The Ultimate Fan Guide

by L. J. Smith

  When did you decide to be a writer?

  People often ask this, and all I can say is I was making up stories before I could read. Unlike authors who were prodigies, I didn’t learn to read until I was taught in first grade, but I certainly knew how to make up a story. Whenever I saw something on TV or heard a story, I would keep making up what would happen next, or what I would do if I were in the story. I would also make up stories about exciting things that happened to me or about interesting people I met. Maya is probably an amalgamation of all the babysitters I hated!

  The book I recall most clearly from my childhood (before I started school) is the wonderful D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths. I particularly adored the story of how Persephone, a young girl, was innocently gathering flowers when Hades, dressed all in black and riding in a black chariot with black horses, suddenly burst out of the ground and carried her away to his dark realm under the earth. I loved to hear how Persephone was doomed to spend six months of each year in the dark underground because she ate six pomegranate seeds while there. But I wouldn’t have eaten those pomegranate seeds! I would have tricked Hades by pretending to eat them and then spitting them out.

  Thinking back on this story, I wonder if, as young as I was, I had some concept of the archetypical Gothic tale of the beautiful young girl being wooed and pursued by the dark, seemingly all-powerful lover. It could be that I was in training for writing about vampires even then. But one thing is certain. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to be a writer.

  When do you like to write?

  I like best to write in the morning when I first wake up, before even having a cup of coffee. I run to the computer (if I haven’t fallen asleep on it) and just dash off a few pages without thinking about how to edit them. This helps turn off the little censor inside my head; the one that choked me up for ten years and that is telling me right now that this is not a very good sentence. Writing at breakneck speed before I do anything else seems to start the motor of my imagination.

  The real question isn’t when I like to write—ever since I decided to become a full-time author, it has been a job that requires me to write morning, noon, and night—but when and where I work out thorny, plot problems.

  That’s when I have to walk. Ideally, I walk on the long, sparsely populated beaches in Point Reyes National Seashore. But if I’m not at my cabin, I have to take to the road, walking with my headphones blaring my favorite music into my ears. If neither of these are possible (say, it’s after midnight and I don’t fancy being alone on the sidewalk), I used to drive the freeway with the stereo blaring. Now I’m more environmentally conscious. So when I need to create and I can’t get outside and I don’t have a houseguest—please don’t think I’m crazy—I turn up the music and walk very briskly inside the house. And I actually act out my story, being all the characters in turn. I’ve done this … well, forever. Since I was a kid.

  It doesn’t absolutely require the music, but that really helps.

  You’ve written a bit about how you get inspired—what do you like about being a writer? What keeps you writing?

  It’s really not a question of what keeps me writing. It’s how to stop it once it starts. I love the storytelling machine in my head, but it is run completely by my unconscious. Once it stopped dead for ten years, leaving me staring at blank computer screens, notebooks, napkins, receipt backs—all the things I used to need to scribble down my thoughts. Then, a few years ago, it began to chug like the Little Engine That Could and then it began to spin in overdrive. Once again I find myself squinting at napkins, staring at my really, really horrible handwriting, and asking friends, “Did I say anything to you about a goose story? A gross—no, ghost story—and a ghastly spaniel? A sparrow? Oh, a specter!”

  Because that’s the other thing I make use of when writing: friends and family. Know me long enough and I’m certain to start asking, “So I want to write about how Jez and Morgead first met, but I need a reason for them to fight …” Or, “Dad, what’s the best thing a quarterback can do to win a game?” Back in the days before the Internet, I asked my hairdresser, who was also a terrific mechanic, “If you’re building a car, what’s something awful that someone can accidentally do to it?” I got answers to all three and the last two are in stories or books. At first, people often just stare at me until I start brainstorming, saying anything that comes into my head. Usually after a few minutes of this, they start to play along, and somehow the problem gets solved and the storytelling machine whizzes off with me in hot pursuit.

