Deadlocked.

A Sookie Stackhouse Novel.

Charlaine Harris.

It's vampire politics as usual around the town of Bon Temps, but never before have they hit so close to Sookie's heart...

Growing up with telepathic abilities, Sookie Stackhouse realized early on there were things she'd rather not know. And now that she's an adult, she also realizes that some things she knows about, she'd rather not see-like Eric Northman feeding off another woman. A younger one.

There's a thing or two she'd like to say about that, but she has to keep quiet-Felipe de Castro, the Vampire King of Louisiana (and Arkansas and Nevada), is in town. It's the worst possible time for a human body to show up in Eric's front yard-especially the body of the woman whose blood he just drank.

Now, it's up to Sookie and Bill, the official Area Five investigator, to solve the murder. Sookie thinks that, at least this time, the dead girl's fate has nothing to do with her. But she is wrong. She has an enemy, one far more devious than she would ever suspect, who's set out to make Sookie's world come crashing down.

Amazon.com Review.

A conversation with Charlaine Harris, best-selling author of Deadlocked, and Laurell K. Hamilton, best-selling author of Kiss the Dead.

Question: Did you ever imagine that your series would run as long as it has?.

Charlaine Harris: I was just glad to sell the first book. It took two years of my agent sending it out to get a bite. I never even dreamed that Sookie would be so popular, that I would find so much to say about her and her world.

Laurell K. Hamilton: No. I had over two hundred rejections for the first Anita Blake novel. They were the nicest rejections, with editors suggesting other publishing houses to send it to, but they, themselves, couldn't figure out how to market it. When I got that first three book contract, I remember thinking, "Well, at least I'll get to write three of them." I actually did think I had at least ten books in Anita and her world, but I don't think anyone can plan to write twenty-one novels in a series and still be excited about starting the twenty-second.

Did you ever dream paranormal would be this hot?

LKH: I remember being told that mixed genre didn't sell, before the term paranormal became a genre. I was also told that no one wanted to read about vampires. More than one editor told me that particular monster was dead and gone. I thought there was life left in the old legends, but I never saw this level of popularity coming.

CH: Yes, even my agent didn't expect Dead Until Dark would be an easy sell, maybe especially since my books contained a lot of humor. Vampires were passe, and books that crossed genres (Except for yours: I think you had three or four books out when I wrote the first Sookie, and I was so glad to discover them!) were called "unshelvable.' I could never have anticipated shelves and shelves of cross-genre books.

Does fan response play a part in your planning process?

CH: Not in the sense of changing plot direction in my novels. This is my story to tell, and I have to write it the way I see it. But every now and then when reader response to a character is unexpectedly enthusiastic--or the opposite--I'll take a second look at that character to see why he/she is coming across in a way I didn't expect or anticipate.

LKH: I don't change plot direction for fan reaction either. My story, my world, my books, my stuff, my way. The only people who can change the direction of my novels are my characters. It's their life, after all, so if they're really insistent on a different plot, then they win. I agree that reader response to a character can make me puzzle over them more, but it doesn't usually change how often the character is on stage, or how big their role is, because weirdly if the fans are interested, then I'm already intrigued. Best example is Edward who started out as this cold blooded assassin, almost a bad guy, and now he's one of Anita's best friends, and he's a U. S. Marshal. So, not what I had planned for him.

Have you ever had a character totally surprise you with their choices?

LKH: A lot of my characters have minds of their own. Edward went away on his own and got himself engaged to a woman with two children from her first marriage. Edward-- assassin, ex-military, current police officer, taking a six-year-old to ballet lessons with all the other moms both amuses and hurts my head. Anita's love life went into a completely different direction than I'd ever anticipated. I so didn't see Anita dating this many men, or being in love with more than one man, and having everyone she loved okay with that.

CH: I've discovered some surprising things about my characters as I wrote them. I know that their minds are really my mind, but sometimes it doesn't feel that way. It's like knowing a character has a secret (I'm thinking of Bill), and then suddenly realizing what that secret is. I was genuinely aghast. Sometimes my creative brain thinks a lot faster than my conscious brain. And it's certainly a lot more devious.

How do you keep a world with paranormal elements credible?

CH: I anchored my skewed world with real-life elements. Sookie has to pay her bills, she has to do her laundry, and she has family obligations. My vampires buy their clothes at the mall. My werewolf runs a surveying business. One of my fairies works in customer service at a department store. Readers seem to enjoy the fact that no matter what creature you may be, there's a process of surviving that has to be gone through; but there's all these other elements that make that process so different.

LKH: I make sure any real life facts are as real and well-researched as possible. Because I'm asking people to believe in vampires, wereanimals, and zombies, I need to make sure the guns, cars, and real crime are as realistic as possible. Once a reader catches me wrong in an area where they are expert they won't believe my monsters are real. But I have found if I'm right on the hard facts even experts will let me fudge, or take that next fantastic leap, because I've proven myself by laying the foundation of reality to make my leap into the unknown.

