Tag Archives: laurell k hamilton

To Anita Blake or Not to Anita Blake, That is the Question!

Crimson Death, the 25th installment of the Anita Blake series, came out in December. I’m usually one of the faithful when I read a series. I have a hard time putting a book down, even if it’s horrible. Any one of my friends can tell you this about me. This part of my personality drives Ross CRAZY. He’s taken books away from me (and hidden them) when I complained but refused to stop reading them. Somewhere in the back of my head, I always think the book can get better.If I just read another chapter, maybe that’s where it gets good. I’ve been disappointed every time, but there’s always hope.

This brings me back to my point. I’ve read all the previous 24 Anita Blake novels. All of them. Within the first week of the release date. I’ve been disappointed A LOT over the last many. There has been so…much…sex. I mean like so much sex in so short a time period that I’m not sure how Anita gets up and walks around. There are only so many orifices and for fuck’s sake, you can’t hit all of them, at one time, four or five times in a 24 hour period and still function or walk properly. Ya just can’t.

Plus, there’s been so much expansion of the “relationships” between Anita and about 15 other people. I don’t care about those other people. I just want some Jean Claude. That’s it. We started the series in Guilty Pleasures with Jean Claude. I’d like to go back to Jean Claude. The glimpses I get of JC are not enough. I miss him.

Below is the blurb from Amazon for Crimson Death:

“Anita has never seen Damian, her vampire servant, in such a state. The rising sun doesn’t usher in the peaceful death that he desperately needs. Instead, he’s being bombarded with violent nightmares and blood sweats.

And now, with Damian at his most vulnerable, Anita needs him the most. The vampire who created him, who subjected him to centuries of torture, might be losing control, allowing rogue vampires to run wild and break one of their kind’s few strict taboos.

Some say love is a great motivator, but hatred gets the job done, too. And when Anita joins forces with her friend Edward to stop the carnage, Damian will be at their side, even if it means traveling back to the land where all his nightmares spring from…a place that couldn’t be less welcoming to a vampire, an assassin, and a necromancer: Ireland.”

The blurb doesn’t sound like there’s any Jean Claude. At. All.

This brings me to my dilemma. I haven’t purchased Crimson Death. However, it is available at the library on audio book. With no wait, I might add. That thing is 24 hours and 12 minutes long which equates to 720 pages. I’m teetering on listening to it, because I have a sickness. But I know:

A) there will be minimal JC, if any.

B) there isn’t that much character development left after 24 books that could justify 720 pages.

C) I don’t want to be sad again after finishing it.

But maybe I won’t be sad, or angry, or let down at the end. Maybe this will be the best of them all.

Help!

 

Info Dumps and other things writers are told not to do…

I’m re-listening to Sherrilyn Kenyon‘s League SeriesI’m preparing for the release of Born of Vengeance which is dropping on February 7th. I’m super excited because I love these books. They’re dark, brutal, and apologetically graphic.

Listening to them back-to-back though, I’ve noticed something that I wouldn’t normally notice if I were reading them one per year. She does a lot of info dumps. For those of you asking; what the fuck is an info dump? I and Google will enlighten you.

in·fo dump
noun
 a very large amount of information supplied all at once, especially as background information in a narrative.
An info dump is the first thing they tell writers not to do. Any editor, critique partner, published writer, and agent will give you a giant lecture about how this is a HUGE faux pas.
You’ll get advise. Reveal it slowly. Work the information into the narrative in stages. Express information through dialogue. These are all ways of working backstory into your narrative.
Sherrilyn Kenyon has incredibly dense info dumps but in a sneaky almost genius way. There are quite a few…”I don’t understand” statements in her novels. What this means is a character is presented with a vague or cryptic piece of information and then responds…”I don’t understand”. What follows is the explanation of the whole history of this person/event explained in wide sweeping paragraphs. You don’t really notice until you’re listening to seven or eight books, one after the other, and you keep hearing the same device used again and again.
Another issue I’ve noticed in my binge listening stint is something Laurel K Hamilton fell into somewhere after the The Killing Dance in the Anita Blake novels.Maybe this is just a product of long series and you can’t avoid it. I don’t know but as the books go on; these feel less and less about the atrocities and fascist tendencies of the League (the over arching ruling body of the 9 worlds) and more about cultural norms of a particular species. I get it. You created this amazing race of people with cultural norms that, I’m gonna be honest, sometimes blow my mind. I wish I were that awesome to create something like that. Maybe one day I will be.
I get there has to be character development but there also has to be plot development. And in a series, this becomes particularly difficult. There has to be series plot development, always moving the over arching story forward. But there also has to be book plot development. I too find this difficult, to always be moving the larger story along as well as the smaller individual book plot ahead. I’m not complaining. I still love this universe she created and will follow it until the end. There is, however, an issue of getting lost in the trees.
I am a writer and a reader. I understand that no book is perfect. Mine sure aren’t. In the first few Blushing Death novels, I might use too many metaphors. This was pointed out to me by a goodreads.com review. Thank you to that person, by the way. I now go through and eliminate unnecessary metaphors and similes in my edits.
I guess the lesson we take from this is that the rules don’t really matter. You can break any and all of them, if you do it well.

