Volume 4, Issue 4 – August, 2001
Charlaine Harris: Putting the Bite on Cozy Mysteries
Charlaine Harris prides herself on writing cozy mysteries with teeth. The teeth in question can be metaphoric. In A Fool and his Honey, for example, Harris turned the life of Aurora Teagarden, her most conventional sleuth — a librarian, no less — inside out, inciting readers to tears and outraged emails. In her series featuring Shakespeare, Ark., housecleaner/sleuth Lily Bard, Harris adds bite by dealing with the darkest emotions of her own past.
But some of Harris’s toothiest prose to date can be found in her newest mystery, Dead Until Dark, featuring a vampire named Bill. As Crescent Blues learned this at this year’s Malice Domestic mystery convention in Washington, D.C, Harris has a thing about fangs.
Crescent Blues: How did you go from writing about small-town librarians and a housecleaner who’s a karate expert to writing about a telepath who takes up with vampires?
Charlaine Harris: I always liked to read science fiction, and I always thought that if I could do something besides mysteries, that would be what I would do. Then I thought, maybe I could combine them both and write what I really wanted to write. Somehow it all just formed up in my head.
I thought, who would be more likely to hang out with a vampire? Well, someone who was an outcast herself. Why would she be an outcast? Because she couldn’t tolerate the constant companionship of other humans. Well, why not? It went a little bit forwards and a little bit backwards, and I backed and forthed until the picture revealed itself.
How long did you work on Dead Until Dark?
I wrote it over two years ago when I was on a break between one series and the other. I wrote it very quickly, and I had the most fantastic time writing it. But my agent didn’t like it, and he didn’t really want to try to sell it, so I got some outside intervention. I told my agent I was getting another opinion.
I sent the book to Dean James of Murder by the Book, who’s my long-time friend and fellow Mississippian — and fellow vampire fan. Actually, I knew that Dean would like the book before I sent it.
Dean said, “This is a fabulous book.” So my agent said, “OK,” and he started sending it around. Well, it didn’t sell and it didn’t sell, but I really had faith in the book. Finally, after two years, just when I was on the verge of signing a deal that wouldn’t have paid anything, [the book] sold for actual dollars.
Have you got more adventures planned for Sookie Stackhouse (the heroine of Dead Until Dark)?
Sure! I’m working on the second book now. The title’s changed a couple of times. Nobody liked my original title, which was: “The Dead Detective.” Nobody liked that. My editor didn’t like it. My agent didn’t like it. So we’re still beating the bushes for another title.
Titles can be awfully hard. Do you find the “reality” of Sookie’s world puts a different spin on good and evil?
I like the ambiguity. I like the gray areas. Why do the black and white? That’s so done. I like the little gap between the steps.
Sookie has a lot of problems, because she’s allying herself with a non-human species, and yet she’s still a human. This is a conflict. Obviously, there are going to be tremendous conflicts, because she’s being integrated more and more into the vampires’ world. But she has to be for humans, because she is a human. I’m really getting into that in the next book.
That’s really interesting, because I got the feeling from reading that comment from Sam, the tavern owner in Dead Until Dark, that the vampires weren’t just another species. And the condition wasn’t the result of a virus either — they were really…
They were really dead. It’s not an aberration in the human species. It’s a magical thing. It’s a supernormal thing, and that’s going to be a big thing to face, because we all try to explain everything in terms of what we understand. But Sookie’s going to have to face the fact that there are things that are not understandable, not explainable, and yet they’re as real as her car.
And her own power.
Yes, and her own power, which she has to develop and channel.
That creates another challenge. How are you going to have a telepathic heroine in a mystery series and yet keep her from knowing the solution to every mystery?
This time she did.
Yes, but you don’t want to give away how in an interview. [Grins.]
Oh! What Sookie’s going to be doing next involves the vampire politics. Because of vampire politics, she’s going to be working for the vampires quite a bit. Of course, she can’t read their minds, but she’s going to be doing investigations with humans for them.
But it’s not like every telepath can read every mind clearly. The reading I’ve done on [telepathy] indicates that some people broadcast very clearly, and some people don’t broadcast at all. It’s not like turning on a television station. So there are going to be problems with that. And then, [telepathic power] has to be focused. You can’t listen to everyone in a crowd. You have to listen to the radio station you want to tune in.
