spoke with Lone Star Lit via email about the amazing success she has experienced.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
LONE STAR LITERARY LIFE: You were born and raised in Mississippi and spent time in Arkansas, Charlaine; now you call Texas home. How have the places you\u2019ve lived influenced your writing?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
CHARLAINE HARRIS:<\/strong> I\u2019m a true daughter of the South. Every place I\u2019ve lived (including South Carolina), no matter how different the regional accents, confirms that some traditions do hold true throughout. Good manners and hospitality are two of those norms, as is a toleration of the odd (within certain boundaries). Southern people talk slower, but they don\u2019t think slower. I\u2019m afraid the South is changing, becoming more homogenized, and I\u2019m sad to see it. On the other hand, the social changes necessary to bring the South into this time are moving along, though slower than I would have imagined.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
What authors did you enjoy reading growing up?<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
I read a lot of Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Carolyn Keene, Louisa May Alcott . . . plus anything else I could lay my hands on. It was hard for my parents to keep me in books.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Did you always want to be a writer? Or\u2014 when did you know that you wanted to be a writer?<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
I always wanted to be a writer. That was my secret identity. It remained secret for a good many years!<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
What was your first big break?<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
My first big break was getting published at all. I was very fortunate in that my first book was published by a major house, Houghton Mifflin. My second big break was finding my agent, Joshua Bilmes. At the time, he was struggling even more than I was. We grew together. My third big break was writing the right book at the right moment, Dead until Dark<\/em>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
What\u2019s it like to have your work turned into a television series \u2014 first with True Blood<\/em> <\/span>and then Midnight, Texas<\/em>?<\/span> For our readers who aren\u2019t familiar with the two book series, perhaps you could describe them.<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
I\u2019ve also had my Aurora Teagarden books produced as a series of two-hour mysteries on the Hallmark Movie and Mystery Channel. Appropriate to that channel\u2019s demographic, the Aurora books are my most conventional series of mysteries, about a small-town librarian in Georgia. The Sookie Stackhouse novels, about a telepathic waitress in Louisiana, were of course made into True Blood<\/em>,<\/span> which had a great run on HBO. The three Midnight<\/span> books have been adapted for NBC, and at the moment we\u2019re waiting to hear if the show will be renewed. The Midnight<\/span> books are neither as cozy as the Auroras nor as explicit as the Sookie novels. Of course, it\u2019s tremendously flattering to have your books chosen for adaptation, and the process is fascinating. It\u2019s always interesting to see another industry at work, and to see your work through someone else\u2019s eyes. I\u2019ve met many people I never in my life thought I\u2019d meet, from all aspects of the film industry, and been to events that I didn\u2019t even know existed when the process began. It\u2019s been a privilege and a learning curve.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
How has publishing changed since you started?<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Publishing has changed enormously since I began my career. My first book appeared in 1981, and I wrote it on a typewriter. Not only have the tools writers use changed, but the whole process of submission, of getting an agent, and of editing a manuscript are completely different. Of course, one of the biggest changes is the rise of self-publishing. When I started out, it was a last resort, and the businesses that would publish memoirs and the like were often deeply shady. Of course, there are still dubious companies in the business that rip off uneducated writers \u2014 know your industry! \u2014 but there are also many opportunities for self-publishing that actually may turn out to be lucrative and successful.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
What\u2019s your creative process like?<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
The creative process is still complicated and mysterious after all the books I\u2019ve written. I begin with a kernel of an idea, something or someone that interests me, and the whole book builds around that \u2014 from that kernel outward. I am not an outliner, which is both my strength and my weakness. I do work every day I\u2019m physically able. This is my job, and though creativity is a huge part of it, discipline is also a necessary component.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
What advice do you have for aspiring authors?<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Advice. I get asked this a lot, as you can imagine, and it can be summed up in two sentences. Close the door and write. Finish the book. That\u2019s it. Don\u2019t keep hopping from idea to idea in the hopes of finding the perfect one. FINISH YOUR BOOK.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
What was the best decision you ever made in your career?<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
The best decision I ever made . . . was to go with my agent, Joshua, rather than stay with the big agency that let him go. My second best decision was to leave the original agent I had on the left coast and sign with APA.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
What project are you currently working on?<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
I\u2019ve turned in the first book of a three-book contract with Simon and Schuster. It\u2019s set in an alternate America with a different history, in 1939, and it\u2019s about a very young woman who is a gun-for-hire. I really like to shake up my topics and my points of view and my genres. Keeps me on my toes creatively.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
* * * * *<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n
Praise for Charlaine Harris’s Midnight, Texas novels<\/span><\/span><\/h1>\n <\/p>\n
\u201cThe Mark Twain of things that live under your bed.\u201d \u2014Houston Press<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\u201c[An] out-of-the-ordinary mystery.\u201d\u2014Publishers Weekly<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\u201cFun but creepy…A very quirky mystery that reveals more fascinating details about the varied denizens of this little town.\u201d \u2014Locus<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\u201cA little magic, a little mystery, and a lot of imagination make for a story that is both fun and edgy.\u201d\u2014Kirkus Reviews<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\u201cAs intimate and deep as the Stackhouse novels.\u201d \u2014Library Journal<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\u201cMove over Bon Temps, Midnight Texas has arrived.\u201d\u2014Fresh Fiction<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n* * * * *<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The otherworldly lives of vampires in literature have rarely been hardscrabble. But author Charlaine Harris turned the world of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[811,875,813,830,812],"class_list":["post-1008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-author-interview","tag-interview","tag-lone-star-literary-life","tag-lonestarliterarycom","tag-texas-author"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1008\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}