Chelsea Gaither's Blog, page 31

IT. IS. LIVE.

Amazon and Barnes and Noble  both have their copies up, Smashwords will be up later this afternoon (after I make sure there's nothing there for Smashwords to choke on)

Go. Buy. And support the campaign to fund the next one if you like the first one.

Happy reading!

Incubus Dreams--chapter 68-69

The buttons. They are pushed. Dragon Breath Part One is now filtering through Amazon and Nook Press's various processors and should be live sometime tomorrow morning. I'll upload the thing to Smashwords when it is live elsewhere.

Oh, and two things: the campaign is going well, you guys are awesome, I love ALL of you.

Second: I'm not always the easiest person to hang with, and I get that. And you guys have every right to call me on shit if you feel you need to. You don't need to jump to my defense--in fact, it's usually better if you don't. When I read a new comment it is usually from the dashboard, where the "delete" button is right next to the "view this post" button. If a comment exists for more than a few hours it's because, for whatever reason, I want it there. I have no problem nuking a comment if I think it is not good for the blog. You guys have the right to be heard and responded to, even if I don't like what you're saying.

That said, while I'm not going to ask you to be nice, I am going to ask that you be polite, and respect your fellow blog-readers even if you disagree with them. Nothing has happened so far that isn't directly my fault, and the conversations at issue have remained polite, and I am very grateful that you guys HAVE kept things on a respectful level. Let's keep it that way. We might not all agree how we should play in this sandbox, but let's not shit in it either, mkay?


Mkay.

Shitty book time.

So Anita runs over to the two vampires who helped them nab Jonah and apparently Unstabbed Vamp is disturbingly pretty, and Stabbed Vamp is disturbingly pretty, and--oh shit, this is Wicked and Truth.

Let's go back to talking about how to talk about things on the blog, okay?

...you're not going to let me get away with that, are you?

IIRC, Wicked and Truth are background members of the Harem in later books. Not stand out characters, but these two are kind of clouds the size of your hand in terms of how much more this series will suck.

Anita tells Malcom that Stabbed Vamp could survive, and Malcom says that only a master vampire could help him survive, and "Wicked and Truth have no master".

...Anita is going to have some kind of sex/foreplay to save Random Hero Vampire's life and switch their bloodline over to Belle Morte's just like she did with Damian, isn't she.

You know, I went out of my way not to buy any alcohol today, because I planned on not drinking tonight. SO MUCH FOR THAT. 

 After a few paragraphs we figure out that Truth is the stabbed vamp and Wicked is the other dude. Apparently the founding sire for their bloodline died and they survived, and this is a Really Big Deal, and anyone other than Malcom would have killed them, but it's kind of a big deal now because nobody has a blood oath and that means these two vampires are probably going to die.

Or have sex with Anita.

Because that's the solution for every single problem in this series.

So Anita starts negotiating with Jean Claude--who reveals that Wicked and Truth are also known as the Wicked Truth (did you have to think real hard for that one?) and are famous among vampires for killing their crazy maker--while Malcom is all "Back my children, avoid her black magic" and I have to say Malcom would do real well as a televangelist. You can't really tell the difference between them and vampires anyway...

(Seriously. Rick. Joel. Lighten up on the pancake)

Anita breaks out the silver knife and it's going to be erotic blood play. They pull the other knife out of Truth and he promptly starts bleeding all over everything (apparently having paramedics on hand for things like this is asking too much.) Anita realizes Truth is too weak to feed and so this happens:

Jean-Claude breathed through my body, “Kiss him.” 
“What?” I said out loud.
 “What is it?” Wicked asked.
 “Give him enough energy to feed.”

Well, maybe at least this will be something approaching erotic and not at all offensiv--

I kissed him, and felt his death. Felt that spark flickering like a match in the wind. I breathed power into his mouth. I forced it inside him the way you force air into the dying....It brought Truth gasping, sitting up off the floor, yelling. Yelling something in a language I’d never known.

She kiss-rapes Truth back to life. With bonus points for borderline necrophilia.

Because there is no other way to do magical healing than to describe it in terms of "force" and "sex".

Truth begins to feed. He also starts pawing all over Anita because getting this over with and going back to the (non-existant) plot is asking too much.

AND THEN THE ARDEUR RISES.



 Anita tells Jean Claude that she needs to shut that down so she can go back to work. Jean Claude warns her that if he shuts it off for her, he'll have to feed off his entire club and I thought it was impossible to completely piss me off on every single level, but hey, they just did:

“Then feed like you did last night. Feed on the willing, but let this cup pass me by tonight. I need to catch a murderer, not fuck everyone we bring over.”

Because nothing says "Sexy-a-go-go" like quoting the words of Christ in the garden of Gethsemane.

And embarrassing yourself in front of your co-workers is absolutely comparable to death via crucifixion. 

 Wicked throws a mini temper-tantrum because Anita is too blood exhausted to give him blood and bind him the way she did Truth, so she promises to "bind him like his brother" which is signficant, but we're never told how. It's much more important for Jean Claude and Anita to emphasize how amazing awesome these characters we've never seen or heard of before are, and how they are "Our warriors" and have I mentioned that Jean Claude is doing all this from a room full of "sexy women"?

The chapter ends with three sentences that ALL say "Be careful what you wish for."

Next chapter:

Anita realizes that Jonah Cooper is either a vampire she was hunting or a vampire hunter who supposedly died in a nasty fire. THE TEXT IS NOT CLEAR. What is clear is that however he survived, he arranged for a lot of cops to die in the same fire and suddenly Zerbowski and all the other cops in the room become profoundly disinterested in observing all of Jonah's legal rights.

Jonah is equally disinterested in helping Anita, so she decides to borrow Malcolm's mind-reading powers. By blackmailing him into breaking the law on her. She picks Malcolm's psychic pocket, uses the power on Jonah and discovers that the murdering vampire leader is Vittorio!

...WHO THE FUCK IS VITTORIO?!?

 The name sounds familiar enough for me to think he was either a Creepy Fucker from Guilty Pleasures or he was with Musette's crew back in Cerulean Sins, but the text confirms neither of these and I'm too lazy and tired to go wading through that mess to figure out who this dude is.

Jonah decides to make Anita kill him, and she punches him so hard she breaks his neck, and then keeps right on with the mind-reading. She has to find out where the daytime retreat is. So she's going to see a major landmark or a place she recognises or--

It was a big building, a condo. A fucking modern condo. I wanted to see the front of the building. I saw it. I had the address. Wait, number and name on the condo, and I was looking at the little boxes with all the names and numbers. I was looking at it from higher up than I would have seen it. Street, I thought, what street are we on?

