Deadline: June 30, 2009

A Crucial Date for Iraq Approaches

 The ready smile was gone from Iraqi Army Corporal Gassem Mohammed’s freckled face, replaced with an intensity of purpose.  Three of his fellow soldiers lined up behind him against the wall.  A voice bellowed from the catwalk above and the four men moved in unison inside a small room and squeezed the triggers of their Kalishnikov rifles.  Gunfire echoed from the room only to be drowned by the gusting winds whipping over the Iraqi desert.

  Mounted on the walls, two cardboard silhouettes are dotted with bullet holes.

An American with a greying goatee and dark sunglasses walked briskly into the room.  Special Operations Advisor Rober Wise wore a camouflage shirt with the words “Army” over his right breast pocket and “Contractor” over his left.  A native of Alabama, Wise has 20 years of Special Forces experience and he’s using it as a civilian instructor to mold these young Iraqi soldiers.  He looked at Mohammed and said in an even tone,   “You don’t stop there.  You make your way further into the room.”

The stern look evaporated from Mohammed’s face, replaced by the face of an attentive student wanting to please his teacher.  It’s time to do the exercise again.

The clock is ticking.  Not just on America and it’s allies, but on the Iraqi military as well.  Late last year the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) was signed by Iraq and the U.S. and earlier this year the words were echoed by President Barack Obama.  The U.S. military will leave Iraq by the end of 2011.

However, there is another major deadline looming.  U.S. and Coalition forces must be out of Iraq’s major urban centers by June 30, 2009.  In a matter of weeks, the Iraqi military must be ready to hold fast if a renewed insurgency and/or Al Qaeda attempts to take advantage of the military drawdown.

The U.S. will not leave Iraq’s soldiers unprepared.  Aboard Al Asad Air Base in Iraq’s Al Anbar Province, Marines, often with the help of contractors like Wise, are training segments of the Iraqi Army to stand on its own and protect its citizens.

 Recently members of the 1st Company, Commando Battalion of the 7th Iraqi Army Division found themselves face-to-face with U.S. Marines and following their every lead.  The American military uses teams for their training.  A Military Transition Team is known by it’s acronym MiTT.  Iraqi police are also trained by Police Transition Teams, or PTTs.  Iraqi border guards are trained by BTTs, Border Transition Teams.  There are even POETTs, Port-of-Entry Training Teams.

Corporal Muhammed and his team were almost ready to repeat the room-clearing technique.  His commando battalion is training to capture or kill insurgents, room by room, at their new Close Quarters Battle Course just outside Al Asad.  It’s also known as a “shoot house.”  The course is a metal house without a roof.  Where a roof would be is a steel catwalk where Iraqi officers stare down at their men or bark orders.  Gradually, Robert Wise speaks less and less to the Iraqi soldiers.  He wants the Iraqi officers to pick up the instruction and lead their own men.  It’s all part of the process of leaving Iraq.  Hand over authority, hand over towns, hand over training, hand over cities, day by day, to the Iraqis. 
The nation’s sovereignty is written on paper and respected by the U.S. military, but sovereignty also means the Iraqis must assume every facet of their country’s security.

Close Quarters fighting can be intimidating to learn, much less perform. Marine Lt. Col. John Van Messel, team leader of MiTT 7, stood on the catwalk next to the Iraqi officers and watched.  ““I’ll tell you it’s no different than young Marines going into a shoot house in the United States,” Van Messel explained.  “The first time they do live fire in close quarters there’s a bit of trepidation.”

This is where Mohammed had to be corrected by the instructor.  He listened intently, nodding as the interpretor, or the “terp” as they’re called here, translated the instructor’s words from English to Arabic.

             Next, they lined up outside and ran into the room again.  This time, each of the four are in the proper formation: two men against one wall, two on another.  Bullets slam through the cardboard silhouettes and the wood behind them.  The shoot house’s thick, steel, exterior walls forbid the rounds from leaving the building.

            Wise and his interpretor tell the four they did a good job.  Mohammed and his men leave, quickly replaced by four more Iraqi commandos ready to fire their first bullets into a small room.

            On the catwalk, the Iraqi commanding officer, 1st Lt. Amir Mwafic, is satisfied with what he’s observed.  “This training improves the abilities of our soldiers,” he  said.  “We, as officers, are more confident with our soldiers after the training.”

