Kim Harrison
Schuler Books and Music, Lansing
Feb. 27, 3 p.m.
schulerbooks.com, (517) 316 7495
Rachael Morgan is a purebred witch who is also bounty hunter for Inderland Security. Her friends include Ivy, a bisexual vampire, and Jenks, a four-inch tall pixy with 54 children. Rachael's kids won't be witches; they'll be demons, and, while Rachael has encountered lovers of many species, her one true love was a vampire named Kisten.
Rachael Morgan is the foundational character in the Kim Harrison's Hollows series, and is a driving force in Harrison's writing.
"If I wanted to, my publisher would let me keep going, but my main character Rachael Morgan says ‘Stop! I want my happy ending. Let me go!'"
Harrison's brand of dark urban fantasy and romance has been winning fans since her debut book in the series, Dead Witch Walking in 2004. Romantic Times named it the Best Fantasy Novel of the year, and ParanormalRomance.com awarded it the P.E.A.R.L., or the Paranormal Excellence Award for Romantic Literature for Best Science/Fantasy Fiction. Harrison was also given the P.E.A.R.L. for Best New Author that same year.
Harrison, an Ann Arbor native, didn't begin writing until she was 30.
"I started on a whim," Harrison said. "I wrote for an hour and loved it, and it just got addicting."
The very first thing she wrote eventually got published as First Truth, a book in the Truth Series that she writes under her real name, Dawn Cook. After she finished the Truth Series she wrote Dead Witch Walking under the name Kim Harrison, which found a ready market. As Cook, she has also written the Princess Series.
Harrison attributes the appeal of urban fantasy to escapism. Although the world her readers visit is not any sort of paradise, "it's a safe danger, like roller coasters. You know you're going to be OK. You can live vicariously through these characters then you can close the book and go pick up your kids from school," she chuckles. "Most of it has to do with [that] it's fun; it's fun to just pretend that you're doing these magical powerfully things."
Urban fantasy has enjoyed a steady increase in popularity for a number of years. The genre seems to attract readers, and Harrison contends that "when I write about vampires and witches, I'm really writing about people. That's what the core of my books are about, are the characters."
Another aspect of urban fantasy is that it "does tie in quite a bit with paranormal romance...both have usually strong willed female protagonists, usually oriented for solving a crime [and there is] always magic," describes Harrison. "It seems what helps identify these two genres isn't so much what they're doing-you can have mystery, you can have romance-what identifies these genres are the characters themselves."
Black Magic Sanction, the eighth book in the Hollows series, comes out Feb. 23, and Harrison will be in town for a talk and book signing.
Other Literary Events
Helene Ellis
Schuler Books and Music, Okemos
Feb. 24, 7 p.m.
schulerbooks.com, (517) 349-8840
Helene Ellis has a heart for children who have experienced abuse, neglect, and are part of an extended kinship family. She has dedicated her care and time for children and their kinship families by writing The Kinship Guide to Rescuing Children, a monthly newsletter Kinship Care Notes and a blog located at kincare.blogspot.com. Ellis states that "after years of working with families who have just taken on beloved children in their extended family, I have learned that there are few resources guiding these courageous adults through the maze of public systems." Her writing works as a guidance for grandparents or other kinship relatives who have taken in extended family members, offering advice and explanation of how to deal with a variety of situations and life's little difficulties. Ellis will be speaking at Schuler Books on Feb. 24 beginning at 7 p.m.
Diane Glancy
MSU Main Library, North Conference Room (W449)
Feb. 22, 5 p.m.
lib.msu.edu, (517) 884-6448
Michigan Writers Series welcomes Diane Glancy: poet, novelist, playwright, and essayist. Glancy's award winning Native literature, including books Asylum in the Grasslands, The Dance Partner and The Shadow's Horse, is a reflection of her background and ethnicity. Coming from a Cherokee father and a English and German mother, Glancy possesses a unique perspective on spirituality, family ties and personal identity. Glancy states that "you have to face discomfort, you have to be quiet, you have to open your ears and listen and let them talk and tell you. That's what all of Native literature is in the process of doing."