...she gets an exact address complete with the number and name of the owner.

This is almost as bad as finding the bad guy's pad via Google Earth.

Cooper wakes up. Zerbowski is sending teams to the address. Anita says no, don't, Vittorio will kill them, let me talk to them instead.

Zerbowski is less than enthused. Given all the things Anita has just done in front of him, none of which are explained or even remotely sane, I can't blame him. But he gives her the phone. It's an answering machine. They leave a voice mail and then take Jonah away from the church. Anita tells him that she kills because she wants to (HONESTY FINALLY) and starts torturing Jonah with bullets.

The heroine. is torturing info. out of the bad guy. with bullets. He refuses to give her anything, so she shoots him in the head until most of his head goes away.

Our heroine.

Speaking of which, Zerbowski and company are still standing right there. And since when did "cruel and unusual punishment" get amended with "Unless the guy's dead already, because it sucks to be you fucker."

Malcolm brought the entire flock to watch Anita blow a vampire into tiny, tiny pieces. Wicked and Truth apparently enjoyed the show.

Everybody packs into the cop cars (Except for the vampire sheep and W&T) and goes off to confront Vittorio. Anita is mildly disturbed by what she's just done.

End chapter.

The book's almost over. We're almost there. Don't worry. It'll get better soon.

We'll do the dinosaur book next. I promise.

It's almost that time, guys

Locked and loaded and ready to go. Dragon Breath drops August 5th.

And PLEASE don't forget to support the campaign to fund the editing for part two. It's really important.

Incubus Dreams--chapter 66-67

You guys are the most awesome people in the history of Things. I just want you all to know that.

And if you're just tuning in, that's a screenshot of my Indiegogo campaign, because editing costs money, and buying it last month blew most of my savings. So if you want the second (and probably third) parts of Dragon Breath to be well-edited, donate to the campaign. If you donate, you get the second part of Dragon Breath, even if all you give is a dollar. Consider it pre-ordering via Indiegogo.

GO. NOW. DO IT.

Anita is reading the mind of a potentially murderous vampire. I had to go back a chapter and re-read this, because chapter 66 opens like another freaking porn scene.

Jean Claude tells Anita via telepathy that she probably just stole her mind-reading power from Malcom.

This is all a wonderful way to cover your ass when you realize your murder mystery plot needs a solution and you only have about a hundred pages to work with. A good writer--say, Guilty Pleasures era Laurel K. Hamilton--might spread some of the porn out amongst the actual plot, and then cut a couple of the more unnecessary scenes to make room for a couple "Whodunnet" scenes. Instead, we're siphoning powers off other characters so that Anita can pull the bad guy directly out of her ass. 

 So if I'm following what happened right--and that's a huge "if". I like non-linear storytelling but for fuck's sake, at this point we should be at basic cause and effect here--Avery met a master vampire named Nellie who wanted to seduce him for her master, and she brought along "the stripper" who I assume is the dead girl in Avery's apartment, who he knew as Morgiana and (again, I assume) who the cops identifed as Sally Cook.

They're at the club when Nellie wants Avery to feed from Sally/Morgana's thighs. Avery flees and Sally/Morgana is still alive...only now she's somehow in his apartment? And he's dressing in his own living room while Morgana and Nellie are in his bedroom? TRANSITIONS PLEASE.

Oh good fucking god, how did I miss that Anita was Kissing Avery while she was reading his mind? OF COURSE A BASIC PSYCHIC ACTION MUST BE PREFORMED IN A VEIL OF SEX.

Anita decides this means Avery is innocent and asks him to tell her the name of another vampire who was with (snigger) Nellie. He names Jonah. Jonah bolts. Anita runs after him with her gun out. She yells for somebody to catch him and the civilian vamps assume she means them, because they chase after Jonah, pin him down, start letting him go when the cops tell them to, and Jonah skewers one of them because this is why you don't order civilians to do the cop's job. 

...And why are there no vampire cops. ? I understand "discrimination" but vampires are not human and can overpower a human. I'd think cops would be recruiting a lot of vampires as officers because if they get shot, usually the vamps can get up again.

Chapter ends. Next chapter.

Anita orders Jonah to drop the knife. He does.

It takes three pages. This does not bode well.

Anita pulls a gun and then...we have a massive near-paragraph about bras.

I nodded and pressed the back of my gun to my forehead. It didn’t feel cool, it was warm. Warm from being tucked up under my arm, wedged next to my breast. If I wore the wrong bra I scraped the edge of my breast as I drew, so I’d learned that all those minimizer bras that spread the breast to the side are not my friend wearing a shoulder holster. Push-up bras actually keep your breasts up and out of the way. You just had to make sure that the bra actually covered the front of you, so you could run without falling out of it. Why was I thinking about bras when we had a double murdering vampire still to be subdued?

One: We've lost track of what we were talking about again, haven't we?

Two: Given that Affliction revealed that Anita is a EEE cup size, I shit you not, you'd think that she'd have a special bra adapted with an inter-boob holster. She could make it work, she's already got one stuffed down her pants. And it would justify having boobs that are literally bigger than Anita's head.

Anita slowly walks the vamp through the methods of surrender. On your knees. Hands behind your head. He complains about the crosses.

I want a vampire story with a devout Christian as a vamp. Somebody who still believes. Wouldn't that be interesting?

Anita searches Jonah, realizes his knives are silver, and that the good Samaritan vamp is probably dying of silver poisoning. She rushes off to save him because FUCK IF I KNOW IT IS NOT MY BOOK.

End of chapter.

...I officially want a gun-bra.

The Obligatory Crowdfunding Campaign Info Blog Post

So as I said yesterday, I have an indiegogo campaign going.

It is for the SECOND part of Dragon Breath.

Here is the campaign video, for those of you who did not watch it already:



(Please watch it. I put work into it and things)

Here's the campaign.

Because I am running le campaign, I will probably be annoying the crap out of all of ya'll posting about it. Less because OMG I NEED MONEYS (though oh my god I actually kind of do. You realize I'm asking for, like, twice what I've made off of writing, ever? And that I feel incredibly guilty about doing this, and I'd feel worse if I didn't already know there is no way in fuck I can actually pay for editing on my own and you guys didn't want it so badly) and more because that's what you do when you have a campaign.

How can you help?