What kind of research did you do for Dead Until Dark?
Surprisingly little. [Laughs.]
But you just said you did research on telepathy!
I didn’t say I did a lot. I went to the library. I ordered some reference books.
This is what is so strange. When someone in my family was reading the book, she said: “Where did you find out all this about vampires?” And I said: “I made it up. It’s not like there was a of vampire code of conduct or something, that you could call Vampire Central and say, ‘Would you send me that pamphlet, please.’ They’re not real, you know.”
“You made it up?”
It’s like, all these years I’ve been making up people, and it didn’t make any difference, because they were actually people — recognizably people. But when I made up something that wasn’t a human being, it took on a whole new edge. [My relative] didn’t think. “How did you know all this?” How do you answer that? [Giggles.]
Tell me about the Count of Montrose.
He is this very neat guy who makes custom vampire fangs.
I had one set made earlier, but they’re canine, and they were a little tight. I don’t know if you’ve ever worn fangs before, but the really custom-made jobs have a brace behind them. And when I put mine on, they kind of squeezed my teeth, and it was really uncomfortable. But I lost them, which was terrible, because they were really expensive.
But I still have my mold — you have to send a mold of your teeth. My dentist did it for free. So I sent [the Count of Montrose] another mold, and told him this time I wanted my laterals, which is a whole different look. And they’re much more comfortable. I really like them.
How did you wind up ordering custom fangs for yourself?
Oh, Elaine Viets… Do you know Elaine?
Oh yeah. We know Elaine.
Elaine has a set of them. Once I knew it was possible to get such a thing, I couldn’t rest until I had my own fangs.
Elaine has fangs, and Elaine used them to great effect in a bar when a guy was hitting on her.
That’s wonderful.
She tells the story beautifully, and I thought, “I’ve just got to have some of those.”
Somehow that didn’t come up in our interview with her.
Oh, get Elaine to tell you what else came up when she was getting her fangs — what the lawyer was getting done. You can’t pass that up.
I won’t. [Smiles.] On a different subject, I get the feeling that your Lily Bard series is darker than your vampire series.
Oh absolutely, because [Lily] comes from a different place. She’s coming as a rape survivor.
The Lily Bard series seems closer to you from the standpoint of location. She’s from Arkansas; you live in Arkansas. Was that a conscious decision?
I wanted to make it a little easier. I was having to email friends in Atlanta about the [Aurora] Teagarden series. When I started writing Lily Bard, I thought, “Give yourself a break!” I was doing the weight-lifting, and at the time I was doing the karate — though I’m not doing the karate anymore because my teacher left town, which is a whole ‘nother story. Anyway, I said, “Give yourself a break and set it here, so it won’t be so hard.” And the story came from probably the darkest place I’ve got.
What prompted you to plumb that darkness? Normally traditional mysteries featuring an amateur sleuth don’t get that dark.
Because it’s my dark place, and that’s the way you clean them out.
Do Lily’s experiences reflect your own?
Absolutely, yes. Not in detail but in general. I’m a long-term rape survivor and really proud of my adaptability. I thought it was time that such a person was depicted reasonably.
And all the things that go along with surviving rape.
It’s not like you can pull your socks up and get on with it. It’s not like that. It’s the death of something, and you have to cope with that, in different degrees, off and on for the rest of your life.
The experience definitely affects your interactions with other people.
Right. I think rape survivors see things from a much different perspective from people who haven’t had that experience.
You view people from a much different perspective.
And judge people from a much different set of criteria.
And you pulled all that out of yourself to create Lily.
Yes.
But [the series is] not without its humor.
At least I think so, but sometimes people just don’t get me. I thought the Aurora Teagarden books were really funny, and you know, nobody would ever put me on humor panels or anything like that. And I was going: “I can be funny! I can be funny!” Then I started Lily Bard, and no one could see there was any humor in that, but actually there is. People kept saying: “Why aren’t you as funny in your books as you are in person?” Those books are me!
