Yeah, we bitches not above some scandalmongering every now and again. So a little birdie told us that Laurell K. Hamilton was given the ole what-for during Archon for all the sexx0ring in her books—told off by other writers, no less. Anyone have any details? Anyone?
“I’ve been trying to do a blog about Archon since Sunday when we got home, but it just isn’t coming. I end up sounding tired or grumpy, and I don’t mean to. “
My husband sent me that quote from her blog. I am definitely a little too thrilled with her discomfort here, but it is nice to hear her being called up about this. She doesn’t give a rat’s ass about her long term reader’s opinions, and she’s been extremely clear about that philosophy of hers for a long time. (She has said on her blog that hearing from her fans that they want less sex makes her want to write MORE of it). It’s easy for her to do I am sure when she is consistently riding bestseller lists. But seriously, if you’re going to change genres mid-series, just write a new series, don’t break our former Anita-loving hearts.
Whew it is impossible for me to write about this without getting on my soapbox. I think I did pretty well, considering, soapbox wise. So much bitterness stored up about one little topic!
Is anyone else scared of the upcoming threatened Edward appearance? I am terrified to discover how she can pussify him. If they fuck I am gonna be pissed!
You know, I never had a problem with the sexx0ring (although it is pretty bad) as much as the blatant Mary Sue-ism. (In her next book, “Sexy Restaurant Name” Anita Blake defeats God in hand-to-hand combat while simultaneously having sex with the entire vampiric council (except the women). Later in the book, she discovers her newfound power of shitting gold bricks, each of which is regarded as a holy relic by the local werewolf pack.)
Still, I want to know what was said!
“her newfound power of shitting gold bricks, each of which is regarded as a holy relic by the local werewolf pack”
Ok, I about fell over laughing at that. HA! I once read, and I think cited here, a review from a friend of mine, JenFu, who hated that Anita collected powers like charms on a charm bracelet. Such Mary-Sue-Ism made her want to pound her head on the wall (JenFu, not Anita).
I’m so curious about this gossip, though.
*snerk* Ok, granted, I got bored with and gave up on the Anita Blake series long before she became a giant, glistening orifice to the entire world, but I’m more than a little amused to hear Blake got some shit from fellow writers.
I guess all the reader bitching in the world isn’t enough to motivate her to care, but give her heck from fellow wordsmiths and she gets annoyed!
Wah, poor Laurell. I weep tears of blood for you, I’m sure.
Kaite that was too funny. I’m dying here laughing. I’ve read alot of Anita Blake snark but that was the prize.
“Kaite that was too funny. I’m dying here laughing. I’ve read alot of Anita Blake snark but that was the prize.”
Same here, Katie. And yet…it was all so, so true.
Ooh, I can’t wait to hear the details when they finally emerge. I was a fan of the Anita Blake series way back when it was damn near impossible to find any of the books (I first started reading them in ‘97). For me, the series started going downhill in a hurry after Blue Moon, but I’ve tried, so very hard, to give LKH the benefit of the doubt. Cerulean Sins was the straw that broke this camel’s back.
The Mary Sue-ism, the taking out her frustrations on people in her life by vilifying once-likeable characters, the endless BADLY WRITTEN sex, the lack of any obvious plot…I just can’t take it anymore. LKH was never a technically great writer anyway, but she at least had interesting characters and intriguing storylines. Now? It’s all crap on a crap cracker.
“(In her next book, “Sexy Restaurant Name†Anita Blake defeats God in hand-to-hand combat while simultaneously having sex with the entire vampiric council (except the women). Later in the book, she discovers her newfound power of shitting gold bricks, each of which is regarded as a holy relic by the local werewolf pack.)”
BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!
((wipes tears from eyes))
This is priceless!
But OMFG, she’s bringing Edward back? Oh no. I’m still crushing on him. Big time. I don’t know if I can handle him returning.
Hey—maybe he’ll kill Anita. Or maybe the serial killer dude from OB will stalk her and kill her. A lot. And Edward will watch. Hmmm…..
…And I’m eagerly awaiting the gossip.
Ditto on the kudos to Katie. Excuse me now as I chuckle my way through morning chores.
I have found recent AB offerings to be seriously lacking in any directional plot…except horizontal. Where’s the action, the plot, the adventure?
…and, where’s the gossip?
Oh, please, you know she’ll be fucking Edward in this one. She can’t leave a man behind!