            Outside the shoot house, Corporal Gassem Mohammed is more relaxed and his comfortable smile has returned.  “The Marines have increased our experience.” he said with a nod, “and we are becoming faster than before.”

            At the end of the day, the battalion of Iraqi Commandos march away from the shoot house, climb into the back of several waiting pickups, and drive off to their camp on the opposite side of the Al Asad Air Base.

Tomorrow is another day of training and tomorrow doesn’t wait.  The June 30^th deadline for these Iraqis to be on their own, without the U.S. military watching over their collective shoulders, also will not wait.  Ready or not, the date is fast approaching. 

Randy Garsee

May, 2009

Al Asad Air Base

Author Brian Lumley

Write Fright

A Creepy Conversation with Brian Lumley

by

Randy Garsee

British author Brian Lumley sat by a Phoenix hotel swimming pool, just outside of yet another convention of writers, readers, and publishers of the horror genre. He lit up a cigarette and looked at me, his eyes squinting as though this bestselling writer of vampire books wasn't exactly comfortable with the concept of daylight.

"Everybody has something that frightens them," he said and leaned toward me as if to make sure I understood the message. "Everyone has something that frightens them."

I agreed. I was sitting here under the Arizona sun talking to a guy with an English accent who was famous for scaring the bleep out of people. So, yeah. I agreed with him. And that's when he told me the secret behind his bestselling technique.

"I write about things that would frighten me," he confessed. "And that way I believe I'm going to grab my reader by the throat."

I swallowed and tugged lightly at my shirt collar.

"If it frightens me," he said, "It's going to frighten [the reader.]"

"But where is it going?" I asked him. "People, critics, say horror is dead. Do you believe that? What do you think?"

Lumley smiled and exhaled a cloud of smoke that drifted over the pool. "I think the future of horror belongs really in being able to explore the reader's mind. Like Hannibal Lecter. Get into your reader's mind and find out what frightens him."

Getting into the mind of what scares us is precisely what Lumley has been doing for more than 30 years. In fact, the focus of most of his stories is on the undead.

"I have a big stake in vampire stories you might say," he said and laughed, a deep, throaty voice of a man who loves his work.

Lumley knows what scares us because he's seen a lot of gut-wrenching, heart-pounding things in his time. He's a retired Royal Military policeman. He's taken the horror he's witnessed on the streets, thrown them into a surreal blender, mixed in the fictional dark side and the psychologically twisted, and punches "puree."

A prolific writer, Lumley's penned nearly 50 novels and short story collections, but he's probably best known for his Necroscope series where the main character is a psychic detective.

"My Necroscope series deals with a guy who talks to dead people," Lumley explained. "A paranormal talent. A psychic skill. He is more than just a psychic. He actually can converse with them and they can tell him all the secrets of the world and all the knowledge they took with them."

Lumley points out that Hollywood is raising the level for the horror genre through special effects that can recreate the most frightening imagination of any writer.

"Hollywood can do anything with special effects," Lumley said, snuffing the cigarette out in a ashtray. "So once upon a time you could be too extreme with horror. You're aliens could be too weird and far off. They can't be anymore, because they can be done. So if we can envision it, if we can see it in our mind's eye, it can be put on the screen."

For the latest information on Lumley visit www.brianlumley.com

From 2003

Like an Alien Landing

Mayberry on Steroids?