To me, the book Dead Until Dark is a rip-roaringly funny book, but I’m not getting anybody who’s come back saying: “Oh, I just laughed my ass off!” They’re all going, “She’s humorous!” [Cackles.] Well, good! I thought, “This is just as funny as I get. If this isn’t funny, I don’t know what funny is.” Then I thought, “Well, maybe I don’t know what funny is.” I have a really fractured sense of humor.
That probably predates any of the issues in your life.
Yes, I was born that way.
When people talk about cozy mysteries, though, you can’t get much more cozy than a librarian named “Teagarden.”
That started out to be a perfectly innocuous series. I thought, I’ll just take something happy. Everything will work out. It will be a nice neat little murder, and you know, I just kept screwing it up. I had to put my own…my own…
Spin?
That’s a nice way to put it. I had to put my own spin on it. People would say: “Those are really cozy books, but they’re a little…weird.”
Toothy.
They’re cozies with teeth.
That description could apply to all your mysteries, especially Dead Until Dark.
Lots of teeth in that.
What do you think is the craziest single episode in the whole Aurora Teagarden series? What stands out in your mind as the most fun to write, the most hysterical — though possibly the episode didn’t get that much reaction from your fans.
In A Fool And His Honey, which is probably the most reviled book I’ve ever written… I’m still getting letters from that — “You made me cry all night.” When [Aurora] is holding the baby that she didn’t ask for, and she’s trying to go to the bathroom in a public rest room. There’s nowhere to put the baby down. She can’t pull her pants down. She can’t pull them back up. There’s no one to help her. And I thought, this is the way being a mother is, when you’re totally unprepared for it. Which I definitely was [not prepared].
I thought, this has got to be something every mother can relate to. What do you do when you have to go to the bathroom, and you have nobody to take care of the baby? To me that was really funny, but nobody else seemed to think so.
Readers couldn’t get around the ending of the book.
No, they couldn’t get around it, for obvious reasons. But hey, that was what I wanted to do.
When did you first know that you wanted to write?
When I was in fourth grade, I guess. When I could hold the pencil and form the words, writing was all I ever wanted to do in my life. So you see how incredibly lucky I am.
How did you get from fourth grade to writing three series?
A bumpy road. A very bumpy road.I got through school, and I felt like a real outcast most of the time. I wasn’t. That was no one else’s perception but my own. But I strongly held that perception, because there were so few people I could share my thoughts with. My parents were absolutely the most wonderful people in the world, but they thought I should prepare myself to be a schoolteacher. I would’ve been the worst schoolteacher in the world!
I went to college and got through it not knowing what I was going to do. So, since I didn’t know what I was going to do, I got married. Then my husband quit his job.[Giggles.] I did not know how to do anything! Honestly, I did not know how to do one thing. When I got married, I did not know how to cook a meal. I was the most useless human being on the face of the planet, and I’m sure I was the worst thing that ever happened to [my husband]. But I got this job in a darkroom of a newspaper — standing up on concrete eight hours a day — for $1.20 an hour. What a job! But I learned a lot. I learned how to get along with people in authority over me, which was something I was not used to. I learned how to keep — which has taken me a long, long time — but I learned how to keep my mouth shut when I had to.
Eventually that marriage ended. By then I was a typesetter, which at least you could actually sit down and do. I was always writing little things on the side, but I was really tired too.Then I met my present husband. He asked me to marry him the second time we went out. We did get married, and for a wedding present — remember this was a long, long time ago — he gave me an electric typewriter. And he said: “Stay home and write your book.”
What a nice thing to do.
I thought it was an awfully nice thing to do. That’s how nice he is. He’s a lot nicer than I am.
So I did. I stayed home and started writing, and after about a month he said: “You know, I haven’t seen you writing.” I said, “OK.” I was really scared, but I got out the typewriter and learned to use it and wrote a book, and it got published.
Was this the first Aurora Teagarden mystery?
No, I wrote two stand-alones before I started the Teagarden books. The first was called Sweet and Deadly. I hate that title! I didn’t pick that title. The book came out from Houghton Mifflin.
Then I wrote what’s become kind of a cult book: A Secret Rage. It was a book about rape, but it was a mystery. I still get letters about that book.Then I got pregnant. It was like no one had ever had a baby, because I’d had so many fertility problems. I reveled in it. I couldn’t do anything else, except sit there and gestate. [Laughs.] I had my first baby, and I was really involved with it. Then I had a second.