Do people ever expect you to be your characters?

LKH: If I had known people would get confused between fiction and fact I'd have made Anita look less like me, but it just never occurred to me that there would be a problem. I've had fans want to know what weapons I'm carrying. They assume all the men are based on real people, and they aren't. I don't actually base characters on real people. Since I can't lighten Anita's hair, I've lightened my own and I get less fan confusion. I've had fans ask for the phone numbers of the men and get angry when I tried to explain I couldn't give them the contact info for a fictional character.

CH: Ha! Well, I'm much older and rounder than Sookie, so I'm definitely no stand-in for Sookie. In fact, readers who have never met me before are usually astonished when they meet me; so were the actors on True Blood. Some of my readers who came to me after watching True Blood get the characters in the books sort of conflated with the actors who play them on television. In their minds, Alexander Skarsgard IS Eric, Stephen Moyer IS Bill. It can lead to some confusing questions when I'm at signings.

What scenes in your novels are the most fun for you to write? Action? Sex? Relationship drama?

CH: All of those are fun, depending on the outcome! But I have to say, I love to write a good fight scene. I find the "relationship" scenes a challenge. When people talk about their relationships, it's a messy conversation. People aren't too articulate about their innermost feelings. And such conversations don't proceed in a linear way, but jag back and forth as each speaker voices the issues that are most important to that person. So it's hard to make sound realistic, coherent, and yet condense such a conversation enough to make it tolerable.

LKH: It depends on my mood. Sometimes a good fight scene can be very therapeutic, and give a productive outlet for negative emotions. The more people involved in the action the more complex the fight choreography can become, and that can be a challenge, and slow down the emotional content for me. I enjoy doing sex scenes, but they are a different kind of challenge. On a day when I can get in the mood for the scene, they're great, but on a day when real life interferes, it's a bit like real sex. It's hard to concentrate on it when you have too many interruptions from the non-sexy side of your life. I guess that's true of all writing, though, too many interruptions disrupt the process in general. The biggest challenge for the sex scenes is that sex is a very personal and individual activity, so I have the same girl involved, but different men and I want each man's style to be unique. Relationship drama? Yuck, can I just say, yuck again? This kind of drama isn't fun in real life and the only thing that makes fictional relationship drama tolerable is that it's fictional, and I'm not having to endure it in my real life, but other than that it sucks just as much. It also tends to complicate my life as a writer, because almost nothing screws up a story arc like relationship choices, though I have had action scenes go so differently from what I'd planned that an entire third of a book had to be thrown out. It was a better book for it, but still, near deadline that was hard.

What's the hardest thing about writing such a long running series?

LKH: The beginning of the book is easy, because you always want that to be interesting and lure in both old and new readers. It's the middle of the book that becomes more complicated. As a writer you always have to think that you may have brand new readers picking up your book, so you have to explain the characters, the world, everything, but you don't want to over explain to the long time readers. The other problem with a series is that each book needs to stand alone as much as possible, but you also want character growth and world development from novel to novel, so again, it's a balancing act. I make sure that each opening is different enough that you won't be left wondering, did I read that already. It's an issue I've had with other series that I read. It gets very challenging when you get in double digits to make everything fresh, but familiar. I'm lucky that I'm still discovering new things about Anita, Jean-Claude, Edward, Nathaniel, everyone, and the world continues to grow and surprise me. My fictional world is like the real one, I never know quite what's coming next.

CH: The hardest thing is keeping track of previous developments and details. My memory just wasn't up to it, and I had to hire someone (the fabulous Victoria Koski). When you create a world, there are a thousand small things that make it credible, and it's easier than you'd think to forget whether someone is a werefox or a werelynx, or whether it's still daytime during the narrative or if you've passed into darkness. I think it's important to catch as many little errors as you can, so readers don't get yanked out of the world. I'm not the kind of reader who notices, but there are many readers who do.

Photo Laurell K. Hamilton Stefan Hester.

Photo Charlaine Harris Sigrid Estrada.

Review.

"Harris is a master at taking several paranormal worlds and plunging them into our reality with humor." *Tulsa World.

"The Sookie Stackhouse series seamlessly mixes sensuality, violence and humor as readers experience the people of small-town Louisiana through Sookie's eyes." Boulder Weekly*.

DEADLOCKED.

Julia, this is for you.

I love you, honey.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

I appreciate the advice and encouragement given by my friends Dana Cameron and Toni L. P. Kelner. I couldn't do any of this without my husband, Hal. Paula Woldan (bffpaula) has made my life a cakewalk rather than an obstacle course. And heartfelt thanks to my agent, Joshua Bilmes of JABberwocky, who guards the entrance to my cave.