  What do I like about being a writer? Everything. For most of my life, it’s been how I define myself. I am, therefore I write. Oh, and getting feedback! That’s the icing on the cake for me. I write for readers, otherwise it would be much easier to keep my stories in my head. When a reader says, “I never really liked to read until I found your books,” it’s like champagne. When a reader says, “Your books got me through high school,” it makes me want to cry and do the Happy Dance all at once. When a reader says, “I read your books and now I’m a teacher or a writer myself,” it’s almost too much for me to take in.

  But even the simplest e-mail makes me feel humble. I’m just doing what I have to do, and if it helps other people in any way, giving them a few hours of enjoyment, I’m happy. Very, very happy.

  How did you create the intricate backstory in Night World? Did you start from the beginning and write to the end, or did you have a plan from the start?

  Both, really. I had to have a game plan from the start because there were so many rules and traditions for the vampires. The Night World has rules about humans: they are never to reveal the Night World to a human and never fall in love with one. Lamia vampires traditionally name their children after a plant, animal, or mineral (resulting in names like Rowan, Kestrel, and Jade, from Daughters of Darkness). There are two kinds of vampires, lamia and made vampires. No one older than nineteen can be made into a vampire at all—after that the body doesn’t have the physical flexibility to change and simply burns out. I introduce things like that in Secret Vampire as a sort of gentle prelude to the more complicated backstory that comes in later books.

  Then I introduce Hunter Redfern and his descendents in Daughters of Darkness, and I explain Hunter’s history and the kinship ceremony with the witch Maeve Harman. Later, in Spellbinder, I add another piece of the puzzle, about how both the Redferns and the Harmans go back to Hecate Witch-Queen and her two very dissimilar daughters, Maya and Hellewise. Maya has a lamia son, Red Fern, and of course he is the origin of all the Redferns. Hellewise has a daughter, from whom all the witches are descended. “Daughter of Hellewise” means witch.

  So I had the background in my head, and I tried to dole it out in little pieces so it wouldn’t sound too much like a history lesson. But Night World history changed radically when I introduced new prophecies about the end of the world in Huntress and Black Dawn and Witch-light. And it isn’t until Witchlight that I unveil the means by which the world will be destroyed. The means actually scared even me, they were so merciless. And that’s how dragons entered the Night World.

  How do you keep track of all of the Night World characters and lore?

  On paper. It’s the only way. Otherwise I could never remember that Jez Redfern is related to Thea Harman. She’s Thea’s seventeenth cousin once removed. (Lamia and witches are related through Hunter Redfern and Maeve Harman, remember? They had a daughter: Roseclear….)

  I got a family tree software package, and laboriously, I filled it in, name by name, marriage by marriage, child by child, until I had a set of ancient Harmans and Redferns, a set of Pilgrim’s Age Harmans and Redferns (this was important for the kinship ceremony and for the introduction of Quinn and Hunter’s three lamia daughters), and a very large set of modern Harmans and Redferns.

  When I printed it out, on about a zillion pieces of letter-size paper, it covered the floor like a five-foot-by-five-foot carpet. It even included dates of marriages and “occupations”: lamia,
made vampire, witch, psychic, human, etc. I taped it together to make a giant poster, and I made a new chart with each book. They were works of art that eventually got so huge and unwieldy as I continued to add new soulmates that I finally gave up. (I think my cat mistook a newly made poster for a litter box and that also had something to do with it). But I still have most of the information.

  The same with the prophecies. I keep them all in a special file and add each as it comes along—otherwise I’d forget all of them.

  If you were part of the Night World, which clan would you want to be part of?

  I would love to be a witch. I would marry a vampire, and he would love me so much that he would stop being a humanitarian and become a simple carnivore, biting deer or cows and only taking enough blood as is necessary to live on, because naturally we would be part of Circle Daybreak. I would let him bite me only on special occasions, like his birthday. Or holidays. Or every day—but just a little. Like every couple in which one partner is a vampire, we would walk that thin line between the thrill of joining minds and the danger of changing the other partner.