Then I thought: “I’m not happy.” I have to do something else. So I started back writing again, and I got an agent. I wrote the first Aurora Teagarden. Then I found out I was pregnant. Back in the saddle again!
Having three kids, do you have any writing rituals? Or should the question be, can you afford to have any writing rituals?
It was very hard when they were little bitty. Now that they’re all older — they’re 17, 13 and 10 — they go to school, and I don’t have to have a babysitter in the summer anymore. A referee would be good, but I don’t really need a babysitter.I work in the morning. When they’re going to school, I try to get over to the office at eight. I lift weights first thing in the morning, then I get to the office about eight, after I get them all off to school
.Is your office outside of the house?
It’s in a separate building, which is just wonderful. I used to work in a kind of glorified closet. This is much better. I work over there until about 11:30 a.m. everyday.In the summer I have to go over and get out of the office earlier, because the kids are up, and they want the computer. They want to get on-line themselves.
Your kids use your computer?
Charlaine Harris: We’ve actually got two others, but of course, the one I use is more desirable because it’s newer, it’s got more memory. So I’m hoping… Maybe I’ll put them all out in the cotton field this summer and get some work out of them.
Do you live in a rural area?
All south Arkansas is rural. There’s only one city in Arkansas: Little Rock. It’s in the middle of the state. Everything else is rural, except for the really built-up areas around Fayetteville and Fort Smith up around the University of Arkansas, where Joan lives — Joan Hess.
But she doesn’t write about that part of Arkansas.
Yes, she does. Her Claire Molloy series is set in a thinly disguised Fayetteville.
I’m thinking more about the Ariel Hanks series.
Oh, I love those books — the Maggody books. They’re set in a small town in the mountainous part of Arkansas.
Do you get together with other Arkansas writers?
No, almost never. I email. There really aren’t that many other Arkansas writers. There’s Joan at one end of the state and me at the other. We’re a seven-hour drive apart. And there’s a really, really nice lawyer/writer in Little Rock: Grant Stockley. Grant lives in Little Rock, and he’s a fantastically nice guy.
So you come to conventions to find other writers.
That’s where I get my fellowship in.
You were born, though, in Mississippi and moved to Arkansas
With points in between too. I was in South Carolina for ten years. I lived in Memphis for some time and worked for Federal Express briefly.
But not as a typesetter.
Yes.
You worked at Federal Express as a typesetter?
That was the last place I was a typesetter.
How do the places you’ve lived compare? What do you like about Arkansas?
It is the prettiest place I’ve ever lived. The people are exquisitely polite. You cannot stop your car by the side of the road without at least two people stopping to help you. If you get stuck in a parking lot, five or six guys will act like they’ve got nothing better to do than march your car out of the hole.
That creates additional tension in the Lily Bard books — the contrast between what she’s been through and this cocoon of politeness.
It can be a form of reality dodging. Lily is polite too. Her rebellion lies in not saying what people expect her to say. She keeps silent, and that’s very rattling.
You mentioned earlier that you’ve got very broad reading tastes. What are the books that have influenced you the most?
Most?
Which books do you think of off the top of your head?
Pride and Prejudice — you can’t beat Jane Austin. I really love that book. And Barbara Paul, who I think is the most underrated writer in America today. Her book, The Fourth Wall — a classic mystery — changed my point of view on women and men. It changed my point of view on what a woman should be. It’s a tremendously important book that never got the attention it deserved.
I like to read Laurell K. Hamilton. I like her very much. There are just so many writers I like tremendously. I really enjoy reading Katy Munger. I really enjoy reading Andrew Vachss. I really enjoy reading Dennis Lehane, Harlan Coben. And the great thing is now I know all of them!
A little earlier you said you were on a deadline for another book. Could you tell us something about that?
It’s the sequel to Dead Until Dark. My agent said, “We’re going to have to ask for an extension.” I said, “I don’t think so.””You think you can write eighty or ninety pages by June the first?”I said, “Yes.” We’ll see.
Well, after Malice Domestic, you don’t have any more conventions until Memorial Day.
Yes, “Mayhem in the Midlands” over Memorial Day weekend. I write like the wind. [Laughs.]
