Chelsea Gaither's Blog, page 42

Cerulean sins--chapter 47. Triggers. Consider yourself warned.

Forgive me for this opening, guys, but I need to point something out to my darling lovely unnamed friend. Something that they probably ought to know, given that I've talked about this on the blog before. So if you do not know much about my history, This will probably be highly disturbing. I am very sorry if it disturbs most of you. I will probably regret doing this, my wonderful unnamed friend will probably bat it around with her friends for the next several weeks, but you know what? I'm done. I'll play your game, my darling unnamed friend. You finally pushed the button that gets a response out of me.

I would like to have been real friends with you, princess. Before you started showering me with attention, I respected you. I reacted the way I did to our first encounter because I wanted to be a good person in your eyes. And for several months afterwards I thought that I did deserve every awful, soul destroying thing you said about me. Because I thought you were more than a good person. I thought you were the best person. And if the best person thinks I am a piece of worthless white shit, that must mean that I am utterly irredeemable, without value or merit, and that I am so far gone I can't even try to get better without destroying the value and self esteem of millions of other people.

I thought you were all powerful. All knowing. I thought you were actually good.

So I want to thank you.

Thank you for calling me an awful human being because I wrote that rape recovery makes people stronger, and that I find that recovery to be a sublimely beautiful thing. Thank you for believing that means I glorify rape and abuse. Thank you for making assumptions. Thank you for taking your own cause and turning it into something that's all about hatred and not about dialogue, because that sure as shit stinks will make humanity better. Yes, I am sure it will. Answering hate with hate, murder with murder, and violence with violence has always solved all of the worlds problems.

Thank you for deciding that I don't deserve to have a voice.

Thank you for showing me that you really are an inconsiderate, un-self-aware, remorseless piece of shit.

Fuck you for making me talk about this.

I was sexually assaulted three years ago by a man in a black pickup truck who asked for directions to an electronic store, asked for me to get into his car and show him where that place was, drove out into the middle of nowhere and made me give him 100 dollars and a blow job.

 He criticized my performance.

He gave me instructions.

As a courtesy, he didn't even make me swallow.

We got interrupted. He took me home.

I told the police. They told me "Well, that counts as consent, so it sucks to be you," and drove away.

The fact that you think I am a horrible person for believing that recovery can be beautiful just fills me with all the warm fuzzies. Kind of the way the assault did. I guess the only other option I have is to be a broken mess of an individual who rocks quietly in a corner every time something triggers that memory. Somebody says "blow job" and I'm back in the truck. The other day I heard the song that was on the radio during the assault and boom, I was back in the truck.

Having you go "OH MY GOD SHE IS GLORIFYING RAPE YOU CAN'T SAY RECOVERY IS BEAUTIFUL WITHOUT GLORIFYING RAPE"...yep, that puts me back in the truck.

I'm really sick of being back in the truck.

He made me weak. He made me kleenex. He broke me. He turned me into nothing. It was the worst day of my life, and for him, it was just Tuesday. I mattered that little.

I make my recovery beautiful because it denies him any right to it. Any right to my memories. Any right to me. It means that my rapist is not allowed to define me.

And I choose to write about it, and to say "rape recovery is a beautiful thing, and being stronger is a beautiful thing" because I wish to God one person would have said that to me. That just one person could have told me that I could be proud of the days and weeks that followed. That I could be proud of myself for still being alive. That it was even possible to take those hours back and make them be mine again. That I have every right to isolate that hour in that truck like the piece of cancer it is and refuse to let it have any more of my life, time or energy.

What happened to me was wrong. And I'm choosing to grow from that, and grow beauty from that, and grow stronger from that, and to tell other people that it's possible to go through an assault and come out the other side whole. I'm choosing to make recovery praiseworthy.

The alternative is to let rape be about the rapist, rather than about the survivor. The alternative would be to let him have power, and to keep that part of me.

The alternative would make survival a duty, and not a triumph.

Fuck that. And fuck you. Fuck you for not understanding that. Fuck you for deciding that recovery and survival shouldn't be something worthy of praise just because the thing we survive is a nightmare. Fuck you for deciding that I can't take MY OWN ABUSE back and make my recovery be something beautiful. Fuck you for invalidating my recovery. In fact, how about we just go with, "fuck him, and fuck you too"?

