From Murder to Mind Reading:
Charlaine Harris Interview
by Kimber L. Rose

When presented with the opportunity to interview my writing idol, Charlaine Harris, I jumped at it. I have admired the writing and imagination of this writer for many years now and can't even come close to expressing the excitement that was running through my veins when she gave her permission to ask her a few questions. Well, the few questions that I was going to ask took on a life of their own and multiplied freely resulting in a much longer interview than I originally intended. Now, for the result of my over enthusiasm.

KLR - What made you start writing? Did you always want to write?

Charlaine Harris - Yes, I always wanted to write, from the time I could hold a pencil. I couldn't NOT write.

KLR - What made you start writing in the mystery genre specifically?

Charlaine Harris - I loved (and still love) to read mysteries, and consider that my “home” genre. However, I also loved science fiction, especially fantasy, from an early age. I decided to write a mystery first because I looked inside myself and found one there.

KLR - What do you like about the mystery genre?

Charlaine Harris - At first, I liked the rules. I liked the fact that you knew when you set out what you'd have to include in the book, no matter how well you disguised those elements. Later on, I began to find these rules constrictive; but I've made my peace with that.

KLR - How did your different book series' come into being?

Charlaine Harris - That's a question that could take a long time to answer. I'll try to condense. I wrote the Teagarden mysteries first because I love librarians, and the job itself includes a lot of contacts with a lot of varying people per day, which is always a help in the mystery genre. I also wanted her to be a bridge character between the old and the new South. (This was quite some time ago, remember.) I found that though the series was a moderate success, I got little respect from about half the mystery community, so I decided it was time to show my dark side, which resulted in the Lily Bard books. That series pretty much got dropped, and I was facing my fiftieth birthday, so it was time to shake things up. I thought I'd write the book I'd always wanted to write, and that turn out to be DEAD UNTIL DARK. I love writing Sookie, and her success has blown me away, but I wanted to write something a little more mystery based, yet still a little weird; hence, Harper Connelly.

KLR - Can you tell me a little bit about your Aurora Teagarden series?

Charlaine Harris - It's the first series I wrote (after two stand-alones), and the protagonist is a Georgia librarian. Since I wrote the series twenty-five years ago, Aurora is a woman who's a bridge between the old and new Souths, and she has a very traditional mother, who wants every good thing for Aurora . Their definitions of ‘good' don't exactly match.

KLR - As the Aurora Teagarden Mysteries are being re-released currently, were there any changes that you wanted to or did make?

Charlaine Harris - No. That's like making an attempt to change history. That was the writer I was then.

KLR - We know that the Lily Bard series goes with a darker mystery genre overall, what would you tell readers who haven't read a Lily Bard mystery about the series?

Charlaine Harris - Lily is my walk on the noir side. She has a very dark past, and she has a very different way of viewing the world because of that past. These are solid mysteries, though.

KLR - The Sookie Stackhouse, Southern Vampire Series is your most popular. What would you tell a new reader about the series?

Charlaine Harris - The Sookie Stackhouse books are about a blue-collar woman with a disability. She can read minds. And she starts dating a vampire, who are open about their condition in my world, at least for the past four years. The whole Sookieverse arises from those two elements, Sookie's telepathy and the presence of vampires.

KLR - With Harper Connelly, what would you say the series is about?

Charlaine Harris - I hate to say my books are “about” anything, but in the Harper books, the protagonist is a very young woman whose background runs the gamut from affluence to neglect. She also has found an unsual way to make a living; she finds the dead. Her close companion is her “brother” Tolliver.

KLR - I noticed that Harper isn't on the list of releases for this next year, are there any more Harper books pending?

Charlaine Harris - Yes, I'll write at least one more. I just don't have time this year.

KLR - What is your writing process? Do you do an outline, or just start writing and find out where your going when you get there?

Charlaine Harris - I wish I did an outline. But I sit down and start writing. I have to do a lot of backtracking and correcting. My process is still ongoing; it changes a little with each book.

KLR - Why are your books primarily based in the South?

Charlaine Harris - “Write what you know.” I feel there are plenty of people who write about the North already. I'm more comfortable writing about the South.

KLR - Is there a particular item that you focus on when you are writing a series? For instance, when writing about Harper Connelly you have a lot of criminal and law elements involved, do you focus more on the criminal aspect or the personal aspect of the books when you are writing?