I’m amazed LKH even mentioned online at all that this Archon thing existed, witnesses to the contrary. That goes against her usual MO.
Oh, please, you know she’ll be fucking Edward in this one. She can’t leave a man behind!
Edward will be begging to fuck Anita and Jean Claude while tendering stroking Nathaniel. He will profess his undying love for being a submissive and beg Micah to leash him and call him whipping worm. Richard will stand by with the others crying at Anita feet.
Instead of taking place in one day in a bedroom, it will take place in on hour with a mile long line of men holding numbers from one of those number machines at the deli. Maybe they could cross over Mary Gentry’s bodygards to act as bouncers incase someone trys to go over their alloted 30 seconds per each of Anita glistening orafices.
How boring can she possibly get.
Y’all’s welcome. Anything I can do to brighten your days. 😉
HA! I might tune in for that scene. As noted, I haven’t read in quite a while, but I got a friend into her books and I get constant grief and updated booty counts from her. By now, I want Anita Blake dead. Hopefully dead by sexual frustration, because then there might actually be a *plot* involved.
And I spotted an error in my original post—I said “I’m more than a little amused to hear Blake got some shit from fellow writers.” I meant I’m more than a little amused to hear HAMILTON got some shit from fellow writers.”
And the book summary for “Sexy Restaurant Name”? Pure. Genius. Particularly the gold bricks part. :snake:
Yes, I too give you kudos Kaite- well done! When I first read that Edward was coming back I saw red. He is my favorite character and if they fuck (yes, I know they will, of course they will) I’ll throw the book THROUGH the damn wall. And then I’ll have a lot of explaining to do to my landlord as well as the library. God, LKH is the poster child for authors gone bad. I can’t wait to hear what was actually said to her.
Now, now…we all know that the next novel, Dracula Disco (hey, at least then the title would be a reference to a good song), will involve Edward finally giving Anita anal. With guns.
Don’t we?
So can anyone tell me why Laurie dear doesn’t bother having anything resembling proofreading any more? Incubus Dreams made me sick (I actually whited out and wrote in correct spellings all over that book), and Danse Macabre’s even more awful.
The sad thing is that until I got to the gold bricks part I totally thought Katie had read a summary of the next book. It just sounded so much like something LKH would do.
Okay, well, this clears some things up. The first AB book I read was Incubus Dreams—or rather, the first I attempted to read. After a couple chapters of pointless fuckage, I put it down. It might still be lurking in the depths of shadow behind the dresser… where the Bad Books go…
Can someone explain the concept of “Mary-Sue” to me? I’ve seen it bandied about within the context of Bitchery, and now my curiosity is piqued.
If I recall right, Mary Sues are characters that nothing really bad ever happens to and they’re essentially prefect, usually in context of the author projecting their own idealized image onto a character.
Mary Sue defined here.
Yep. MarySue is the bestest, brightest, smartest, sweetest, toughest, cleverist, mostest magickal powers (sometimes in her very hoo-hoo!) and everyone loves her, longs for her, and wishes he (or she) could lick up her armpit sweat. I’ve very seldom seen a more textbook example of that than Merry Gentry.
The kind of heroines I want to bitchslap into a coma. Though, of course, they’d just lie there pristine, like Snow White in her glass coffin.
I always hear that cheesy Carpenters song in my head, when I think of MerrySue. “Why do birds suddenly appear…”
BTW I blogged about MarySue-ness for SBD.
So nobody knows? I want to know what was said! Writers ripping LKH! I would love to hear about that. Not so much cause of the sexorama in her books, although that is a good part of it, but more the sloppy, half-assed job she’s been doing at writing. The last time I read one of her books I kept a pencil close by to mark all the errors.
And bring back Edward! Go for it, the job she did on him in OB was the most anticlimactic episode in crap literature. How can she do any worse?
Even with these writers crawling on her she’s still selling books and making money…It ain’t right.
Is it true that she has a bodyguard that travels with her?
Also on MJD’s blog she said the LKH had a 5 min disclaimer about questions the audience could not ask. Is this an exageration?
MJD isn’t exactly Snow White herself, she was off my auto-buy list before LKH.
Anybody with the scoop? Please…somebody…anybody? Any distraction, please, from NUG (No Underwear Girl, down there in Hollywood). A term I borrowed from the daughters dance class…while panties are discouraged, it’s not noticable when in proper uniform. If your peers view the evidence, you earn this unflattering title…and others.