Donate. (duh)

Talk about it. Post it on your facebook(s) or twitter(s) or whatever. Ask questions/make comments on the campaign page. Talk about it here. Point out anything shitty so that I can fix it.

In other words HELP ME LOYAL READERS and I love you I knew you could do it. Peace. Out.

Incubus Dreams--chapter 63-65 and crowdfunding campaign

Business first, my lovelies. I have an Indigogo campaign. And a video. This is the video:



This is the Indiegogo campaign.

Yeah, initially it was going to be a kickstarter, but let's just say that if you have to jump through that many hoops just to have Amazon Payments tell you "Well you're not in our GPS database so fuck your Kickstarter, fuck your project, and just for the fun of it let's fuck up every aspect of this account ever, sucks to be you" (My city is lazy as fuck so according to everything from the IRS to the local pizza delivery guy, my legal street address does not exist.)

(Seriously. If you're considering a Kickstarter, please realize that if you make a mistake on the Amazon Payments forms, including using an address they cannot immediately verify, they will lock down the Payments account and you probably will not get to make another one. And by "lock down" I mean not only can you not go in to fix whatever it is you fucked up, they won't tell you what it was. And Kickstarter only pays through Amazon Payments. I spent all day researching things trying to fix this. Apparently it cannot be fixed.)

So yeah. And be aware, my dear loyal blog readers, this is for the second part of Dragon Breath. The first part is done and coded and paid for and either in the chute or waiting to be uploaded to the sites that aren't quite that user friendly (AMAZON SMASHWORDS I AM LOOKING AT YOU) (Not you Nook Press. You're beautiful). If you support the campaign, you get part two. I don't see this as "give me money" I see this as "give me preorders so I can eat while we do this editing thing" You donate a dollar, you will get a copy of part two. Because if you pay for the book, you ought to, you know, get the frickin' book. 

So please. Spread the word, donate if you want to (and ONLY if you want to) and point out any little issues...or not so little issues.

(AND YES, Indiegogo is the crowdsourcer that lets you keep the money if you don't make goal. The ick factor of that is the reason I tried Kickstarter first. It ought to be all or nothing, but if I have to fax your company everything short of my long form birth certificate to prove that I am a person and that I exist at the address I exist at on the teeny tiny off chance that you might let me use the service I signed up for, fuck it, I'll deal with the ick factor.)

(I spent all fucking day on the phone before work trying to find a human being who could give me a straight answer and none exist. I am entitled to still feel ROYALLY PISSED twelve hours later.)

Alright. Back to the book.

Anita now has to go apologize to Jessica Arnet...because Zerbowski told her to, otherwise she's off the case too.

I love how she's not empathetic enough to go "Hey, I just royally insulted a co-worker (ish) and I might need to go apologize." No. She needs the big sexist asshole she works with to go politely point this out. I think you'd have to upgrade a few levels for that to qualify as a gender fail. That's just basic "Forgot how to human".

She bumps into a dude named  Smith that she worked with on some other case. She's still trying to find Arnet.

...why do I get the feeling that the book just started? I feel like this is the fourth or fifth chapter. Possibly tenth. Not the sixty third. It's got that aura to it. We're introducing new characters, we've got a new crisis, there's preliminary bickering to set up some whatever conflict later on...this is all stuff you do in the first two thirds of a book. You CAN introduce characters in the last hour like this (God knows I've done it) but it's bad (and I didn't like doing it when I did it) and very hard to pull off. The reader should be focusing on the plot, not trying to remember who Smith is.

Anita goes and sits down next to Arnet--who is outside the apartment complex, sitting on a curb and crying--and we find out what Anita is wearing:

Sitting down on the curb, I was happy that I was wearing jeans, jogging shoes, and a T-shirt. They were perfect curb-sitting clothes.

YAY! WORK APPROPRIATE ATTIRE THAT ISN'T PUTTING HER LIFE IN DANGER. There are no shower-cap shoe booties, but we're going to take what we can get. Good job, Anita and Laurel. Here's some cookies.

That said...this only adds to the feeling like we've just started another book. That one back there? That was the porn movie, where the heroine dresses in titlating clothes and only titling clothes and everything she does is either intended to arouse, or preformed in a manner/involved in a pratfall that is intended to arouse. (And I am SO GLAD the comic is going to burn itself out long before we get to Narcissus in Chains. I could handle the slit-to-the-waist-gun-dress, but I don't want to see either this book's crime scene in a mini skirt, or Kiss the Dead's stiletto heel to the (LIVING!) vampire's chest pratfall) This isn't a procedural cop story, or even a decent mystery (WHAT mystery?) but we're suddenly doing things that are almost sane, and the sitting-on-the-curb stuff feels like it could be...maybe...I'm squinting sideways and it could be character development, let's give it a--

She looked at me sideways again, but this time she held the look. “Do I have to fuck the monsters to be as good at this as you are?” I gave her wide eyes. 

“Please tell me that you are not this pissed just because I’m dating Nathaniel and you don’t get to.”

Sorry, gang, false alarm. The Anita Blake series fails both the Bechdel test and the Sexy Lamp test. (If you can replace a female character with a sexy lamp and it still works...)

Not only that, but Arnet went to Guilty Pleasures to see Nate when Anita wasn't around and she watched the "bad kitty" scene from the audience. And she refuses to believe it was staged.

I'll bet she watches Monday Night RAW and really believes that Vicki Gurerro got fired.

Anita tries to explain that Nathanial is a sub who likes really intense shit and that he was, you know, acting on stage as part of his job, only instead of doing that she does...well, this: 

“Look, Arnet, sometimes Nathaniel flirts without really meaning to. I think it’s like an occupational hazard.”
 
"Because he's a stripper?"

"Yes." 

Does it get worse? OH yeah.

She looked at me, horrified. “You’re going to blame him? You’re going to blame the victim?” 

This was not going to go well. “Have you ever met someone who’s been blind from birth?...You’re blind, Jessica, how do I explain to you what blue looks like?”

So you expect me to believe that a cop, a cop who works in Saint Louis, a city that houses MULTIPLE BDSM bars, including one run by insane wereheyenas, and a vampire stripper club empire, would not understand that sometimes subs are just that into it if you explained it to them straight. OH AND THAT SOMETIMES THE ACTS IN STRIP CLUBS ARE JUST THAT: ACTS.

All of this, of course, is so that this misunderstanding can continue because FUCK IF I KNOW, it's not my book.

Zerbowski and Smith and someone named Marconi go to get Anita because they're gonna go find the guy that owns the apartment with the dead girl in it. Anita calls Arnet a child right before she gets into the van, and then tells Zerbowski that it "could have gone better" FUCK YES IT COULD HAVE.

