constant interaction with the readers. There’s a comments page on my website (www.kimharrison.net), and I respond to them and try to keep in touch. I’ve very active on my Yahoo! group, The_Hollows, so that I can get to know the readers more and feel more comfortable with these people. I am a terrible introvert. It’s part of the reason why I can sit down and write for 8-12 hours a day. I have consciously tried to break out of that, and it’s getting better, but I did not start to write to be rich or to be famous. I wrote because I had something to say, and the fact that people are listening is just an incredible high. I never expected so many people would hear my words, and it’s scary.”
One thing that could come out of the increased attention in Harrison’s work is the possibility of Rachel’s story being developed for the big screen. An idea that definitely appeals to the author, she says that she would only feel comfortable trusting it in the hands of someone who loves the characters and the world she’s created as much as she does.
{quote_bottom}“I would want to make sure that the soul of the story, or the soul of the characters, especially the main ones, remain the same, and they’re not turned into somebody else’s idea . . . I think there’s a lot of potential with these books. There are certain elements that would be very difficult to convey on the big screen, and they would have to be modified, but the heart of the story would remain the same. I’m looking at the movies that are coming out right now with a kick butt heroine, and they’re great. But, the female characters aren’t realistic, in that they don’t have the vulnerabilities that Rachel does, and that gets tiring after awhile. Guys love it, but they’re not tapping the female market out there because no female wants to go and watch a kick butt heroine, if she doesn’t have a softer side. I think they’re missing out.”
These days, Harrison says that her free time is at such a premium that she finds herself scheduling it out. “I have made a conscious decision to not write at all on the weekends, unless I’m in an editorial crunch. I also will not update my website on the weekends. I used to sit around and say, ‘Well, what do I want to do? Maybe I’ll go out and putz around in the garden, or maybe I’ll go shopping, or maybe I’ll go shoot some pool.’ Now, I plan it, otherwise, it won’t happen. I’ll work in the garden a little bit, or I’ll work on the computer, developing my website. And, I have this new passion for braiding leather, so I will sit down and braid leather casings around my writing pens. I’ll spend a lot of my free time developing promotional items for the book signings, which is still book related, but it taps into the physical, hands on, creative part of me, so I consider that relaxation.”
While fans are anxiously waiting the nine months until the release of Harrison’s next Rachel book, For A Few Demons More, being released in hardcover, she has this advice for her fans who are also aspiring writers. “Write like you already have the contract, which means intently, with focus and with purpose. No dilly dallying. Sit down, write it, finish the last sentence and close the book. Also, find a writer’s group, become involved in it and stick with it. Those writers groups that meet in book stores, libraries and coffee shops are probably the most under-used, valuable tool that’s out there for a writer who wants to get published. You develop your skills, you help other people develop theirs, you get to know people who are struggling through the same things that you are, and you get to meet published writers who will then mentor you. I’ve been finding out that getting out of the slush pile and getting published is becoming more and more rare. Agents and editors are looking more towards their existing writers to bring new talent to them, so if you can latch onto a published author and they can mentor you and help you, when you’re work is ready, they’ll put it in front of their agent and editor, which is the best way to go about it.”