  We would be soulmates, and we probably would have had a rocky courtship: he would be a Redfern, with a Redfern’s typical arrogance and power. However, I would be firm but gentle with him—something like taming a big dog—and we would be so drawn together by the silver cord that we would hardly be able to stand being out of each other’s sight.

  I would definitely want to be a Harman—a direct descendent of Hellewise Hearth-Woman. That would make practically all of the characters in my books my cousin, more or less distant. I would originally belong to Circle Twilight, like Thea in Spellbinder, but I would always use my powers for good. My witchlight would be so hot and powerful that it burned blue, like the bottom of a flame. That would allow me to heal people’s wounds and diseases.

  I might even go on a sort of pilgrimage, traveling from hospital to hospital, healing the sickest patients without them ever knowing I was doing it. I would heal and heal until finally I fainted (gracefully) with exhaustion, and my soulmate would catch me and gently carry me back to our car. Then I would rest against his shoulder until I woke up and was ready to begin the crusade all over again.

  My husband could spend a lot of his time fighting off the assassins that the Vampire Council or the Circle Midnight (wicked!) witches would undoubtedly send after me. He’d enjoy that.

  Who is your favorite character from the Night World? Why?

  Out of the books already published? I’m going to have to say it’s … Jez Redfern from Huntress. I love writing about Jez because she’s so impulsive and unpredictable; she might do anything at any moment. She thinks with her heart—and her snakewood fighting stick.

  Jez is dealt a tough hand. She’s actually the first vampire-human hybrid. Her father is one of the lamia, the born vampires, the family vampires, but her mother is human. Vampires find out that Jez’s parents broke Night World law and kill them both. Jez is four years old and survives this savage attack, but her memory doesn’t. She grows up thinking of herself as a vampire. But when her memories are triggered and come rushing back to engulf her, she doesn’t collapse, or become catatonic, or try to forget. Jez switches sides and begins to defend humans from vampires.

  Jez is intelligent and a natural leader, but by no means perfect. She has a quick temper and is always getting into fights with Morgead, her soulmate. They trade the leadership of their vampire gang back and forth as they challenge each other for the title. It’s fun to write about their wrangling, and equally fun to write about their making up.

  I enjoy the energy that Jez brings to any scene because she is sure to start an argument, jump on a table, or somehow capture the attention of the audience. She certainly doesn’t believe that women should be soft and fragile and demure.

  How do you feel about shapeshifters? The only good one in a lead role is Keller.

  For a long while, I couldn’t really see the beauty in werewolves and they really get a bad rap in the Night World. They tend to be the thugs, the hired muscle, or insanely territorial and unstable.

  But when I wrote Soulmate, Lupe comes in her wolf form to rescue Hannah, and I saw shapeshifters in a whole new light. After all, I reasoned, I adored animals, sometimes more than people. So a person turning into an animal doesn’t have to be a villain. But I didn’t want to focus on a werewolf; everyone was doing werewolves. I’d seen the movie Cat People at some point and thought the cats were absolutely gorgeous. So I decided to have a heroine who could turn into a black panther—voluntarily.

  That was Keller, and from the very first pages of Witchlight she was running everything in her own brusque, apparently invulnerable, way. She was willing to attack a dragon alone. Granted, the dragon was in human form and she herself was a huge beast with jaws that could crack the skull of a water buffalo, but attacking it meant her death and she knew it—but never hesitated. I couldn’t help but admire her guts.

  Keller is actually one of the most wounded and vulnerable characters in all the Night World stories. She needed a gentle soulmate to soothe her and remind her that she had value as a person. So I created Galen, Prince of the Shapeshifters, to help her learn to love and trust again.

  That’s how I learned to love shapeshifters. I may even do a were-wolf story someday….

  If you could be a shapeshifter, what would be your shape and why?