Also: Thank you for e-stalking me for six months. Thank you for posting something from my blog that you find problematic every time I post a goddamn page. Thank you for reminding me what a horrible, worthless human being I am. I am sure this accomplishes something in the betterment of the universe.

You triple the traffic my blog gets every time you link to it, and you make up, oh, about 45% of my traffic every time you tweet a direct link to a page. And hiding your tweets only works when all your friends do it too.

You are the ONLY PERSON ON THE INTERNET who is talking about me. Not an exaggeration. I get referral links from spam websites and from you. You are still my primary source of traffic. You latched onto me within twenty-four hours of me posting on LKH_Lashouts, you've continually criticized every single word I say because I happen to be white and live in the states. I am actively anticipating when you finally tackle one of my books because I know that's coming next (yeah, hiding your tweets was the big clue that you were about to move back into my life again. Thanks for the warning) You've called me an illiterate fucktard, which is true given that YOU could afford a college education and I could not. Thank you SO MUCH for lording that privilege over me.

And now you just spent the last day criticizing how a sex-abuse victim--namely, me--handles her own recovery on twitter.

Because it made you feel all happy and superior and it made me look like more of a shit.

You really are the superior person.

 I fucking dare you to link to this post, you insensitive fucking troll.

(But you're right about the spelling. I hate spelling, I always have hated spelling, and not right clicking under every batch of wavy red lines is my way of sticking it to Queen Elizabeth's arbitrary rules about where letters are supposed to go.)

Okay, I feel better now. So where were we?

Oh, right. The wolves show up. Richard is going to pull a power play to try to take his wolves back from Jean Claude. Because undermining the biggest power in your city when he's facing down a rival who is worse than he is, is the absolute smartest thing he can do.

...This book is a piece of trash.

 Richard yanks all the wolves away from everyone who isn't a wolf, including Gregory, who is still comforting Stephen. Then he demands Anita stand with the pack because, technically, she is pack.

Anita says "what the fuck is going on" and the audience says "The writer forgot how to plot." because there is no logic behind this, at all.

Anita and Richard face off, Richard gets all imposing and...fuck me, this happens:

I looked up the length of his body and met his eyes with the knowledge in my eyes that I knew what was under that conservative suit, every inch of it.

I am probably not in the mood to discuss this tonight. Anita raped Richard. And now she's reminding him of their sexual relationship. The one that ended with rape. She's trying to make him do what she wants him to do by reminding him of the sexual power that she once held over him. That she once used to rape him with.

I now actively want to hurl.

Richard gets angry, and of course it's wrong for him to be angry at Anita, because Anita is only the person who violated every promise made and boundary established during their relationship twice, including that all important one of "DON'T HAVE SEX WHEN I SAY NO"

So Musette is amused, and Richard says "Go away, this is pack business," and Musette just laughs until Belle shows up and tells Richard, basically, "Sit, boy, I need to play with Asher right now."

Richard goes "Uh...what?"

And then Asher starts screaming and the chapter ends with Anita thinking about how much she's going to hate Richard in a few days.

This book needs to die in a fire.

Sorry for hijacking the review to vent my ire at a non-related issue, but I'm getting really, REALLY tired of being this person's favorite chew toy. I'll let her sit all over me re: race and GLBT issues because I am an idiot when it comes to that, and I know it. But you don't get to tell me how I feel about MY recovery from MY OWN SEX ASSAULT is invalid.

AND we are LIVE!

Barnes and Noble and Amazon.

Well? What are you waiting for? Go buy books! Go! Go!

BLACK HOUNDS IS UP+ Cerulean Sins--46

Yep, we are live on smashwords and should be up on the other webpages very shortly.

This one was a slog through hell to get done and I am very glad to see it up, very glad to see it gone. Hopefully, ya'll will enjoy it.

...

Chapter 46 is obscenely long, and it would be better titled "In Which All Major Players Kiss Anita's Ass." I know that happens a lot in this novel, but this is the worst example I've seen so far.

Leopards are Belle Morte's animal to call. I don't think I've covered this properly, so let me explain: Big, powerful vampires get an animal to call. JC has wolves, Musette had rats and bats, apparently, and Belle has leopards. Anita, despite not being a vampire, will eventually have all the things to call and the phrase "(blank) to call" will invoke this urgent urge to kill in the reader, and you won't ever really know why. I think the words "Deus ex machina" and/or "asspull" would be better suited to this particular element, but whatever.