Charlaine Harris - It depends on the book. There's no clear answer for the question. Sometimes I have my initial plot idea about the personal relationships in the book, and sometimes it's about the mystery part of the plot. So . . . it varies.

KLR - How do you decide on occupations for your protagonists?

Charlaine Harris - It's always help for the protagonist to have a job that brings her into contact with lots of people, as I mentioned before. Occupation determines a large percentage of the protagonist's social status, too, always a big element of my books. The choice of the occupation is a clue to the protagonist's character. So it's crucial to search for the correct job.

That depends on what I need them to do. Sometimes the occupation comes first because that's what I need to move the plot along. Sometimes the character is formed and then I pick an occupation for her that achieves my goals in propelling the plot.

KLR - How did your protagonists for your books come into being?

Charlaine Harris - That's almost too complex a process to write down. They're created from a lot of factors: what I need them to do, what I'm trying to accomplish, what issue I'm hoping to tackle. I don't always start with the same fact. I built Harper around the lightning, I built Lily around martial arts. Sookie began with the question, “What kind of woman would date a vampire?” Aurora was formed around the predicament of a Southern woman who can't fulfill her mother's, or her own, expectations. I began to understand the characters working outward from those elements.

KLR - Both Sookie in the Sookie Stackhouse series and Harper in the Harper Connelly series have parents who have died and a brother with whom they have a complicated relationship. Why did you make those choices for the characters?

Charlaine Harris - Both Aurora and Lily had both parents living, though, and though Aurora was an only child (though she had a much younger half-brother), Lily had a full fledged sister. Sookie has a grandmother (at least initially) who takes the place of her parents, and Harper has had both parents until fairly recently. It's true that Sookie has a problematical brother who is basically a jerk; but Harper's “brother” is actually no relation to her at all. I planned on Tolliver loving Harper from the beginning; I didn't plan on Jason, Sookie's brother, being such a total ass, but he is.

KLR - How do you know when it's time for a series to end?

Charlaine Harris - Sometimes you don't have a choice. Dell dropping the paperback of the Lily Bard series determined the series was over. But truly, I was reluctant to write more Lily Bards, anyway; I felt the danger of diluting the strength of the character. I didn't have time to write more Auroras after I started writing Sookie and thought of Harper. Sookie is so much fun that I have no thought of ending the series yet. Harper, the end will come sooner.

KLR - What is your editing process like?

Charlaine Harris - When I start work for the day, I re-read what I wrote the day before and edit it lightly. When I get close to the end of the book, I begin re-reading it from the beginning and putting in changes that will smooth the book and help me launch into the conclusion. In the past two or three years, my friend Toni L.P. Kelner, and sometimes Dana Cameron, read the work and offer their comments. My continuity minion, Debi, reads it for mistakes pertaining to information I've given in the past books.Then my agent reads it, and offers his. Then it goes to my editor, who puts in her two cents. Then the copy editor. Amazingly, horribly, mistakes still creep in.

KLR - What do you think about first when you start writing a new book?

Charlaine Harris - What threads from the previous books I need to continue, and which I need to conclude.

KLR - What do you think is harder, writing a stand alone or writing a series? Why?

Charlaine Harris - In a stand-alone, you have to tie everything up; you won't get a second chance. In a series, you have more opportunities to screw up if you don't remember everything you've said in the previous books, but you have a ready cast of characters. So it's a tossup.

KLR - How long does it generally take you to write a book now versus how long it took you to write a book when you first started writiing?

Charlaine Harris - It takes as long as my deadline says I have. I had more generous deadlines when I first started writing . . . twenty-six years ago.

KLR - What was it like changing genres after writing mysteries for so long?

Charlaine Harris - Kind of scary, really. A whole different batch of editors, and whole different set of conventions, a lot of different readers. I still feel more at ease at a mystery convention, though the science fiction people are wonderfully welcoming.

KLR - What made you decide to change genres?

Charlaine Harris - I wanted to give my career a shot in the arm.

KLR - What is the element that you believe takes your Southern Vampire series from Mystery to Urban Fantasy? I know that there are fantasy elements involved, but there is also a huge mystery background as well. Is just the addition of supernatural characters enough to make it fantasy?

Charlaine Harris - No, the addition of supernatural characters is not enough to make it fantasy. I'm not sure exactly what the magic element is, but it has something to do with the grafting of the supernatural into the basic mystery plot. Handle it right, and you have urban fantasy. Handle it wrong, and you have mystery with a few supernatural elements thrown in awkwardly to make the book trendy.