She cries all the way to the Church of Eternal Life. Because Arnet could trash her reputation with the force and make her look like a bad girl. Right.

So they get to the Church of Eternal Life and Anita, Zerbowski and a dude named Marconi all go in to see Malcom, the leader of the CoEL. Malcom is not happy to see Anita.He goes down to shake her hand and...

I read this twice to understand what happened, and it sounds like, because Malcom turned every single human in the Church, personally, Anita somehow reaches through Malcom and takes control of every single vampire in the building. As in they are now all her puppies on a leash and she can do whatever she wants with them.

Including compel the murdering ones to tell the truth.

Well, that was easy.

Anita, however, is distracted by thinking about the lives of the vampires here. She looks at a random girl and this happens:

But I saw other things. I saw that once she’d been human here, and she’d knelt and given herself over, but it was a thing of chaste hands on her covered shoulders. No one had ever held her close, gripped her against their bodies, fed so powerfully that her body bucked against them, and sex was a pale thing compared to it.

Yes. Because sex is the be-all-end-all of life. For someone complaining about judgemental behavior you're doing an AWFUL lot of that on your own here.

She calls the guy they came for-a kid named Avery--and Malcom tries to stop her from being a corrupting influience. She says that he's the corrupting influience because the vampire lives in the church suck, no pun intended, and this never gets resolved.

And then we get the opening paragraph of chapter sixty five:

I COULD TASTE their pulses on my tongue. Not just one, but hundreds, as if I’d suddenly had a truckload of candy shoved in my mouth. Candy that was hard and sweet and melted slow across my tongue, but it wasn’t just cherry, or grape, or root beer. It was like a thousand different flavors filled my mouth, so that instead of being delicious, it was overwhelming.

Yes. But is it candy?

So Anita gets overwhelmed by all the candy flavors--apparently the CoEL is a pinata--and can't find the one that she wants to call. Except she already found him. He's Avery, the kid coming up so quick the cops have their guns shoved in his face. They don't shoot because they don't have a warrent, but by the time that is resolved the warrent has come through the door.

Anita can now kill Avery. Just like that. Dead body in a vampire apartment=instant death. Nice to know. Only Anita now has a crisis of conscience, because what if Avery is innocent? Wow, that law is really unfair and highly unrealistic. Maybe they should fix it.

Or maybe the author should come up with realistic and consistant laws instead of making Missouri State Legislation work like a game of Calvinball.

 Fortunately Anita can read Avery's mind and find out if he really did it or not.

NO. REALLY. THAT'S WHAT SHE DOES.

You know, you'd think in a universe where you have high-watt psychics and necromancers who can do shit like this, the court system would have them paired up and on payroll. So, you know, warrents of exicution for the innocent don't fucking happen.

Anita touches, realize that she's rolled him the way a master vampire rolls a mortal--no shit, and I don't think this is your first time, darling--and the chapter ends with her wondering if she could talk Avery into killing himself.

YES. We are past the 2/3rds mark and in the home streach I WILL NOT HAVE TO READ THIS BOOK MUCH LONGER.

Incubus Dreams--chapter 61-62

Yeah. So I'm doing a Kickstarter.

Ya'll will get the official announcement here soon-ish. Like tomorrow morning.

I have learned a lot today. I have learned that trying to nail timing for a kick-ass piece of trailer music is HARD AS FUCK (Let's try two seconds for that slide. No. Okay, let's try one point five. No. Okay, one point two five. Too soon. One point three five? One point three? When you are adjusting things by tenths and hundredths of a second just to get things to change on a beat, you've either gone insane or hit nirvana and all I can say is, it required lots of booze.) I have learned that the Kickstarter "start project' interface hates Firefox and Internet Explorer equally (FIREFOX: WHY WILL YOU NOT UPLOAD THINGS. IE: WHY WILL YOU NOT SAVE TEXT CHANGES THAT I HAVE MADE. KICKSTARTER: WHY DO I NEED TO HAVE TWO BROWSERS OPEN JUST TO COMPLETE YOUR FORMS I DO NOT KNOW THIS PLEASE SEND SCOTCH)

That said, I am almost done gathering things together for Kickstarter's consumption, and I will Post Things as soon as Things exist to post.

ALSO: Dragon Breath drops August 5th. PLEASE SUPPORT THIS BOOK I cannot emphasize this enough.

And also the kickstarter. Because it would be very sad if this did not work.

Also-Also: Chronic blog-reader and all-around awesome person Duamuteffe has decided to take one for the team review Affliction for us. I know I will be following this because I don't want to read that god awful mess we must all support our fellow sporkers.

Go visit. Go support. Go. Now. Do.


The next chapter does not open with a call from Zerbowski. However, it DOES open with Anita and Zerbowski getting out of a car together. As Zerbowski is married and not on the List of Men to Do the table flipping promised in the previous review is regretfully set aside. Instead, we're probably about to have crime scene fail, which is now MUCH preffered to Sex Scene Fail, because only one of these can scar us for life and so far, it is not the one with black lights, luminol and little shower foot booties.

Which, once again, Anita doesn't have.

I guess Zerbowski never needs to use shoe impressions in court.

And you know what? this is the very first time I've made it through a kindle page and nothing's sucked. In fact, I need to point out something good:

“You’ve seen our house, it’s perfect, everything in its place. Even our bedroom is immaculate. The car is the one place that’s mine. It gets to be as messy as I want it to be.”

This is Zerbowski speaking and I get this. This is called "CW's Craft Table" in this house. (Let's just say GLITTER and leave it there)

Anita then points out how many people don't know they've got a vampire "living" next door, and she brings up the predator/prey dynamic, and you know what? That doesn't suck either. Because the problem with using vampires/werewolves/mutants as a metaphore for, say, being gay or trans, is that a vampire can overpower your will and kill you, a werewolf can hulk out and kill you, a mutant can burn your face off if he loses his glasses (Seriously, I would not want to live next to Cyclops that day when the lenses in his glasses fall out and Jean Gray can't find that stupid fucking tiny screwdriver in the glasses repair kit) and a gay guy is a guy.

(...you know, it probably says awful things about me that I just realized equating gays with cyclops means straight people think gays can kill them just by being gay.)

And then Anita brings up one of the things that I've kind of loved about this series from day one, about how the myth about vampires being all powerful is usually just that, and you're far more likely to wake up dead and a master vamp's flunkey forever than you are to wake up dead and a master vamp yourself. Which is a really good reason not to become a vampire. Other than the whole, you know, being dead part.