Belle tells Anita she's pissed because Anita shot the Mother of all Darkness's servants. Belle is not pissed because this might, in turn, piss off the MOAD. No. Belle is pissed because the servant raising...stuff was proof that Belle was best vampire, and now it's all dead and icky on JC's floor.

Anita should not be allowed near political situations. EVER.

JC says that Musette broke the truce and was being put under room arrest, and the servants of the MOAD were trying to stop this lawful detainment. Belle calls bullshit. Valentina confirms it, stating that if she'd known that Stephen and Gregory were abuse victims, she wouldn't have abused them.

This defies all logic. I will buy vampires and werewolves and magical waves and possessions that smell like roses. What I won't buy is a sadist deciding that triggering an abuse victim is bad. Maybe it's just me, but I don't think that's how a sadistic vamp would operate.

Belle gets pissy because she has to accept that Musette did break truce, so she decides that she's taking Asher back to France with her. JC says no, we're fucking each other, that means I get to keep him.  Belle says JC is lying because Musette smelled (?) the lie on Anita. JC replies that Anita only counts intercourse as sex. Because, like, we didn't already cover this THREE OTHER TIMES already.

So Anita decides to bargain with Belle Morte for Asher's freedom, and of fucking course it's Anita having sex in front of Belle. Also, this happens:

He’d used my real name, he almost never did that. Perhaps because Belle was using my nickname, he didn’t want to.

This is the skeeviest part of the book so far, and I have no idea why.

So Belle drowns Anita in the magical scent of psychic roses, and Anita and Micah roll around on the floor, and a random person touches Anita, and this gives her the ability to remember that she's a necromancer and that vampire magic doesn't really work on her, and this somehow activates her inner leopard, and she and Micah have psychic sex on a real floor, while Belle psychiclly feeds on the psychic sex energy. And this somehow makes all the leopards in Anita's pard safe against Belle's influience because Plot. I guess. I think it's over there rocking in the corner, at any rate.

Belle calls all the humans in the room toys, and compliments JC on how nice his set are. Then they go back to discussing the dead servants of the MOAD and what the punishment for killing them should be. Belle realizes that Damian is Anita's vampire servant, a plot point that goes absolutely nowhere, though it establishes that Anita would be dead meat if the vampires still adhered to the "old ways"

Belle also tries to take over the vampires JC has made. Only JC has cut Belle off from controlling those vampires. Belle is now thawarted dictator level pissed, and she walks up to Asher, who isn't a leopard and is older than Jean Claude and thus, is Belle's own personal meat.

ALL of this has this thick coating of "Anita is a bad-ass". Seriously. Replace every other sentence with "Anita is a bad ass" and you'd have the effect this chapter gives me. INCLUDING the utter fucking disconnect between the tone and the actual behavior of every single person in this story.

The chapter ends with Anita rambling about love and/or evil.

LKH must have a pathological need to end every chapter with a quotable quote, which is fine and dandy most of the time. However, here we have a major character in immediate peril. Anita being quotable is not interesting. It's the internal monologue of a sociopath.

This chapter had no reason to exist. 

Cerulean Sins--chapter 45

I think this chapter shows me what the biggest problem with Anita is.

The chapter opens with two of her people being driven practically catatonic on the floor, due to Valentina and Bartolome. The scary vampire children are hurting her people. And I realize that both Anita and Jean Claude are worthless characters because, above all else, they suck at being leaders.

I've been trying to figure out how to put this down into words for several hours, and I think it boils down to this: The only reason to have an uber-superpowerful character be both the Baddest Kid on the Block AND be a good guy is to enforce the consequences that promote healthy bounderies. AKA don't steal, don't lie, don't murder, don't stab people just to watch them bleed. That's why we like those characters. They make us feel safe. Not because they can protect us, though that's a part of it, but because they can make sure that we are allowed to be people.

The problem is that a boundery without consequences is just a chalk line. It only has meaning if you can add "Or else" to your "Don't cross this." It's why "don't steal" has to be followed up with "Or I'll have you arrested". Why "Don't hurt me" has "or I'll leave" attached to the end.