My sincere gratitude to Stefan Diamante of Body Roxx for his Male Strippers 101 course.

Chapter 1.

It was hot as the six shades of Hell even this late in the evening, and I'd had a busy day at work. The last thing I wanted to do was to sit in a crowded bar to watch my cousin get naked. But it was Ladies Only night at Hooligans, we'd planned this excursion for days, and the bar was full of hooting and hollering women determined to have a good time.

My very pregnant friend Tara sat to my right, and Holly, who worked at Sam Merlotte's bar like me and Kennedy Keyes, sat on my left. Kennedy and Michele, my brother's girlfriend, sat on the other side of the table.

"The Sook-ee," Kennedy called, and grinned at me. Kennedy had been first runner-up to Miss Louisiana a few years ago, and despite her stint in prison she'd retained her spectacular looks and grooming, including teeth that could blind an oncoming bus.

"I'm glad you decided to come, Kennedy," I said. "Danny doesn't mind?" She'd been waffling the very afternoon before. I'd been sure she'd stay at home.

"Hey, I want to see some cute guys naked, don't you?" Kennedy said.

I glanced around at the other women. "Unless I missed a page, we all get to see guys naked, on a regular basis," I said. Though I hadn't been trying to be funny, my friends shrieked with laughter. They were just that giddy.

I'd only spoken the truth: I'd been dating Eric Northman for a while; Kennedy and Danny Prideaux had gotten pretty intense; Michele and Jason were practically living together; Tara was married and pregnant, for gosh sakes; and Holly was engaged to Hoyt Fortenberry, who barely stopped in at his own apartment any longer.

"You gotta at least be curious," Michele said, raising her voice to be heard over the clamor. "Even if you get to see Claude around the house all the time. With his clothes on, but still ..."

"Yeah, when's his place gonna be ready for him to move back?" Tara asked. "How long can it take to put in new plumbing?"

Claude's Monroe house's plumbing was in fine shape as far as I knew. The plumbing fiction was simply better than saying, "My cousin's a fairy, and he needs the company of other fairies, since he's in exile. Also, my half-fairy great-uncle Dermot, a carbon copy of my brother, came along for the heck of it." The fae, unlike the vampires and the werewolves, wanted to keep their existence a deep secret.

Also, Michele's assumption that I'd never seen Claude naked was incorrect. Though the spectacularly handsome Claude was my cousin-and I certainly kept my clothes on around the house-the fairy attitude about nudity was totally casual. Claude, with his long black hair, brooding face, and rippling abs, was absolutely mouthwatering ... until he opened his mouth. Dermot lived with me, too, but Dermot was more modest in his habits ...maybe because I'd told him how I felt about bare-assed relatives.

I liked Dermot a lot better than I liked Claude. I had mixed feelings about Claude. None of those feelings were sexual. I'd very recently and reluctantly allowed him back into my house after we'd had an argument, in fact.

"I don't mind having him and Dermot around the house. They've helped me out a lot," I said weakly.

"What about Dermot? Does Dermot strip, too?" Kennedy asked hopefully.

"He does managerial stuff here. Him stripping would be weird for you, huh, Michele?" I said. Dermot's a ringer for my brother, who'd been tight with Michele for a long time-a long time in Jason terms.

"Yeah, I couldn't watch that," she said. "Except maybe for comparison purposes!" We all laughed.

While they continued to talk about men, I looked around the club. I'd never been in Hooligans when it was this busy, and I'd never been to a Ladies Only night. There was a lot to think about-the staff, for example.

We'd paid our cover charge to a very buxom young woman with webs between her fingers. She'd flashed me a smile when she caught me staring, but my friends hadn't given her a second glance. After we'd passed through the inner door, we were ushered to our seats by an elf named Bellenos, whom I'd last seen offering me the head of my enemy. Literally.

None of my friends seemed to notice anything different about Bellenos, either-but he didn't look like a regular man to me. His head of auburn hair was smooth and peltlike, his far-apart eyes were slanting and dark, his freckles were larger than human freckles, and the points of his needle-sharp inch-long teeth gleamed in the dim house lights. When I'd first met Bellenos, he'd been unable to mask himself as human. Now he could.

"Enjoy, ladies," Bellenos had told us in his deep voice. "We've had this table reserved for you." He'd given me a particular smile as he turned to go back to the entrance.

We were seated right by the stage. A hand-lettered sign in the middle of the tablecloth read, "Bon Temps Party."

"I hope I get to thank Claude real personally," Kennedy said, with a sultry leer. She was definitely fighting with Danny; I could tell. Michele giggled and poked Tara's shoulder.

Finally, knowing Claude was a perk.

"That redhead who showed us to the table thought you were cute, Sookie," Tara said uneasily. I could tell she was thinking of my full-time boyfriend and vampire husband, Eric Northman. She figured he wouldn't be too happy about a stranger ogling me.