KLR - Do you do research on your books, and if so what process do you follow?

Charlaine Harris - Yes, if there's research needed, of course I do. First I look on the internet, then I look for people who've actually done/experienced/ seen what I'm researching. I check a reference book or two. I love talking to people who've had the experience best.

KLR - I know that writing and publishing your books can't possibly be a smooth process, what has your experience been like overall?

Charlaine Harris - My career has been so long that I've had every possible experience. What I hate most is mistakes getting through. Most of all, I get mad at myself for making them, which is the correct response. But I'm also irritated that my various professional editors don't catch them, and I'm mortified by the multiple readers who can hardly wait to tell me about them. I really try hard to keep the books clean of inner contradictions and inaccuracies; but perhaps like a director before the advent of VHS and DVD, I never expected anyone to read the books five or six times over, just as a director might not have anticipated someone stopping the frame and examining it for errors in continuity.

KLR - What is your favorite part of writing? Developing characters? Plots?

Charlaine Harris - I love the whole thing. I love the moment when a plot twist suggests itself, the moment when a character does something that I think is very interesting.

KLR - How did you get your first agent?

Charlaine Harris - We were “introduced” by a mutual friend, the writer Barbara Paul. He looked at what I'd done and asked if he could represent me. Joshua (Bilmes) is the only agent I've ever had; we've lasted way longer than my first marriage.

KLR - Over the years, what have you learned about writing that you wished you had known when you started?

Charlaine Harris - I have no regrets, no “Had I But Known.” The learning curve is ongoing and valuable.

KLR - What kind of books do you like to read?

Charlaine Harris - I read everything: mystery, science fiction, a little romance, some non-fiction. I don't read too many mainstream novels. I don't have time or inclination.

KLR - Who are your favorite authors? Biggest influances on your writing?

Charlaine Harris - There are really too many to list. When I first started out, Elizabeth Peters/ Barbara Michaels was a huge influence; the best example of mysteries that were humorous and light but extremely well-written. Barbara Paul was a big influence, too. I was a great Bronte and Austen fan, still am. I read a lot of EX Ferrars and Rex Stout, though I don't think you'd find too many traces of them in my own work. In the past few years, I've been fascinated by writers who can do more than one thing: Barbara Hambly and Connie Willis spring to mind. I love the tough guys, too: Barry Eisler, Lee Child, Robert Crais, James Lee Burke. Of course, I read a lot of “urban fantasy” now. Jim Butcher is great, Rachel Caine, E.E. Knight (really military science fiction, I think), Laurell K. Hamilton. I could go on and on. Please stop me.

KLR - What is the best advise that you ever got about writing?

Charlaine Harris - I don't know that I've ever gotten any advice about writing.

KLR - How did it feel when you found out HBO wanted to make a television series out of your Southern Vampire series?

Charlaine Harris - For the sake of accuracy, Alan Ball optioned the books, and HBO picked up his pilot. But that pilot was about two years after the process of writing the contract began. Of course, I was delighted that a great talent like Alan was interested in the books, but I'd had other options (on the Southern Vampire books and other books) that came to nothing, so I wasn't ecstatic until the series actually started filming. Now, of course, the writers' strike has called a halt to the whole process, just when I was beginning to be optimistic the show would actually be on the air soon.

KLR - What has that process been like?

Charlaine Harris - Long, boring, and only exciting towards the end. Negotiations take so long, waiting for a clear spot on the calendar for the producer, writer, director, cast, to get together . . . waiting.

KLR - What writing groups are you a part of? Do you find them helpful?

Charlaine Harris - I'm not in a writing group. Not enough professional writers around here.

KLR - Last but not least, What is your ideal writing day?

Charlaine Harris - No one calls. No one comes to visit. I don't have to run errands in town. I usually start work around eight o'clock when everyone else leaves the house. I work until eleven thirty or so, have lunch, come back out to the office around twelve thirty or one. I used not to work in the afternoon; I'd do housework and shopping then. I've relieved myself of some of that. I quit work around three thirty or four, then I read until time to start supper. In volleyball or softball season, I go to my daughter's game. That's pretty much it. Boring.

I would like to express my thanks to Charlaine Harris for being patient through my barrage of questions. Anyone interested in checking out more about Charlaine Harris, please feel free to visit her website at www.CharlaineHarris.com where her complete bibliography is available. Be sure to check out the next book in the Sookie Stackhouse, Southern Vampire series ‘From Dead to Worse' that was released in May 2008.