  I’m tempted to say a black panther like Keller from Witchlight, because black panthers are smooth and silken, and I’m sure that just moving must feel wonderful to them. But the truth is I’d rather fly. I’ve wanted to fly since childhood, and parasailing, while fun, is just not the same thing. I’d like to be a bird large enough so nothing would want to eat me. I’ll pass on having to eat roadkill or decaying carcasses, too, thanks. So I guess I’d like to be a peregrine falcon. (For some reason bald eagles just don’t ring my bells. Maybe because they remind me of the government.)

  By the way, black panthers, falcons, and bald eagles are all endangered. I am a member of the World Wildlife Fund and have adopted an animal that I will reveal when Strange Fate is published (my bad boy is a shapeshifter and it’s a secret). I’m also a member of the Nature Conservancy. Both organizations help endangered species, of which there are an alarming number. This is a cause I really believe in. You can do lots of things that don’t require spending money to help conserve the natural world—things like recycling, going to a car wash instead of doing it yourself (really—it conserves more than four hundred gallons of water!), carpooling to school (make new friends!), or just searching online for local agencies where you can take your pick of other ways to help.

  But back to being a falcon. I would soar on the wind currents and strike dazzling poses, since bird watchers love to see peregrine falcons. I would search the ground with my falcon-keen eyes and then dive for that mouse and scarf it down, because I’m sure it … would … taste … really … yummy….

  Maybe I would be the world’s first vegetarian falcon.

  What about Old Souls? How did you create Hannah and her multiple lives? Can Hannah really remember all her lives?

  Hannah was fun to create because I could put her into any time period that interested me, and there were several time periods that were already favorites of mine, like ancient Egypt. I also wanted Thierry to be able to recognize Hannah in each life without her looking exactly the same every time. The easiest way to do that was to create a physical attribute that wouldn’t change and would be easy to see.

  That was how Hannah got her birthmark; but I wanted to make it an almost attractive birthmark, and so I always describe it as looking as if it had been traced on her cheekbone. What really was traced on her cheek was blood, and this soulmate had a whopper of a crime to atone for: the death of Hannah’s entire kin group back in cave-dweller days— and the death of Hannah herself.

  But Thierry also has extenuating circumstances, and millennia (not just centuries!) to spend doing good deeds. He develops an air
of ancient sorrow, though he never grows a day older than nineteen because Maya makes him a vampire by force.

  By modern times, he is Thierry, Lord of Circle Daybreak, and Hannah is just a girl from Montana and this turns out to be the biggest Cinderella story of them all. Thierry seeks out Hannah during each of her lives–but Maya, mad with jealousy, makes certain that Hannah never lives to see her seventeenth birthday. Fortunately her last life is a little different.

  As for remembering past lifetimes, Hannah has had so many that she really has to concentrate to find and then recall any particular one. But, yes, if she really works at it, she should be able to recall everything about each lifetime—all sixteen years of them.

  Notes on the Chapters from L.J. Smith: In Her Own Words

  Hi, it’s me again. I just wanted to make some comments about the various chapters in this book, and to mention things you won’t find in the Night World series. How or why I wrote certain things in the books or what I think about them now. Little mysteries solved or hints of secrets.

  Lamia

  With the lamia, I deliberately broke most of the “traditional” vampire regulations. According to Wikipedia, “lamia” is just a word that in Greek mythology referred to a “child-eating daemon.” I found the word in a thesaurus, and immediately began to use it in Secret Vampire. I wanted James Rasmussen, the lamia hero (and bad boy) of this story to be different from other vampires. No coffin for him! No all-blood diet! Not even a device to keep him from crumbling in the daylight like a traditional vampire, because these vampires aren’t debilitated by sunshine! I also wanted to show that lamia parents can be just like human parents—rich and controlling parents, that is. Vampires live so long that they have plenty of time to get rich, and money leads to power.

  One thing in Secret Vampire that gave me pause: Poppy North will forever be a teenager, and James would never continue aging without her. This means that they will be a sort of Peter Pan couple, with fangs. My take on this is that Poppy’s twin, Phillip, will pity them as he gets older … until he reaches fortysomething and feels mortality creeping up on him. But by then it will be too late.