If J.K. Rowling is writing true to form, the final Harry Potter book should hit the shelves in a little over a year. But what if she’s suffering from a severe case of writers block? What if the words just will not come, and she’s down to a page every three weeks? Her core fan base could find themselves married with 2.4 kids before a drastically abridged 110 page novelette lands in the bookstores in 2015.

It could happen. Think of all the poor traumatized fans out there, not to mention the children who also read her work, all clinging to the belief that this year they’ll finally get their Hogwarts fix. Wouldn’t it be great if we knew how she was really doing - straight from the horses mouth?

Now, I can take or leave Harry Potter. Like many of us, I’d kind of like to see what happens at the end, but I don’t lose any sleep over it. We all know the good guys will win and the bad guys will lose. The only real question is: Which of the good guys will go out in a blaze of glory alongside Moldywarts?

Anita Blake is another story entirely. If I had a first born, I’d sacrifice the little mongrel for the next volume in the series. After all, the world is seriously over populated, and kids are two a penny. The same cannot be said for quality literature about vampires, werewolves, and necromancers. When it comes to the strange and unusual world of vampire fiction, Laurell K. Hamilton truly is Queen of the Damned.

She had a bad day yesterday, failing to produce a single page, but Wednesday and Thursday combined made up for it with a staggering output of 28 pages. She’s about 2 days away from completing her next Merry Gentry novel, and the question in all our minds is: Can she get it done by Monday? Her promotional tour for the thirteenth Anita Blake novel kicks off on Monday, so it’s all hands on deck to knock out those final pages before she hits the road.

 We know all this, because she tells us. Her blog gives almost daily progress reports on everything she’s doing. Granted, the web-site will win no awards for artistic beauty, and the many pictures of her dogs … well, they’re just pictures of dogs.Compare the slickness of J.K. Rowling’s official web-site, with the blogger next door look favoured by Laurell K. Hamilton. Rowling’s is an over engineered, impossible to navigate, directionless piece of drivel, obviously created by a web design company too caught up in the fame of their client to produce a normal, usable web-site. And do we get to see a picture of her dog? Not a chance.

Laurell K. Hamilton’s blog, for all its amatuer design, tells us all a die hard fan wants to know - how that next book is really coming along.

Fingers crossed ’till Monday. Get that book finished.