Laurell K. Hamilton

It was just you had to be strong, and if you weren't strong you're a victim and you're not going to make it. That was the reality when I was growing up.

I always treated writing as a profession, never as a hobby. If you don't believe in yourself, no one else will.

Perfection is an unattainable goal. It isn't going to be perfect. Just get words down on paper, and when you stumble to what you think is the end of the book, you will have hundreds of pages of words that came out of your head. It may not be perfect, but it looks like a book.

If I'd been easily discouraged, I could have been a one-hit wonder.

I'm more influenced by my own interests than anyone else's. Writers have to entertain themselves, or they can't entertain anyone else.

My writing style is very sensual, as in sensory detail.

Nothing wrong with making money or doing what you need to do to sell, but I think it shows when you're writing something to pay the bills and when you're writing something because it's really your version of the world.

I like conventions. I like meeting and greeting. I'm perched on that edge where I'm getting more attention than I quite know what to do with, though.

Now that I'm being very successful, publishers are trying to mainstream me, but I'm unabashedly genre. It's what I like to read, what I like to write.

I think that my vampires in general were influenced by my being allowed to watch the Hammer vampire films. Vampire Circus, also shown as Circus of Fear, was one of those movies.

I love animals, always have, and it seemed natural to help the ASPCA. Animals have no voice of their own, so we have to be that voice.

Here's the secret to finishing that first book. Don't rewrite as you go.