The appeal of big, strong male leads isn't "OH HE CAN RESCUE ME", or rather, it isn't only that the male can rescue the female. The appeal is the boundery thing. It's knowing that I do not have to be the biggest, strongest, bestest thing on the block. I can hand it off to the cops, or prince charming, or Superman, and I can relax once in a while. Whether or not this is a good thing in a story is immateral; I'm not discussing gender politics and I don't intend to. I'm talking about why the idea of being friends and/or lovers is appealing, and it is, quite simply, that the bounderies we have will be both respected and enforced by them because they love us, and that for once, we do not have to police our own borders, so to speak.

Of course, in a healthy relationship one of those bounderies would be "I police my own fucking borders, thank you very much." It's not the actual surrender that is appealing, and it sure as fuck isn't healthy to drop your bounderies at the first sight of a good set of biceps. The appeal, however, is in knowing that we could if we wanted to. People who like the big, bad strong guys like the idea that we're not just safe, we're safe with another person, and even if we fuck up and get hit on a day when we're not the strong uber-alpha wolf, that safety isn't going to go away because we have this guy in our corner.

Of course, if you don't understand this dynamic, you wind up writing Twilight.

Which brings us back to why Anita and Jean Claude are utter fucking failures as characters: They have no bounderies. At all. And they respect none. They consider someone with bounderies (IE Richard, Asher, the prude-of-the-book) to be someone beneath them, shackled to an arbitrary moral code, rather than an individual protecting their own individuality. They have no limits, and they are constantly testing other people's limits, and that is not a good thing. Superman testing your limits usually results in broken bones.

And they do not and cannot make any other person safe.

The purpose of a leader is not to sit on top of the heap and bask in adoration. The purpose of a leader is to protect and enforce the healthy physical and social bounderies of the individuals under their supervision. A leader ought to understand the job well enough to know, they damn well don't want the job. Both Anita and Jean Claude have gone for the leadership position with both hands, and are now occupying it without the first fucking clue what to do with it, and everybody else knows it. 

This whole thing with Belle and Musette is a limit testing party. Who has control here? What can we get away with? Belle moved into JC's territory and made demands. She threatened his people, she's threating his girlfriend, and he's done the absolute worst thing he could possibly do: he's folded like a pack of cards. Now we're going to read about Anita smashing things to try to fix damage, 45 chapters too late to actually fix anything. The rules should have been enforced the first time Musette asked for a person to break, and were not. So now the rules effectively do not exist for her and JC's so-called "leadership" is just a thing on paper.

So Anita moves in to rescue her people from Musette, and her way is barred by a black vampire. I'm just going to leave the description here and move on:

 He was also one of the few Black vampires I’d ever seen. Some people theorized that the same genetics that made many people of African descent immune to malaria also made them less likely to become vampires. He stood there looking at me, with his dark skin still somehow strangely pale, like chocolate ivory. His eyes were golden yellow, and the moment I looked into them, the words not human came to mind.

Yep. Oh, but that's not the worst part. The worst part should have gotten this book published with a big, fat TRIGGER WARNING on the cover. 

 Anita rescues Stephen and Gregory, who are the people freaking out, by telling Valentina and Bartolome about the abuse that happened in their past. Their own dad abused them both and pimped them out. She announces this to the entire room of strange, crazy vampires. Because that's going to make a crazy-as-fuck vampire back off. Letting them know potential victims have buttons the size of Texas they can push. And it works, the child-vampires back off their victims because I don't even. I really don't. I am losing my ability to even.

And now JC grows a spine. He tells the room that he warned Musette about the abuse, and that Musette elected not to tell the child-vamps about it because she knew they wouldn't want to retraumatize the two men, and I'm wondering what on the blue bloodied earth could have made Laurel K. Hamilton think this was an okay plot event. Seriously.

So Musette declares that rats are her animal to call, and none of the were-rats can put her in house arrest. Anita orders the other shape-shifters to put her in her room, and she orders the were-rats to kill them. They don't. So Musette orders two vampires who turn out to be the servants of the MOAD to protect her, and this results in a who-is-bigger arguement.

*looks back* yes, the child-abuse subplot is still there.