by 

Randy Garsee

     Have you ever watched Mayberry, R.F.D. or The Andy Griffith Show? What would the sheriff have done if large buildings started going up on a secluded piece of land just outside of quiet little Mayberry? And then he couldn’t find out why? Would he finally have to put on that gunbelt and give Barney Fife more than one bullet?
     Of course that plot was never part of a Mayberry episode but it has become a very real episode elsewhere, but first I had to travel more than 700 miles to a quiet little town in west Texas.
     Ten years ago, Randy Mankin went into the newspaper business. "I was looking for a way to stay in this town. We like this little town. It's like living in Mayberry."
     The Eldorado Success is a reflection of his Mayberry with its bad news. "Sometimes that means getting out of bed at three in the morning and going out and covering a car wreck."
     And its good news like, "Seeing someone getting a Lions Club recognition. That's just fantastic."
     A few months ago, however, Mankin's Mayberry began to whistle with questions, conspiracies and paranoia. "When this thing came to town, this story, it was so foreign to what everyone had seen it almost did seem like a UFO had landed."
     "Naturally, panic took over the town a little bit," said Schleicher County Sheriff David Doran. He discovered the seeds of fear sprouted from a secluded ranch north of town. "Where they're building, it sets right in a valley, so, it's real hard to see anything. There was a heightened awareness within our community. There was a lot of fear of the unknown."
     And the unknown wanted to stay that way. The ranch gate stays locked. The red sign offers no warm welcome. To the side, a surveillance camera watches all those who approach. But the unknown could still be seen, as the sheriff pointed out, “Their biggest problem is aircraft flying over."
     "All of a sudden you see them in Shleicher County and it's like, my goodness what's going on down there,” said Justice of the Peace, Judge James Doyle. He took me on a flight over the ranch in question. The view from above showed a lot of major construction: three-story log cabins and buildings large enough to hold hundreds of people.
     Eventually, authorities contacted the names connected to the deed. At first they told the local officials that it was going to be a hunting lodge. It was a lie. Mankin says the stories kept changing. After the hunting lodge tale, they were told it was going to be a place for a businessman to entertain his Las Vegas clients.
     Mankin said, "First thing we thought was 'Well, the mob's coming to town.' It almost would have been easier to understand, had it been."
     The truth finally came from Arizona. It seems Eldorado's newest residents were Arizona transplants. Not just a few people but a religion, a religion that allows men to have more than one wife. The church, of course, is the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints or F-L-D-S.
     Thousands of its members live in Colorado City, Arizona and Hildale, Utah.
"Fundamentalist Mormonism, I guess you'd call it, is not a common thing here in Texas and definitely not in Eldorado, Texas," said Sheriff Doran.
     As it turned out, the ranch would be used by a church accused of forced underage marriages, child abuse and financial misconduct. The church is led by a reclusive prophet who is being sued by his own nephew for sodomy. Understandably, the truth has not eased the minds of the citizens of Eldorado. Now there are new concerns of how many church members are moving here when the compound is finished and what are their plans for the once worry-free west Texas town?
     "As far as them taking over the community,” the sheriff said, “There are big concerns of that amongst the citizens."
     For now, newspaper editor Randy Mankin has the story of his career in a town he once compared to Mayberry.
     "Is it still Mayberry?" I asked.
     "It's Mayberry on steroids," Mankin said and laughed.

Fair Park in Dallas

A Universal Place

by

Randy Garsee

   

   In the shadow of the Cotton Bowl in Dallas is where you'll find it.  Fair Park is a universe of attraction, filled with museums, amusement rides and the fun of learning.  As Public Relations Director Anne Haskel explained, the Museum of Nature and Science is only one star glimmering in its cosmos.

  "There are other cultural institutions," she said.  "There's the Women's Museum and the Texas

Discovery Gardens, so you can really make a day trip."

   There's also the Planetarium with its space and history shows projected on its domed ceiling and don't forget the Ferris Wheel called the Texas Star or the Dallas Aquarium.  When you're tired of seeing things, you can hit the water.  You can rent a Swan paddle boat and make a round trip in the park's pond.  All the fun is in one location.

   "Especially if you're watching your pennies," Haskel said.  "You get a great value coming here.  There's 20 some-odd exhibitions, plus the Imax Theater."

   This is not a crock, although you'll see fossilized crocodiles.  It's a mammoth opportunity to see dinosaurs and a lot more.  Haskel said, "First of all, we have exhibits, both permanent and special traveling shows, that will appeal to a multi-generational age range."

   There's also the African-American Museum, the Museum of the American Railroad and the Hall of State which houses the Dallas Historical Society.  "Come try us.  Give us a day and, then, I really think you're just going to keep coming back," Haskel said.

   There is no doubt.  Fair Park is like a world within a world, a place certain to add to your universe of knowledge for as long as you want to stay.