Can we expect any more Aurora Teagarden mysteries? I know we can expect more featuring Lily Bard.
There will be a new Lily Bard in November: Shakespeare’s Counselor. Aurora in 2002: Last Scene Alive. Then I think I have a contract for another Lily Bard.
How do you work out which Shakespearean themes you will weave into each Lily Bard mystery? Do you do you pick out a theme beforehand?
That is too subtle for me.
You don’t think of yourself as subtle?
No, I don’t. I’m more of a blunt instrument-type person.
In crafting each of your series, do you have an overarching plot to the series or do you write each mystery as you go along?
Do I know my goal [for each series]? Specifically: no. In general: yes.
I think the next Lily Bard will be a very surprising book. People tell me, “We see her changing from book to book.” She’s not. She’s going back to what she was before the attack. She’s deconstructing, not reconstructing. As I see it, she’s going back to the more relaxed, gentle person that she was before she was attacked. There’s a lot of healing — which is regeneration — in the process. But that’s what she’s doing, and I think the next one will be a very surprising book.
There is a pattern. The Aurora Teagarden books are about a woman who is perfectly conventional in many ways, yet nothing ever goes right for her. The Lily Bard books are about a very unconventional woman who really wants conventional things without knowing it, and they happen for her.
And then we’ve got Sookie [Stackhouse], who just wants to have a nice date that she can’t hear in her head.
When you write, are you in control of your characters, or are your characters in control of you?
My feeling on that is that it’s bullshit. You may fool yourself into thinking: “Oh, my characters took over. Blah, blah, blah.” It’s all you. It’s all coming from you. It may not seem like it, but it truly is. [Your characters are] all little pieces of you, maybe changed or seen through a prism. Some very unattractive pieces of you, some very nice pieces of you — but they’re all pieces of you. I think it’s your less conscious mind telling you when you’re heading in the wrong direction.
Do you draw all your characters from your imagination, or do you sometimes take a physical characteristic from one person or an attitude from someone else?
Actually, I did use a real person one time, but she never reads the books, so she’ll never know. (I didn’t like her.)
Sometimes I will pick a person physically, because sometimes I get tired just like anybody else. I keep my college directory by my desk, and when I have to think of a name, I just open it and sift through it until I say, “That’s the first name; that’s the last name.” I can’t keep thinking all the time, or at least I tell myself that. And I do use real people.
But nothing libelous.
Oh no. Never. It wouldn’t be nice.
Anything else you’d like to add before we let you go?
I forgot to mention Tanya Huff. I like Tanya Huff.
[Huff’s vampire] Henry Fitzroy…
And her Keeper books. [Huff] can do just about anything. She’s an amazingly flexible writer. We have the same agent. [Smiles.]
Jean Marie Ward
(with additional questions by Teri Smith)
Readers Respond
I love Dead in Dixie. Will you be doing anymore with Sookie Stackhouse???? Please couple her with Alcide. i adore this book. Do you autograph???
possumlady62@msn.com
Yo,
I read your interview with Mz Harris and saw where she had mentioned that no one thought her books were very funny. This surprised the pants off me. I thought the books were freakin hilarious. I coulda died laughin a couple a times. I really got a kick outta Eric. And Bubba! Dude, don’ even get me started. I feel sorry for Sam at times though, oh well. If you talk to Mz Harris anytime in the near future, let her know that I at least, laughed my butt off. But people have been telling me I have a scary sense of humor for years, (People really hate it when you crack up at funerals) so I could just be looking at the books in my own screwed up topsy turvy way that makes em funny when their really not, but I dont think so. So if ya remember just relay my compliments. Thanx bunches, Bye babe.
Jaws
I’ve just finished reading your interview with Charlaine Harris. It was great. I am a fan of her Sookie Stackhouse series and can’t wait until the next book. Will Ms. Harris be publishing another Sookie Stackhouse mystery next year? I’ve read all three of her books including this spring’s Club Dead. Keep interviewing her she has me hooked on “Southern Gothic”. Regards,
K. Ross
Thanks for the feedback. When I talked to Charlaine at this year’s Malice Domestic, she was happily plotting more books for all her series. She didn’t provide any details, but you can track her progress through her website.
Jean Marie Ward