"He was just being polite because I'm Claude's cousin," I said.

"Like hell! He was looking at you like you were chocolate-chip-cookie-dough ice cream," she said. "He wanted to eat you up."

I was pretty sure she was right, but maybe not in the sense she meant; not that I could read Bellenos's mind, any more than that of any other supernatural creature ...but elves are what you'd call unrestricted in their diet. I hoped Claude was keeping a close watch on the mixed bag of fae he'd accumulated here at Hooligans.

Meanwhile, Tara was complaining that her hair had lost all its body during her pregnancy, and Kennedy said, "Have a conditioning session at Death by Fashion in Shreveport. Immanuel's the best."

"He cut my hair once," I said, and they all looked at me in astonishment. "You remember? When my hair got singed?"

"When the bar was bombed," Kennedy said. "That was Immanuel? Wow, Sookie, I didn't know you knew him."

"A little," I said. "I thought about getting some highlights, but he left town. The shop's still open." I shrugged.

"All the big talent leaves the state," Holly said, and while they talked that over, I tried to arrange my rump in a comfortable position on the folding metal chair wedged between Holly and Tara. I carefully bent down to tuck my purse between my feet.

As I looked around me at all the excited customers, I began to relax. Surely I could enjoy this a little bit? I'd known the club was full of displaced fae since my last visit here, after all. I was with my friends, and they were all ready to have a good time. Surely I could allow myself to have a good time with them? Claude and Dermot were my kin, and they wouldn't let anything bad happen to me. Right? I managed to smile at Bellenos when he came around to light the candle on our table, and I was laughing at a dirty joke of Michele's when a waitress hustled over to take our drink orders. My smile faded. I remembered her from my previous visit.

"I'm Gift, and I'll be your server tonight," she said, just as perky as you please. Her hair was a bright blond, and she was very pretty. But since I was part fae (due to a massive indiscretion of my grandmother's), I could see past the blonde's cute exterior. Her skin wasn't the honey tan everyone else was seeing. It was a pale, pale green. Her eyes had no pupils ...or perhaps the pupils and irises were the same black? She fluttered her eyelids at me when no one else was looking. She might have two. Eyelids, that is. On each eye. I had time to notice because she bent so close to me.

"Welcome, Sister," she murmured in my ear, and then straightened to beam at the others. "What y'all having tonight?" she asked with a perfect Louisiana accent.

"Well, Gift, I want you to know up front that most of us are in the serving business, too, so we're not going to give you a hard time," Holly said.

Gift twinkled back at her. "I'm so glad to hear that! Not that you gals look like a hard time, anyway. I love Ladies Only night."

While my friends ordered their drinks and baskets of fried pickles or tortilla chips, I glanced around the club to confirm my impression. None of the servers were human. The only humans here were the customers.

When it was my turn, I told Gift I wanted a Bud Light. She bent closer again to say, "How's the vampire cutie, girlfriend?"

"He's fine," I said stiffly, though that was far from true.

Gift said, "You're so cute!" and tapped me on the shoulder as if I'd said something witty. "Ladies, you doing all right? I'm going to go put your food orders in and get your drinks." Her bright head gleamed like a lighthouse as she maneuvered expertly through the crowd.

"I didn't know you knew all the staff here. How is Eric? I haven't seen him since the fire at Merlotte's," Kennedy said. She'd clearly overheard Gift's query. "Eric is one fine hunk of man." She nodded wisely.

There was a chorus of agreement from my friends. Truly, Eric's hunkiness was undeniable. The fact that he was dead weighed against him, especially in Tara's eyes. She'd met Claude, and she hadn't picked up on the fact that there was something different about him; but Eric, who never tried to pass for human, would always be on her blacklist. Tara had had a bad experience with a vampire, and it had left an indelible mark on her.

"He has a hard time getting away from Shreveport. He's pretty busy with work," I said. I stopped there. Talking about Eric's business was always unwise.

"He's not mad you're going to watch another guy take off his clothes? You sure you told him?" Kennedy asked, her smile hard and bright. There was definitely trouble in Kennedy-and-Danny land. Oh, I didn't want to know about it.

"I think Eric is so confident he looks good naked that he doesn't worry about me seeing someone else that way," I said. I'd told Eric I was going to Hooligans. I hadn't asked his permission; as Kennedy had said about Danny, he was not the boss of me. But I had sort of floated the idea by him to see how he reacted. Things between us hadn't been comfortable for a few weeks. I didn't want to upset our fragile boat-not for such a frivolous reason.

As I'd expected, Eric had not taken our proposed girls' night out very seriously. For one thing, he thought modern American attitudes about nudity were amusing. He'd seen a thousand years of long nights, and he'd lost his own inhibitions somewhere along the way. I suspected he'd never had that many.