Interview with a Polygamist Wife

Lori:
The Story of a Polygamist Wife

Dateline: Colorado City, AZ
Fall, 2005 (with updated information)

Across the bumpy dirt road from Ross and Lori Chatwin’s home in Colorado City, Arizona is one of the church’s private schools. Kids are on the playground as I pull into the Chatwin’s driveway. As I exit the news vehicle, I see some of the children leaning against the fence and staring. One blonde-haired little girl, wearing a long dress with her hair in a thick braid running down her back, greets me by showing two thumbs down and sticking out her tongue.

The message, from child to adult here, is a clear one. Strangers are not welcome in the twin polygamous communities of Hildale, Utah or Colorado City, Arizona, especially if they’re news media. Unfortunately, this religious community that avoids attention drew attention to itself. Allegations of child molestation, child brides forced into marriage and other crimes eventually attracted law enforcement from Utah and Arizona.
Some want to blame the imprisoned prophet, Warren Jeffs, for the current tribulations in Colorado City, Hildale and even Eldorado, Texas. Others say it’s the lifestyle that makes child molestation and forced underage marriages okay. However, history shows trouble has been a century in the making.

More Than a Century of History

In 1890, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints banned polygamy. It was the only way Utah would be allowed in as a state of the union. Those who continued to practice plural marriages were excommunicated from the church. Among the many factions of polygamists in Utah and other states is the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or FLDS. It is the FLDS who straddle the state line, growing quietly for decades in the shadows of the Vermillion Cliffs.
Colorado City has a population of about 3,500. The population of Hildale is even larger. It’s estimated there are about 10,000 polygamists who live here making it the largest polygamist community in North America. Some of the homes are massive three-story wood structures, big enough for a man to have a number of wives and a multitude of children.

Meeting Lori

Ross Chatwin greets me in the driveway of his home and invites me in. We walk to the rear of the house and enter the back door. I find myself in the kitchen of the home. Ross' wife, Lori, is sitting at a table. A long white dress covers her petite frame. She wears her dark hair in a bun. She smiles shyly as one of her six children walks into the room, a 4-year-old blonde girl. She looks at me, says "Hi," then turns and leaves.

While the Chatwins are in a polygamist community, their marriage is not.
Lori Chatwin has lived here in Colorado City, Arizona, all her life. She does not live in a plural marriage and that disappoints her. As for Colorado City, Arizona and Hildale, Utah, she made it clear, people don’t talk to those they don’t know. “If you’re an outsider it’s pretty much closed up to you.”
She explains, “You know, I’ve grown up with the, ‘You don’t talk to people. Press is bad. They take what you say and make their own story out of it.’ But at the same time, something has to happen. Nobody else is doing it.”
In January, 2005, Ross Chatwin took a stand against the FLDS’s prophet, Warren Jeffs. He blew the whistle, if you will, on corruption and abuse. At one point, Ross compared Jeffs to Adolf Hitler. That meant Lori's dream of a polygamous family would probably never happen. It is the prophet who “assigns” the marriages.
In the aftermath of her husband's actions, Lori tells me, “I have mixed feelings, mixed emotions.”
She also feels alienated. “In the eyes of my family that’s still here, I’m a traitor. You go down the street, half the people that you see are your relatives. At this point, I don’t know if we’ll be able to stay here. I don’t know if we’ll leave and have to start clear over.”
Lori would like to have a polygamous relationship in her family and explained her reasons. “I thrive on friendship. That’s important to me to have communication. What’s wrong with me having a best friend, or best friends, living in the same family, a part of the same unit?”