The vampire isn't as cool as the Zombie Magnate from several chapters back, but he doesn't suck (heh heh) either. His reaction isn't pissing contest with Anita. It's "Aw shit, why are the cops here?" which I am sure all of us can agree with.

I am beginning to suspect that this chapter may not suck. On the one hand, I am sad because that means humor will be more difficult. On the other hand, nobody is fucking anybody else so this is automatically an improvement.

On the other hand, I may have spoke too soon. Anita starts playing "mine is bigger" the second she gets in the vampire's door.

When we were inside, he shut the door and went to the couch. From a coffee table that had almost as much crap on it as the backseat of Zerbrowski’s car, he fished out a cigarette and a lighter. He lit up without asking if we minded. How rude.

LADY. IT. IS. HIS. HOUSE.

(...what would cigarettes do to a vampire? Do they get a nicotine buzz off it? What if you locked a vampire with a pack-a-day habit into one of those silver chained coffins, and then put a pack of cigarettes on a stool just outside of it? WHY ARE THESE QUESTIONS NOT ANSWERED)

Anita also complains about there not being any other chairs. I am imagining this apartment to be something like my one bedroom place from way back in '10, and I now want to fart in her general direction. Seriously, Anita. If you live alone in a cheap-ass apartment, you don't need more than a couch. Unless you entertain. I don't imagine this vampire entertains.

They ask him why he left the strip club. He says it was boring. Anita obsesses over his cigarette, and if she can make him put it out without looking rude.

Anita. It's his house. No, you can't.

And then...you know, I talk a LOT about how this could have been a good book, but I've been actively entertained by the last few pages, and I just formed an emotional attachment with this vampire. See, he says he became a vamp because he was an alcoholic and vamps can't drink, and the Church of Eternal Life offered him an easy way around twelve step programs.

“I’m what my counselor calls an addictive personality. Do you know what that means, officers?”

OH YEAH. Steven King's autobiography/writer's book relates the story of an alcoholic who, when asked how much he drank, replied "ALL of it." An alcoholic drinks until it's all gone. Usually, this includes the Scope and Nyquil (Which, FYI, is about 40 proof. I checked). If an addictive personality drops alcohol, they switch to drugs. If they get off drugs, they switch to gambling. Or sex. Or casual computer games. The addictive personality always has something going. And people in the rehab business are ALWAYS offering a quick fix that isn't a program, and 99.99999% of the times these fixes fail (and most of the time the programs fail. Addiction sucks)

WHY. WERE WE NOT. READING. THE BOOK. ABOUT THE ALCOHOLIC VAMPIRE.

This is not a question. This is an accusation. I would have read the bloody fuck out of that book. And been greatful, because that plot--the drug-addict vampire--has been sitting on my sub-consious for years and I haven't found their story yet.

Instead, I just literally read forty chapters of sex. This is subtracting anything that could remotely be defined as substance--ten chapters is a generous estimate. And I could have been reading a novel about an addictive personality vampire trying to over come his fucked-uped-ness. Either way, this would have ruled. The cervix-punching? IT IS NOT THAT AWESOME.

...the vampire points out that he is now addicted to blood drinking, and that if he fucked up and his friend cried "force", Anita would have to kill him. Anita has no idea how to deal with this moral gray area.

I would have given a kidney to have been reading this book. HOLY FUCK.

Seriously. We sacrificed a book about addictive vampires and moral questions so we could read about cervix bashing and how "you can't rape the willing"? SERIOUSLY?

If I were in a book store, and this was the first chapter in this book, I'd have not only bought it, I'd be freaking raving about it. HOLY SHIT. How can you write this, what I am reading, and not understand that the last 60 chapters were nothing but utter suck.

You want to know why "Negative readers" keep reading? Because once a book, we get this. A brief flash of something that's good. Maybe it's not literature, but it would have been good.

Also, the leadership of the Church of Eternal Life can go collectively sit on a toilet plunger. Just, you know, for the record.

Anita realizes that the CoEL has done nothing to teach their vamp how to actually be a vamp and she starts freaking out. She and Zerbowski leave, confident that the vamp couldn't have killed anybody. He asks her what's going on. She says that the CoEL did something worse than kill this guy, they killed him and then did everything they could to make his new life a crippled one.

We have a addictive vamp plot and a religion plot. I am completely interested. WHY WAS THIS NOT CHAPTER ONE/TWO/THREE/SOMETHING CLOSER TO THE BEGINNING

Of course, the debate between Anita and Zerbowski never goes anywhere. After a couple minutes Zerbowski gets a phone call and they race off to a brand new crime scene where there may or may not be a vampire present.

next chapter.

The suck is back. We get a description of the crime scene that is basically "Anita is here and here is her opinion" for many pages. Including some kind of judgemental bullshit on the crime scene that I just don't get at all.

Also, Jessica Arnet is here. It's time for the "mine is bigger" fighting to commence.

Quick question: How do you become a professional writer and not recognize that the pissing contests and the sex are slowing things down? How can you be that freaking tone deaf to the necessary rythem of a story? most of the fun is getting that right.

Anita tells Arnet to go get air, she's about to faint. Arnet says that Anita isn't the only female who can handle this shit, and I'd say that's true in that there ARE women who can handle this shit, but first, Anita passed out twice at a crime scene during Cerulean Sins, and second, passing out in no way shape or forms indicates the size of your metaphorical balls. It means you either got overwhelmed, overheated, or you forgot to eat a few times. It's a medical condition.

Zerbowski throws Arnet out of the crime scene, and threatens to pull her off the case. I guess when you get in a pissing contest with Anita, that happens.

Anita points out that this could have been an accident--you don't jerk away from a vamp when they've got fangs in your femoral--and then points out that it doesn't matter, it's good for exicution either way. "there's no manslaughter" for vampires, apparently.

This universe has the most fucked up law system ever.

Anita comments that she wants to know how borked the Church of Eternal Life is when teaching vampires new tricks. Zerbowski wants her to put pressure on the Church to teach their vamps right. Meanwhile the guy, who we are implying didn't know how not to kill his girlfriend, is still utterly fucked.

Poor guy.

The chapter ends with them accomplishing absolutely nothing.

Incubus Dreams--59-60

So I spent today working on a book trailer/video for a Kickstarter. Kind of the same thing, ya know? I'm going to be killing myself to get this done quickly, but I think (Cautious emphasis on think) it'll rock socks.