Raina…I didn’t catch that one, don’t often check LKH’s blog. Last one I saw for her, she was rambling on about comics, wererat genitilia, and full frontal nudity. Maybe it’s just me, but…Eeew, not interested.
The only thing of interest I’ve found thus far is this loose from-memory transcript of a panel, where LKH claims only 1-2% of her readership hates what she’s doing now. Riiight. Only one or two percent, very vocal. You keep believing that.
Okay…let’s try that again.
transcript
She claims here it’s only a vocal 1-2% of her fans who hate all the junk she’s throwing out there now. Riiight. Keep believing that, dear.
Any truly delicious gossip to report yet? I’m dying over here.
What news?????
I’m starting to think there IS no gossip if nobody has anything to say after 2 days. *sniffle* I think E.E. Knight would have noticed if it was any more dramatic than what he said.
Maybe it was said behind closed doors? One author to another? Or maybe it was just finger pointing gossip behind her back, sort of like in junior high?
Either way, I’d have loved to read it. Oh, well. Back to work then!
Thank you for the definition of Mary Sue. Thinking on it now, I was writing fan fiction about Duran Duran(!) back in the 5th and 6th grades and Wham!(?!?) back in the 7th, and those were chock full of Mary Sues. (weirdly, the Wham! stuff focused a lot on infidelity, I think inspired by the video for “Careless Whispers.” Gawd.) Here I was, participating in a cultural phenomenon, and I didn’t even know it!
Oddly, these early forays into writing ultimately lead me to a career as a writer. I pray to whatever omniscient being in the sky that those early writings never emerge from their catacombs and terrify (and amuse) everyone on the surface.
That is funny, I don’t read the blog either, but my husband does about once a month. He cruised over there after I sent him the link to this potential gossip, and sent that quote onto me. It is gone now, but I’m sure he wasn’t making it up. – I can’t confirm because I never actually went over there. I stopped doing that years ago. My husband just can’t resist the train-wreck factor.
Oh, the quote was definitely up. I too can’t resist the trainwreck that is the LKH blog. I remember reading that, and she’s saying something now about grumpy/sad/whatever blogs that she wtote but hasn’t posted.
http://blog.laurellkhamilton.org/2006_10_01_archive.html
That is just to the right archive, just do a word search for ‘archon.’
Also on MJD’s blog she said the LKH had a 5 min disclaimer about questions the audience could not ask. Is this an exageration? ~ Lila
I was not at that panel discussion. Way-the-hell too crowded and the bar was calling to me, but reportedly MJ told the audience to “go ahead and ask us anything” at which point LKH took control of precious, precious (MJ’s nickname for the microphone) and did indeed spend about five minutes listing all of the things that the audience was not allowed to ask her. By all accounts it was hilarious … even more so because LKH was dead serious.
Regardless of my opinion on LKH’s writing I believe it is rude to pounce any writer or speaker in a public or private gathering unless they are inviting it by their actions or statements. From what I have seen of LKH in public she is always polite and I can’t imagine why anyone would feel justified in attacking her.
Yes. She has a rather handsome bodyguard when she attends large public events. She also travels with her husband and her assistant.
So. Please forgive me for doing this, but I am going to post a huge-assed TSK! to everyone for publicly salivating over the alleged incident at Archon. I understand the shadenfreude glee of it considering … but realy, turn your personal suffering to do good. Create a decent “Twelve Step” program to free Anita addicts of the compulsion to buy the next book. Help them get lives beyond Jean Claude and forgive Micah for being … well … Micah. It’s time to stop blaming McDonalds for that extra ten pounds you carry around.
It had to be said. I will take my ass-whipping as ya’ll see fit.
Went to the link you posted, Raina in search of the elusive gossip. Had never been to LKH’s blog before and likely WILL NEVER GO THERE AGAIN.
Wow. I spent like a minute trying to figure out what TSK stood for (Terribly Shocked Keebler?) before I decided it’s probably t(i)sk, or the sound your great auntie makes in repetition when you go outside in April without your sweater. Man, I’m slow today.
turn your personal suffering to do good. Create a decent “Twelve Step†program to free Anita addicts of the compulsion to buy the next book.
What is it about this series, anyway? I haven’t read a one of these books, but I’m terribly tempted to start at the beginning of the series, now. That people are still buying them when the snark seems to have surpassed the books for entertainment value strikes me as a powerful recommendation. Is it just that the early books were SO GOOD, or something else? Is it worth reading the early books in this series, and if so, when should I stop (if I can, that is)?