The Best Laid Plans

The Golden Anidae is only 9 days away so here’s a freebie! This little short takes place from Dean’s perspective over  a scene in Midnight Ash. MidnightAsh2_850This consists of strong language and has not been professionally edited. Read at your own risk.

The Best Laid Plans

“There’ll have to be a change of plans,” Pat said as if his perfect little world wasn’t falling apart.

I understood the slight tick at the corner of Pat’s eye.  It was almost imperceptible but I knew Pat, knew what to look for.  Pat wanted to kill something, anything that moved to keep the Blushing Death safe.

“What plan?” the dangerous little mouse squeaked.

Danny glanced over at her with guilt written all over his face.  Stupid pup. She could eat Danny alive.  Her face flushed and the soft grey of her eyes swirled with anger, tugging at my insides.  The room filled with her, the soft floral, feminine scent mixed with the rich spiciness of her anger.  My cock hardened along my thigh as her scent permeated my brain, registering something deep in my synapses that I didn’t understand.  My wolf wanted to leap out to meet her, to run with her.  I fought to hold back my beast and keep control.  I had reacted to her like this from the first and it took everything I had not to rub up against her and mark her as mine.

Dear God, what is she?

She glanced over at me, her grey eyes churning with a secret. With a wicked smile on her face, that glint in her eye was as if she’d imagined something horrible in her mind and got satisfaction from it.  I liked that devious and predatory grin.  My wolf knew it for what it was, dangerous, protective, and mine.

Pat reached out and touched her, sliding his cold, dead hand against her cheek.  Something inside me wanted to rip that hand off. It didn’t make sense. Pat was my friend, had been for decades.

The Blushing Death jumped at his touch and my wolf was glad of it. Quicker than either I or Pat saw, she’d drew her knife.  The Blushing Death would never be a victim. She’d kill everyone and everything before she let that happen and I was glad of it. Humans didn’t live long in our world but then again, she wasn’t merely human.

Pat reached out, slow and cautious, touching her again. She dropped the knife but I could see the reluctance in her gaze.  I wished it was my hand on her cheek, wished I was comforting her.

Damn it!

Janey . . . I missed Janey.  That was all. I was lonely, so lonely.  Dahlia Sabin wasn’t mine.  She was Pat’s. My wolf growled deep in my being, arguing with my brain. She may be Pat’s but she would never be Danny’s.  That much, I knew for certain.  No matter how much that boy wanted it to be true, she would never be Danny’s.

“There’s something else?” Pat asked her.

“Later,” she said, turning to face the rest of the room with her shoulders back and her chin high.  That woman was every bit an Alpha and my cock throbbed at the thought of testing her.

“What’s the change in plan?  What’s the plan period?” she snapped, sliding that long silver blade back into it sheath.  I could read the tension in her body and something in me ached to ease it.  She caressed the blade as she would a lover, taking comfort from the weapon and her own sense of determination.  The Blushing Death was no shrinking violet and my cock twitched, imagining her fingers wrapped around my hard length, squeezing my shaft with the same tenderness.  My beast paced back and forth inside me like the caged animal it was, growling through my mind.  I was stronger than this.  I was stronger than whatever was tugging at my chest and riling up my beast.

“Alex and I had intended to confront the board in the Lebensblut New York offices to come up with a compromise,” Pat said with more words than needed. Too many words could get a guy in trouble. “I’d hoped we could stop this before it started.  Make amends somehow.  Now, I’m afraid we’re too late. We’ll make an appeal but I’m afraid that Dahlia needs to be protected.”

She was stiff, her hands balled into fists at her sides as if she wanted to punch everyone in the room. I couldn’t blame her.  Pat was heavy handed but he knew what he was doing.  She took a deep breath and forced her shoulders to relax.

“Okay.  I’ll need protection,” she agreed.

Before I could hold it in, I laughed.  Out loud. The raucous sound was so foreign, I startled myself.  Pat’s eyes were wider than dinner plates and I could almost see the wheels turning in her head.  She’d surprised everyone.  Including  me.