Mostly because trailer music is awesome. And if it is cool it will have very little to do with anything I do.

You'll get to see it soon. Ish.

(38 frames.of things to draw. It's not even animation. It's just fucking still images that have kind of sort of something to do with each other when laid in sequence. WHY DO I DO THESE THINGS TO MYSELF?!?)

Also remember: Dragon Breath drops on the fifth. IT WILL BE AWESOME.

Or else you will all hate me. It's kind of that kind of book.

Yes, I am stalling as long as I can. Anita and Richard are about to have sex. Of all the things I thought would happen in this book? That is not one of them. I *thought*, silly me, that the whole point of ending their relationship in Narcissus in Chains was so that Richard would be a side character never to darken Anita's bedroom door again. I *thought* that this would be...well, exactly what it was up until chapter 55. FUCK WAS I WRONG.

The previous chapter ended with the words "Enough with the foreplay, off with the clothes". Despite this, foreplay is still occurring. Also we have MANY POINTED REMINDERS that Richard does not like the idea of having sex with men. Which is pointless because Anita keeps shoving Richard into positions where he has to have physical contact with Jean Claude...unless the entire point of this scene is to do exactly that.

Which would mean we've established a character as a homophobe for the express purpose of forcing him to have sexual contact with men.

I hope I'm reading too much into it, because if I'm not, This is a level of fucked up I can't even analyze. On the one level, homophobia is not okay. On the other hand, forcing someone to do something they are uncomfortable with during sex is also not okay. And instead of these two wrongs cancling each other out in some form of karma, they merely multiply the FUCKING WRONG. This is like the Tesla Earthquake Machine of what the fuck am I reading here.

Anita then deep-throats Richard.

We dwell for a really long time on how very, very much Anita wants to choke.

Reading about psychological methods to supress one's gag reflex is not romantic. On the other hand, knowing those techniques might get me through this book.

Only I could make oral sex into a zen moment.

Oh FUCK YOU, Anita. Seriously. You are not that good at this.

...you know, there's only so many ways you can write "Go in, go out" without having it get really boring.

They take a break and I shit you not, IMMEDIATELY get back in on the "How many other people are you fucking" arguement.

This is why you don't have sex with your ex when you are both seeing other people.

Time to go back to fluffy sex. And it's Anita's turn. End Chapter.

Next chapter.

You know, sex, especially frequent sex, cannot be good for silk sheets. And despite the lack of smell descriptors (Silk has a smell, very pungent and a little on the fishy side. I happen to like it, but mostly because that smell means I'm either playing with a really fun, if temperamental, fiber, or I've just bought the world's most awesome shawl) I really doubt that LKH would have Anita on the fake stuff. I have no idea what frequent biological spills would do to silk sheets, but either Jean Claude has one hell of a dry-cleaner or he goes through sheets the way I do popcorn.

Focusing on the silk part helps me ignore how Anita is getting scared now that Richard is playing with her. Look, I get that pushing limits is good, but this doesn't have that "Let's see how far we can go" play feel. This has more of that "FUCKING WRONG" feel.

And then Jean Claude and Richard start having a fight on top of her because Anita likes to play with Jean Claude's limp manhood, and Richard doesn't like that.

Sex is now the entire point of this novel. STOP INTERRUPTING YOURSELF.

Finally they do make the beast with three backs, and yep, Richard starts in with the "You're so tight" part and...

Okay, I just snorted beer up my nose. Couple sex scenes ago somebody in the comments got the "tight" part and went "BUT IS SHE WET" and...well, I think the book heard ya'll.

“Is she wet?” Jean-Claude asked.

Richard gave him a look, and it wasn’t friendly. “Yes.”

 Richard is still scared of hurting Anita, as established by him hurting Clair offscreen. Well, Anita goes all "Richard I'm not Clair, you won't hurt me," thus establishing her as the glass vagina for Richard's Cinder-penis and proving that his new girlfriend is so very wrong for him.

Hey, how's the sexy dialogue?

“Fuck me,” I said, “fuck me, God, fuck me, just fuck me. Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, please, please, please just fuck me.”

...okay then. 

 Also, Anita confirms that Richard is hitting "that spot" inside her. Up until now I thought that was her g-spot, but apparently that's her cervix.

Also, I did not know this until just now, but if a character goes down on another character, having them wonder what the other guy is doing behind their back is really fucking confusing. I had to read a paragraph three times to understand the logistics, and trust me, I DID NOT WANT TO READ THAT MORE THAN ONCE.

I screamed my orgasm around Jean-Claude’s body still shoved deep in my mouth.

It amazes me that LKH has no problem describing a body that has literally been raped until it was liquified, and yet she cannot bring herself to use the word "penis" in a polyamourous werewolf/vampire/witch sex scene.

Though if she had said "head" this sentence would probably have made the pain a little better.

The chapter closes with everyone collapsing into a, you guessed it, "puppy pile".

If the next chapter doesn't open with a call from Zerbowski I'm going to start flipping computer desks.



 

Incubus Dreams--chapter 57-58

I don't think I've been as nervious about a book drop before, other than, you know, the first one. Paying for editing should be making me feel better, shouldn't it? Every other book has been kind of "Eh, they'll like it or they'll hate it." This one has been like "THEY WILL HATE IT AND NEVER READ ME AGAIN AND I WILL HAVE DESTROYED MY CAREER" and this time I'm not really sure why. I haven't done anything different. Other than, you know, paying for editing.

IDK.

It's next Monday.

In other news, LKH has broken her world. Again.

See, Anita is in the shower, and her robe is on the door, which means Jean Claude put it there, which means she is sheilding so hard she can't sense him. Which is a problem, because that's what made Damian go berzerk.

If Anita does not suddenly have to have sex for the sake of Damian, the world is broken. If Anita does suddenly have to sex for the sake of Damian, I'm going to be royally pissed because this is already sex via blackmail, we don't need yet another layer of emotional manipulation just to make Anita get in the sack.

Anita debates about wheither or not she should have her hair up or down.

Second, I had only one boyfriend in the other room, not two. I wasn’t trying to look my best, just help Richard not have a fit about letting Jean-Claude touch him.

If he's not your boyfriend, Anita, what the FUCK is he still doing in the book. You have autonomy. You can tell him "Fuck no" and walk out every time he enters, and be perfectly within your rights no matter what he does. Your previous connection with him has no bearing on what you do for him now.

