


In Blue Moon the number of active, licensed executioners is ten. She can name eight of them, herself included, two of whom are retired. In Bloody Bones Anita states that there are less than a dozen licensed vampire executioners in the United States. Vampire executioners are initially very rare. For the most part shapeshifters and other such creatures are handled by bounty hunters, who are not initially included in the plans for getting a federal status. When licensing is introduced just prior to Bloody Bones there are plans for giving the vampire executioners a federal status, but also of expanding their mandate to other supernatural critters, which Anita sees as a potential problem. Most vampire executioners only kill vampires, but Anita Blake and a few others also investigate and battle other supernatural beings and even the humans who serve them.

He is still serving his sentence at the time of The Harlequin, five years later. The message still didn't really go through until one of the vampire executioners went to jail for murder. Louis, Missouri with her husband, her young daughter, three pug dogs, and an ever-fluctuating assortment of fish.The first people to take the job were those who used to slay vampires back when they could all be killed on sight, and some of those new executioners were so trigger-happy that the government had to strip the vampire executioner credentials from some of them to hammer in the point that waiting for a warrant is really required. She says she writes because to not write - even for her own enjoyment - would be like not breathing. She has written nine additional Anita Blake books, and in October, 2000, began the New York Times bestselling Meredith Gentry series for Ballantine Books. In 1994, Laurell published her first Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter book, GUILTY PLEASURES, and she hasn't stopped writing since. She still believes she would have grown up to be a writer regardless. Her mother's death, her grandmother's role in raising her, and having grown up with no men in the home are "the three things that made who I am," she says. Laurell's mother died in a car crash in 1969, after which time her grandmother held the household together. Hamilton was born in Heber Springs, Arkansas but grew up in Sims, Indiana, a hamlet with a population of about one hundred souls. Her 9-to-5 turns into 24-7 when three Missouri teenagers are killed-slaughtered in a way she has never seen before.