She and Pat both glared at me but I didn’t care.  I couldn’t remember the last time I’d laughed.   It felt good.  Better than I remembered. Who was this woman? My heart raced in my chest and what I could only describe as fear churned in my gut. She’d made me feel things in the last five minutes that I hadn’t felt . . . ever. Not even with Janey.

“Is something amusing, Dean?” Pat hissed.  His jaw was tight and his tone clipped as he glared at me.  I didn’t care.  I enjoyed the light feeling in my chest and even the fear.

“You said she was unpredictable,” I answered through strangled laughter and sunk back into the couch, relaxing.  I liked her more than I knew was good for me.

RT2013

Am I the only one not concerned with fame?

I don’t care that you’re famous.

If you’re an ass, you’re just a famous ass and I don’t have time to deal with that.

If you have fans (and don’t get me wrong, I’m totally jealous), but at least pay attention to them and don’t treat them like their shit. If they want to take a picture with you, smile and say “sure, that would be great!” Also, don’t hide who you are. If you started out as self-published, acknowledge it and embrace it. Be proud of where you came from. Yes, now you have a very VERY lucrative publishing contract but own up. You started out as fan-fiction, stole someone else’s characters and wrote a very subpar set of novels that the general masses adore. Own it!

Maybe its me but I can’t respect a person who doesn’t acknowledge who and what they are, the work they’ve done, and tries to be something they’re not.

As an author, I strive to be better every day, to make my characters as real for my readers as I can. I’m not going to lie. I’ve written some shit in my day, unabashed shit but I know that and acknowledge it. I learn from it and and develop not only as an author but as a person taking the good with the bad. I feel that most of us who are in the business for a while want to be proud of our work and we understand that rejection, development, and tears are all part of the process. If you catapult to stardom without the benefit of failure, you lose something. You lose the ability to be humble, thankful, and grow.

I realize this is a little late considering that RT was in April but better late than never…right?

Confrontations

Hi kiddies! I know I’m a day late. Nothing exciting happened in the last week but we are having a yard sale on Saturday so there’s the potential for alot of humorous incidents. In the mean time, I’m posting a little snippet from Midnight Ash. Its told from Dean’s point of view. This has not been professionally edited or reviewed so READ AT YOUR OWN RISK. If you want to read these little snippets earlier. Join my facebook group Damsel. Well, here goes.

Confrontations

I didn’t want her here. If Danny brought her into the Pack, Dahlia Sabin, the Blushing Death, would be a constant reminder of what I would never have. I sat on the bar, stiff, my body riddled with tension as I watched everything. Watched her.

Jackson and Kurt circled each other but I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. She stood just off to the side, rigid and at attention – a quiet intimidation in the background of a room full of dangerous beasts. Seeming like she was completely at ease, her hand rested on her cocked hip. I knew better. She had her hand ready for the draw. A knife was strapped at her back beneath the coat. I could smell the oil from the blade and had seen a glimpse of it in the darkened club. I could also smell her. The light floral scent of a shampoo or lotion mixed with her own natural scent was earthy and delicious. Grinding my teeth harder, I forced that smell from my nose.

She flung her golden blonde hair over her shoulder, out of her face and my cock jerked. What’s wrong with me? Danny’s my Beta, my friend, and a nice kid. More importantly, Dahlia Sabin was off limits. Pat didn’t share and neither did I.

Look at him! Coddling her. Trying to keep her out of harm’s way. Standing in front of her like she was weak.

The Blushing Death didn’t need coddled. She wasn’t weak or submissive. By the sidelong glances and irritated tension in her shoulders, I knew she’d had enough. She ground her teeth and the muscles in her neck tightened, strained. The angrier she got, the more her scent filled my nose. I wanted to make her angry and watch those grey eyes flash with emotion.

She turned on Danny, her fingers twitching as she fought not to draw that knife. Danny gazed down at her with a boyish, carefree smile I envied. It had been a long time since I’d been carefree. The Pack had needed me. Janey had needed me. When she’d been killed,I thought I’d lose his mind. But . . . the Pack had needed me.

I glanced away. Janey was gone. This woman could never, would never be mine. No matter how much I wanted her. Something deep inside me hummed with satisfaction every time she was near and that scared the shit out of me.

“Dahlia!” Danny bellowed and my ears perked up.

She sailed across the room as if she’d been shot from a cannon. My heart stopped as her limp body slammed into the floor. I fought not to jump from the bar and run to her. Gripping the edge of the bar, I squeezed until the wood cracked beneath my fingers. She wasn’t mine. She would never be mine. I had to remember that or everything I’d built would come tumbling down.

Midnight Ash Book Cover
Midnight Ash Book Cover