Though technically I should be saying that to Richard, given that you raped him and he is still coming to save you from your own habitual stupidty. (Anita: Eat. Pick partners you like who like you. Make safety arrangements before you start fucking. Stop raping people. Learn how to tell emotionally toxic people "no". Your problems are now solved. Seriously, every so-called "conflict" in this life is caused either by Anita's inability to set healthy boundaries, or her inability to respect them. Oh, and her inability to realize she might want to eat something.)

 Meanwhile, Jean Claude and Richard are arguing over candles. For romantic atmosphere. Because we want to drill home the whole "Richard is a homophobe" thing, because, you know, we haven't demonized him enough by now.

Oh, and Anita in her bathrobe now has Richard all ready and raring to go.

This is not how you heal from a bad relationship. This is how you maintain them.

Hey, what does Richard look like?

There were tiny folds in his stomach, like there are on real people, unless they have washboard abs, and Richard had better things to do with his time than do that many sit-ups. His stomach was flat and perfect, but perfect doesn’t mean perfectly flat. Lines are flat, people had curves and bumps and places to explore.

Because apparently we're too dumb to understand that flat means "without fat" and not "mathmatically perfect plane". Because it's not like the entirety of English lit uses "flat" to indicate "without fat" when applied to abdomens.

The preliminaries take a while. For example, it takes three paragraphs for Richard to take off his shoes and socks.

“Did you hear all that, Richard? He’s using vamp powers on you.”

 Richard gave me a lazy smile. “I feel calmer, less afraid, less conflicted. I hadn’t realized how bad I was still feeling until now.”

I want to buy every character in this novel bulk membership to a therapy club. Also: slipping somebody the metaphysical version of xanax so you can have sex with them is NOT OKAY.

Anita and Richard spend a minute "discussing" their sex lives together. It works about as well as it does here:

“Sort of, right now Nathaniel and I are estimating I need to feed the ardeur about every six hours, or I start draining Damian’s life energy. Since I can’t feed on the same person everyday, that still leaves me short.”

Why would you think that's a good idea? There's no reason for this. Anita should be having sex because she wants to, not because (la la la la) she'll kill a man if she doesn't. This is not characterization, this is an "Excuse Four Sex Scenes For Free" card that avoids the nasty issue of, you know, fucking consent. You can fuck four times a day and still be a good person. Probably a sore one, but still a good one. Needing an excuse to do what you want to do means you have issues that need to be addressed before they become really big issues.

...and then Richard starts barganing for an appointment to come to Anita's place every three days and have sex.

At this point I don't know who is creepier, Richard or Anita.

What I said out loud was, “It’s not just the sex I miss, Richard. I miss weekend movie marathons. I miss going places with you. I miss you, not just your body, Richard.” I almost kept the next part to myself, but I had to know. It was time. “Do you miss me, Richard, or just my body?” I managed to make it neutral, very neutral. Brownie points for me.

...WELL THAT TAKES CARE OF THAT BIT OF INDECISION. Also: No. That is not neutral. You both are terrible people and you should be locked up together with Jean Claude, Asher and Micah a la No Exit. It's the only fitting ending for this fluster cluck of a relationship.

Meanwhile Anita and Richard are now declaring their undying love for each other I shit you not. And oh my god is it creepy. And pointless. At this point Richard is so very much akin to John Norman's Strawchick(s) I kind of want to call him Strawwolf and get it over with:

“Because when I’m near you, all I can think about is the smell of your skin, and the way your hair spreads like black foam on my pillows. Because when I’m near you, all I can remember is how your body feels against mine. I have to be a bastard to you, so that I don’t fall down at your feet and beg you to take me back. Tell you that it wasn’t you I hated. It was me, and I’m sorry that I took that out on you. Sorrier than I can say. That you had the courage to make a life that worked for you, regardless of how far that life was from where you wanted it to be. Help me have the courage to do the same, Anita. Help me be who I am.”

Sorry. Real breakups don't work that way. Especially not when the person saying this is the one who initiated the break up.

Because. You know. You raped him. 

The chapter ends with all three of them snuggling.

I'd use the Applebloom pic, but I think she's a little too young for this.

 So the chapter opens with Richard flinching away from Jean Claude. Only now, because he has CONFESSED HIS LOVE it is time to make him a good guy again, so he reveals that he's having flashbacks. Specifically about being in bed with Rania and Gabriel.

And then Rania's ghost gives Anita her memory of what happened to Richard, so basically we get to read about Richard being raped again. And that is all I am posting on the matter because it's that freaking bad. 

Well, that and the fact that the cops in this universe should have a crime unit dedicated to inter were-pack assaults, given how frequent and fucking awful these assaults are. 

If there is any redeeming thing in this section, and by "redeeming" I mean "less bad than the rest of this shit" it is when Jean Claude confesses that he was raped by Rania and Gabriel too, and Richard points out that JC likes men, and JC says this:

“Rape is rape, Richard. Is a woman less raped because she likes men? That’s a question, Richard.”

I'd be more enthusiastic if this book hadn't done "you can't rape the willing" less than two chapters ago.

Then they start flirting again, and say "let's get undressed".

Transitions: We need them. (Actually, we need brain bleach and a pacifier)

The chapter ends AGAIN before they have sex.

I'm going to go find booze and drink myself relatively insensible.








 

Incubus Dreams--chapter 55-56

So we have survived another Sunday. I hate Sundays. I hate Sunday brunches. Everything about sundays suck.

Alright, guys, remember August 5th is Dragon Breath drop day, and let's get started on this, shall we?

...Anita and Richard are having a conversation.

The relationship is over. The author based Richard on bad people in her life and she wants him gone, Anita feels betrayed by him--and oh yeah, SHE FUCKING RAPED HIM because Total Logic Failure.

His presence is no longer even remotely usable for humor-milking. I have a blind inarticulate rage every time I see his name. It's somewhat like seeing the signs WBC babtist members hold up. It's no longer even disgust at an author thinking anything about Richard's character is okay. I just want him to go away. Go be happy with Clair, or another girl, and let Anita wallow in it. Because this tortured aingst shit--other than being catharsis for a divorcee--is utterly fucking worthless.

People have issues, especially when long term relationships die. I get that. Stop working out your issues in your book. It's getting in the way of, you know, THERE BEING AN ACTUAL BOOK.

(Though at this point it's getting in the way of LKH's actual career. Is it too early to say that Affliction has officially tanked? Because it's been out for a month and it's sold WELL under 30K)

Anita is asking about Richard's fight with Clair.