The Sister Wife

Such a friend would become a “spiritual” wife to her husband and a “sister wife” to Lori. Lori explained a sister wife as, “A close friend under the same head, [husband] where we don’t have to say ‘I can’t do that because my husband doesn’t want me doing that.’ If we want to do something together we know that it’s okay.”
I tell Lori many women reading this might respond by saying ‘Fine, but my best friend doesn’t sleep with my husband.’
“Says who?” Lori says and smiles.
I ask her, “Do you want a sister wife more than Ross wants another wife?”
She ponders this a few seconds. “Well, for a man that’s a very dangerous question because everyone’s going to say, ‘Oh, he just wants to sleep with another woman’,” she says. “And so, looking at it that way, I would say ‘yes,’ I want one worse than he does.”
However, she admits that if a sister wife ever joined their family, there may be a painful transition. “I mean, I’m human. I’m not going to say ‘Well, I’m not going to find some spark of jealousy hidden somewhere deep inside that’s going to make me mad some day.’ But I’m willing to work with that.”
Why would an FLDS woman even consider becoming a second, third, or fourth wife? Lori explains it this way, “A woman can not find a man because they’re all taken. All the good ones are taken. And therefore it lowers the value of a woman. Now if she could have her pick of men, whether they’re married or not, she could find a good husband. That increases her value.”
She definitely has her own logic, but Lori Chatwin also believes some lines should not be crossed. “I feel like it should be a person’s right. A consenting adult should be able to do whatever they want. Now if it’s a young girl being forced into a situation, that’s not right.”
Lori had two face to face meetings with Warren Jeffs after her husband was excommunicated. “So when he tells me 'your husband has lost the priesthood. He can no longer hold you as a wife.' I say, ‘That’s not how I feel about it’.”
Jeffs told Lori her husband, Ross, needed to be disciplined. “And he wanted me to help in that disciplinary action by not sleeping with my husband. As time went on, I started thinking, ‘this is really stupid. Why are we complying with what he’s trying to enforce whether we sleep with each other or not. It’s none of his business. Just the same as it’s no business of anybody in the whole entire world how many wives Ross has.”
For now, the FLDS saga continues to play out with its prophet sitting in a jail cell. It continues to play out in Texas as well, in Eldorado.

Lost In Space, But Not Forgotten In Tucson

Mars Underground
by: Randy Garsee

Lost in space. Not the old TV program but the newest label to be placed on the mission of the 10-year-old Mars Global Surveyor. It's been two weeks since Surveyor has phoned home. Maybe its interstellar free minutes simply ran out.
Uh, okay. Maybe not.
It was the oldest of five NASA foil-wrapped gizmos currently orbiting the red planet. Surveyor surveyed via high-resolution photos of the planet's surface. Now it's quiet. Certainly it was abducted by the Gwarbles, those rejects of Orion who have a fascination with shiny space things. I don't know for certain, but I was recently drilled with a root canal and given painkillers, therefore many universal mysteries now have a certain clarity, like the Hubble Telescope after a Windex attack.
The Mars Global Surveyor's mission was to map the entire Martian surface. You know, freeways, city grids, the Great Wall of, well, the Chinese Martians, stuff like that.
But an old pal of mine I haven't seen in years because he won't give me his cell phone number, Tucson author and scientist Bill Hartmann, knows more about Mars than Martians themselves. At the moment, I fear he's weeping the demise of his eyes above the red sky, curled in a fetal position and whimpering, "Why didn't I give Randy Garsee my cell phone number?"
Weep not, dear Bill, for you are still the Red Sage of the Fourth Orb.
William "Bill" Hartmann is (or was) a member of the Surveyor's imaging team. His job is (or was) to read those hi-res photos to decipher the ages of volcanoes, river channels, and the Iranian-North Korean Conspiracy to re-plant Israel in the red sand. Okay, maybe not the last thing. Hartmann, unlike me, is serious about his work. He's a senior scientist with the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson and he's been fascinated by Mars since he was a boy.
Hartmann is also multi-talented. As an artist, he paints the red planet. One painting shows a stark desert-like landscape with mountains on the horizon and an igloo-shaped research station in the foreground. He paints as if he's sitting on the surface looking at the horizon.
As a writer, his acclaimed book, "Mars Underground," was compared to Arthur C. Clarke's legendary novel, "2001: A Space Odyssey."




In fact, Clarke himself read the book and wrote a blurb for it:

"Mars Underground"... "conveys...a realistic feeling about the future development of Mars." "...personally gratifying, as it seems to be like an extension of my own two books on the subject."
It's no wonder Hartmann knows his subject so well. As a scientist, he's been part of four Mars-related missions:

*** The Mars mapping mission of Mariner 9 in 1971
*** The ill-fated Mars Observer mission in 1992. (It disappeared in space after taking only one photograph which Hartmann keeps on his desk.)
*** There was also a failed Russian Mars mission in 1996.
*** And the Mars Global Surveyor. Oh, Surveyor! How little we knew ye.

