Anita Blake

Anita Blake is the title character and protagonist of the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series by Laurell K. Hamilton. The series takes place in a parallel world in which supernatural characters like vampires and werewolves exist alongside regular humans, with Blake's jobs including the re-animation of the dead as well as the hunting and executing of supernatural creatures (mostly vampires) that have broken the law. Hamilton stated that she created the character after perceiving a gender inequality in detective fiction, with female characters rarely getting the same treatment as male heroes of the genre.

Description

Anita Blake is a petite woman of mixed German and Mexican heritage with curly long hair and pale skin with scars scattered over her body. She is very direct and flippant in her speech, but is said to be highly competent in the professions she is involved in. At the start of the series, she is an animator (a person who raises zombies) and a vampire executioner. She is trained in several forms of hand-to-hand combat as well as in the use of several firearms, with her firearm of preference being the Browning BDM. Blake practices Christianity and is currently of the Episcopal faith, having left Catholicism since the Catholic Church has excommunicated all animators. In the short story "Dancing" she describes herself as being 5'3 inches tall.

Vampire hunter

A vampire hunter or vampire slayer is a character in folklore and fiction who specializes in finding and destroying vampires, and sometimes other supernatural creatures. A vampire hunter is usually described as having extensive knowledge of vampires and other monstrous creatures, including their powers and weaknesses, and uses this knowledge to effectively combat them. In many works, vampire hunters are simply humans with more than average knowledge about the occult, while in others they are themselves supernatural beings, having superhuman abilities. A well known and influential vampire hunter is Professor Abraham Van Helsing, a character in Bram Stoker's 1897 horror novel, Dracula.

Vampire hunters in folklore

"Professional" or semi-professional vampire hunters played some part in the vampire beliefs of the Balkans (especially in Bulgarian, Serbian, and Romani folk beliefs). In Bulgarian, the terms used to designate them included glog (lit. "hawthorn", the species of wood used for the stake), vampirdzhiya, vampirar, dzhadazhiya, svetocher.

Anita

Anita or ANITA may refer to:

Biology

Geography

Other uses

See also

Blake

Blake is a surname or a given name which originated from Old English. Its derivation is uncertain; it could come from "blac", a nickname for someone who had dark hair or skin, or from "blaac", a nickname for someone with pale hair or skin. Another theory is that it is a corruption of "Ap Lake", meaning "Son of Lake".

Blake was the name of one of the 14 Tribes of Galway in Ireland. These Blakes were descendants of Richard Caddell, alias Blake, who was involved in the Norman invasion of Ireland in 1169. As such a long present foreign name it became known as de Bláca in Irish.

The origins of the name Blake are also considered to be Old Norse, first appearing in Yorkshire, England, possibly derived from the word Blaker, referring to a village and a former municipality of Akershus county, Norway (east of Oslo).

Blake often refers to the British poet, painter and printmaker William Blake (1757–1827) or to the contemporary figurative artist Blake.

Males with given name Blake

Laurell K. Hamilton

Laurell Kaye Hamilton (born February 19, 1963) is an American fantasy and romance writer. She is best known as the author of two series of stories.

Her New York Times-bestselling Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series centers on Anita Blake, a professional zombie raiser, vampire executioner and supernatural consultant for the police, which includes novels, short story collections, and comic books. Six million copies of Anita Blake novels are in print. Her Merry Gentry series centers on Meredith Gentry, Princess of the Unseelie court of Faerie, a private detective facing repeated assassination attempts.

Both of these fantasy series follow their protagonists as they gain in power and deal with the dangerous "realities" of worlds in which creatures of legend live.

Personal life

Laurell Kaye Hamilton was born Laurell Kaye Klein in Heber Springs, Arkansas but grew up in Sims, Indiana with her grandmother Laura Gentry. Her education includes degrees in English and biology from Marion College (now called Indiana Wesleyan University), a private Evangelical Christian liberal arts college in Marion, Indiana that is affiliated with the Wesleyan Church denomination. She met Gary Hamilton, whom she married, there. They have one daughter together, Trinity.