Let's remove gender issues and just look at what is actually there for a second. A person was emotionally and sexually abusive towards their partner, and the partner ended the relationship for the sake of their own safety (This is not headcannon. THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED) Now that person is asking their ex-lover, who they raped, to tell them about the fight they had with their new lover, and that person is getting miffy because the ex-lover doesn't want to get into all the details of their relationship WITH THEIR RAPIST.

I WANT to stop talking about that. I am tired of that. But every other page it's like HELLO WE WERE NOT UNHEALTHY ENOUGH SO HERE'S ANOTHER VIOLATION OF SAFE EMOTIONAL BOUNDERIES. I keep waiting for Anita to go "OH HAI MARK HOW'S YOUR SEX LIFE".

And then Anita tells him that the reason he's having difficulty controling his temper is that he's inherited her rage.

Her abuse victim is being told that his anger is invalid because it is coming from her. She is taking ownership of his emotional state and is telling him that he doesn't really feel anything.

If there is one thing I hate in this universe, it is exactly that. That is the kind of emotional manipulation that both disarms AND re-victimizes. You can't even respond to that, because implicitly any anger, any reaction, any "fuck you", no matter how well and OBVIOUSLY deserved it might be, isn't actually yours. It's theirs, and they'll be happy to take it back. It makes you MORE of their posession and you aren't even allowed to feel angry about it.

And Richard is giving short,  clipped answers and Anita is responding thusly:

“Don’t go all grumpy on me, Richard, I’m trying to make a point here.”

“See, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. That sounds more like me, than you. You’ve been quicker to anger for the last bit, and I’ve been less quick to anger, why? What if you got some of my anger, and I got some of your calmness?”

It can't be because of trauma related to, you know, being in an incredibly shitty relationship AND having to work through one crisis after another, starting with having to eat Marcus. No. It's all Anita's fault that he's angry. It's all about her.

I am mentally wishing violence on Anita, because JESUS CHRIST, NONE OF THAT IS OKAY. 

Finally, though, Richard responds beautifully: 

Anger filled his eyes, like magic. One moment trustworthy brown, the next moment serial killer dark. “Thank you, thank you very much, for reminding me that I don’t mean shit to you anymore.”

It's invalidated immediately but I do not care. The ONLY correct response to this kind of bullshit is an IMMEDIATE "Fuck you" (unless it's not safe to say that) and an equally immediate departure. And then you keep contact to a minimum because somebody willing to do this is an utterly worthless piece of shit.

And then Richard drops the bombshell that his fight with Clair is that she accused him of raping her.

Well, you know...let's play devil's advocate here. Maybe Clair is lying, or manipulating, or--

“I’m glad it makes you feel better, but remember, I saw the beginning of the lovemaking session. You can’t rape the willing, Richard.”

...every single character in this series is officially a piece of crap and I'd like to drop all of them into a fire.

The conversation then goes on to try to define terms, and they talk about how Clair thinks Richard is too rough, and he doesn't know how to "make love, only fuck", and any good feeling I had towards Richard is rapidly going out the window. Oh, he's still a victim of abuse, don't get me wrong. But being a victim in no way migitates continuing the cycle.

...and then Anita tells Richard the problem is he's so "well endowed" it's impossible for him to be anything but rough...and also his first time was Rania, and his next major love was Anita. Yeah, he probably doesn't have that much experiance with gentle. But it's a big jump to go from "rough sex" to "the girl accusing you of rape doesn't know what rape means", which is still the conversation we're having right now.

“A lot of women don’t like their cervix bumped during sex.”
...is that even possible? 

 But hey, we get a score here! Anita Blake finally uses the word penis:

 “You’re big enough that you always bump someone’s cervix if you’re in a position that allows all of your  .  .  . penis to go inside her. I can’t be any plainer, Richard, so please make the connection here.”

I did not put the "..." there. Anita pauses before she says penis the way a church-going little old lady pauses before she says "fuck".

WOW. And to top off the cervix-related WTF:

“No. I like having my cervix bumped. I have a whole different kind of orgasm from it, so I don’t mind.”

Great. Some women get the glass slipper. Anita's vagina is apparently the glass condom. Only she can fit the most perfect men in the universe.

...so how big is Richard's schlong?

WAIT. WAIT. NO. HOW BIG IS MICAH'S PENIS? The text implies that Micah is bigger than Richard because both JC and Anita have seen Richard naked, and if Richard is big enough that he bumps Anita's cervix...

Micah must be a tripod.

And then Anita decides--knowing ONLY what Richard has told her--that Clair is being a big meanie meanie pants and is only trying to hurt Richard in the worst possible way. Because rape accusations between consensual adults is, you know, just a ploy in a relationship to hurt somebody else.

There are not enough fires in the fucking universe.

And then Richard starts getting violent with Anita.

I can't make this funny, guys. I can't. I'm just kind of sitting here with my mouth open going "Well, we can't top tha--oh, yes we can."

This turns into a step-by-step safety instruction on BDSM relationships. Because, you know, Anita is the picture of safe, sane and consensual.

No. I did not just type that with a straight face.

...and we've just transitioned into Richard is bi/a homophobe.

It's like Laurel K. Hamilton realized that she'd made it through 55 chapters without bring any focused awfulness to the table and she decided she had to pack it all into one chapter RIGHT NOW.

And now we're talking vampire politics re: Primo. THANK GOD. Much better than Anita and Richard talking about something that a real person might actually listen to.

the chapter ends with Jean Claude coming into the room.

Now, it'd be really hard for me to get even more pissed off at this point. Having to read stuff about the tri-whatever Anita just made upping their power levels AGAIN? Sure, we already got all that, but it's much better than the rape talk a few pages back. In fact, there is exactly one thing that could royally piss me off right now.

I did my best not to look at Richard. “Who did you have in mind?”

“Requiem told me of the amount of blood you lost last night, ma petite. I think it is wiser if you do not donate more quite so soon.”

I heard Richard’s sigh from where I was sitting, and he wasn’t sitting that close to me. “I would say it’s always me, but it’s usually not. I know that Anita isn’t your regular feed, but I know she lets you feed.” He put his face against his knees and sighed again. “Fine, but only if Anita is here, too. No just you and me.”

A sex scene with Richard, Jean Claude, and Anita. Aww. And hey, here's the "HOW FUCKED UP CAN YOU GET" Bonus round...they just established Richard as a homophobe so that he would ask for Anita to stay. Because otherwise Richard would have said "NO"

Loudly.

Mercifully, the chapter ends with Anita heading off to take a much needed shower prior to the bloodplay.

And I really have just one reaction to all of this.