To put it clearly, there is no one on planet Earth better qualified to write about planet Mars. Hartmann believes we'll have humans on Mars soon. Hopefully those pioneering astronauts will be able to fend off the Gwarbles by not wearing anything shiny. I understand the color of rust will repel those Gwarbelian scavengers, but I have no proof. Just take my drug-induced word for it, ALL RIGHT! Uh-hmm. Back to Mr. Hartmann.
"There will be this continuation of missions to Mars every couple of years," He told me before my root canal. "Gradually, they will explore different aspects of Mars with different instruments and put more and more packages down onto the surface until we understand the surface environment."
Hartmann believes we'll put people on the red planet before the end of the next decade. "I think the question is when do we get to Mars and when will we start all of that."
And before you start thinking this is all about spending billions of your tax dollars for nothing, Hartmann explains why this is really all about Mother Earth. "We go to this planet, Mars. It's frozen. It's extremely dry. It has almost no atmosphere. And yet there are dry river beds that look like the [rivers in the Arizona desert]. Nobody knows why those rivers were running. Where did the water come from? Why did the frozen water on Mars melt? I think what we're beginning to learn is planets are much less stable than we thought they were."
(A Randy Note: I didn't have the heart to tell Bill you won't find a lot of frozen river water in Arizona.)
Nevertheless, his novel "Mars Underground" is dipped so many times in projected scientific fact it's a wonder the fictional characters were able to penetrate the surface and worm their way into the storyline. Hartmann, however, is no Gwarbelian. "I think that will be a reality. The base will be something like the ones we have in Antarctica today. The environments are not that terribly different except the air is a lot thinner on Mars. Socially and scientifically, there will be bases like [the ones in the book]."
Great, I think, urban sprawl in outer space. Bill continues, "I have 5,000 people either on Mars or up on the satellite of Mars. There's a little moon of Mars called Phobos and I have Phobos University. It's a staging area for a lot of the expeditions. Some of the people are up there and some are on the surface of Mars."
(A Randy Thought: Why do I feel like if you don't pass enough Phobos University pop quizzes your Pho-bottom is plopped down on the cold red planet?) This is starting to sound Machia-gwarbelian and it's frightening me, so I cleverly change the subject to another alien force: Hollywood.
"Are you getting any nibbles from movie studios?" I ask him nonchalantly. "Will we see 'Mars Underground' as a movie?
Bill laughs, "If Martin Scorsese calls up and wants to do something, I'm willing to talk."
Martin?
Martian?
Get it?
Me either.
The Gwarbles, however, I get.

Other books by William K. Hartmann:

Laurell K. Hamilton: "Come Play"

"Come Play"
From Vampires To Fairies:
The Literal Transformation of
Author Laurell K. Hamilton
by Randy L. Garsee


    She's wanted to write since she was 14 and it's all she's ever wanted to do. Laurell K. Hamilton has written her way into the hardened hearts and maniacal minds of horror readers everywhere through her “Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter” series. If you haven't been there it's a surreal place where monsters and humans share an uncomfortable, bloody and, often, murderous co-existence.
   "It's like if you got up tomorrow and everything that went bump in the night was real: vampires, zombies, ghouls," Hamilton explained, describing the modern day setting of the Anita Blake series. "The vampires have rights. They're people. You can't just shoot them, or stake them, because they're vampires."
   The zombies, in particular, create some constitutional quandaries that would leave most of America's judicial authorities giggling in straitjackets.
   "They are fighting things in court, like, 'Do you have to give back the money now that Daddy's declared legally alive? Are you a widow or a bigamist now?'" Hamilton said and smiled, clearly having fun injecting our reality with her dark imaginings. "When you see zombies shambling down the street in Anita's world, you call the police department. They believe you and they send someone."
   Anita's world is mostly set in St. Louis, where Hamilton lives. "St. Louis is an underused location for both books and movies," she said. Hamilton is originally from Minneapolis and lived for a while in California before settling down in St. Louis. "I sort of fell in love with the town. It's got a city feel and yet you're never 20 minutes away from the country. I have the best time driving around and saying, 'Okay where are the bodies going to be in this book?'"
   Hamilton has full, dark, red wavy hair that drapes over her shoulders and she wears very red lipstick. Blood red, you might say. A Celtic cross clings to her throat. A second necklace also has something hanging on it, but it's hiding somewhere behind the low-cut blouse and will remain a mystery. Hamilton, who is in her early 30's, is not exactly a bombshell, but she's certainly not unatrractive either. She carries a certain sensuality. And when she talks about her work, she peers at you with dark golden eyes through round, wire-rimmed glasses.
   "I'm an eye contact junkie," she confesses. "Usually the first thing I notice is the color of a person's eyes."
   I blink.
   Hamilton has found immense success with the Anita Blake series as well as the Dark Fey series, but it's sometimes been a long drive on the publishing autobahn with roadblocks along the way.
   "When I originally marketed the [Anita Blake] series, I had at least one editor reject it because she said the monster being out of the closet made it not horror, made it not scary," she said, explaining just one in a long string of editorial confrontations in her career. Another involved a location for one of the Anita Blake novels.
   "One [of the novels] is set in Albuquerque and another is set in Branson, Missouri, which is much more rural. On that one I had one scene where I describe how black it gets at night without city lights. My copy editor, who had literally never been out of New York, wrote in the margin, 'It never gets that dark,'" Hamilton said and laughed. "Of course it doesn't get that dark in the city. It was very fun to explain to her that, without electricity, yes, it does get dark."
   Still, behind those wire-rimmed glasses and dark golden eyes, a transformation took place in the writing mind of Laurall K. Hamilton. If you haven't read it already, then brace yourself, dear reader, for the Dark Fey series.
   "The first book is called 'A Kiss of Shadows,'" she said. "I'm doing with the Fey, the fairyfolk, what I do with the vampires."

   Hamilton explained the story behind the series. "For me, it is again, altered history. It's modern, set now and today. The fey were kicked out of Europe at the end of the last great fairy-human war. [After their defeat], they were given the choice of mainstreaming into the culture or inter-marrying with humans and losing their identity as a culture. Some of them didn't want to do that. [Then-U.S. President Thomas] Jefferson was a fairy-phile and he invited them to come to America. They moved into the Cahokia Mounds in Illinois."
   The Dark Fey series is divided between Los Angeles and Cahokia, Illinois, which is near St. Louis. Hamilton describes the series as mystery, romance and political intrigue. Also in the series, another strong female character with a knack for detective work. "We have the main character who is actually Princess Meredith Nicessus who is in line to both the good and bad thrones. Princess Meredith is hiding from her relatives, who are plotting to kill her. She's a detective when the series begins in L.A."
   It may sound like the Dark Fey series slides easily on the fantasy shelves at the bookstore, but categorizing the series became an exasperating experience for Hamilton.
   "It's going to be marketed as dark fantasy and, uh," she said, then her eyes darted down to the tabletop, she hung her head for a second, and said, "And, actually, erotic fantasy."
   "Really," I said.
   "Really," she replied. "And I debated with them on this word. I said, 'What do you mean by erotic fantasy?' To me that sounded a bit more than I sent the book in as. And they said erotic meant a high sensual content. And I thought about it for a few days and I said, 'Okay, I'll give you that one. By your definition, it is [erotic fantasy.]'
   "I'm a very sensory-oriented writer," she said as she fidgeted and gave a couple of deep nods. "But I am kind of wondering what my grandmother's going to say about 'erotic' above the title."
   "You're not comfortable with the erotic label, are you?" I asked.
   "No, I'm not," she admitted. "But I think [the publisher] sees it as tittillating, that it's going to get other readers, but it's always a double-edged sword. If you put something like erotica above the title, some people aren't going to pick it up just because of that."
   As for her choice of subjects, Hamilton said, "I am writing it the way I want to see it. If other people would write the way I want to read it, I wouldn't feel compelled."
   Hamilton still finds writing "fun" and encourages readers to join her, whether in vampire tales or erotic fantasy.
   "I love what I'm doing," she said. "It's still very much 'Come. Come join me. Come play.' And that sense of play and fun I think still comes out in the writing. It shows that I'm still having a great time."
   A few of Hamilton's books are listed below. But keep an eye for this amazing talent. Her novels often debut high atop the New York Times' list of bestsellers.