Anybody who's read any of my books should know I do not object to writing about abuse. Of my primary cast I think...two people, maybe, don't have abuse or violence in their history, (Tim Anderson and Adrienne Parker, as long as you discount the whole works-triage thing) and they're not exactly destined for a happy ride. In short, I don't find a character with rape in their backstory offensive. It happens in real life. Not writing about abuse isn't going to make abuse magically disappear. Keeping fictional women from being raped isn't going to keep real women from being traumatized. BUT, and here's the thing, it only has value in the aftermath. In getting over it. In recovery. In standing up and saying "That happened, here are the scars, I still have these issues, but you're not getting anything else from me." Abuse doesn't make a character strong. Getting over abuse makes that character strong. Getting over abuse, and trauma, and difficulty, is what makes a person strong. I find abuse and violence to be hideous, awful and monsterous, but I find the growth of the human spirit after an event like that to be the most glorious thing I've ever seen. I wish we didn't live in a world where survival and recovery had to be part of our daily vocabulary, but we do. Rape and violence exist. Erasing that in fiction won't fix it; the only counter I can think of is to show the beauty that defeats it.

Or to quote a dead white man, Fairy Tales don't teach children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy Tales teach children that dragons can be killed. 

Replace "Dragon" with "rape".   You'll see what I mean. The status of victimhood is a transitory state, and when it's over, it's over. It does not consume you. You are allowed to get up and walk away. But sometimes hearing that isn't enough. We have to be shown. And stuff that won't penetrate in a heart-to-heart talk might maybe, please God, hopefully, get through in the theater of a story.

I know it worked for me.

This bullshit? It's rape as a plot bunny. And now that we've gotten Musette into a corner, we're forgetting about the two traumatized men and, in the process, telling abuse victims that they are and always will be victims.
. 
So Anita shoots one of the servants of the Mother of all Darkness in the head, just to prove that she can. Because this story is all about how bad-ass Anita is, and not about actual leadership or growth or recovery or anything like that. Anita reflects on how she just complicated everything for everyone (no shit, sunshine) and Belle Morte possesses Musette because I don't even care anymore.

This chapter was horrible, awful, dreadful, disgusting, and I think when I'm done with this book I'm buying a brand new print copy and using it to decoupage a toilet.

This chapter goes on the seat.

Cerulean Sins--chapter 44

It is AMAZING how typesetting can reset your vocabulary. Rivers. These are not nice, safe, wet places anymore. No. They are white space and blurry vision and squinting at a monitor without my glasses on and nail biting and chewing fingers and WHY DID I THINK PRINT BOOKS WERE A GOOD IDEA, WHY, WHY, DEAR GOD, WHY?

And then I remember: It's just a hobby. For now.

(sobs quietly to self. God, I suck at this)

So now Anita and company are going to eat dinner. A banquet. Involving sex crazy vampires.

Written by a woman who cannot write a sex scene without involving food imagry.

I am terrified. Please, oh please, oh please, let nobody be eating a banana. THERE WILL BE NO BANANAS.

So the feast takes place in...*sporfle*. Yeah:

It was literally cavernous, because it had originally been a cave, a huge, towering, space that water had carved out of solid stone over a few million years.

No, really? And that's how a cave is formed? Oh, my god I did not know this. /sarcasm. Seriously, though? I'm having sudden Captive of Gor flashbacks. Is there a mark on her thigh? Is it HIGH on the THIGH? Does it go all the way up to the SKY? If ever if ever a cave there was, this cavern is one because because...

...because because because because because. Come on. You HAVE to finish that song every time you hear it. And then we get a description of how the air in a natural cave is different from the air in a man-made cave. How? What are the tactile differences between a man made cave and a natural one? We never find out, because it's just freaking different, so there.

The cave is also lit by gas. Bootleggers did it. I suppose having somebody come through and put track lighting up--or at minimum, hipster-style christmas lights--is just asking too freaking much. Hey, anybody heard that story about how laying gas lines next to water mains blew up a whole town? (It's number 5 on the list) One lazy contractor. Series problem solved. Just sayin.

And then we get the banquet table described, and everything is white and gold. White and gold. Gold. Gold. More white. More gold. This happens:

The tablecloth was triple layered, one long and white that nearly dragged the floor, a gold edge of leaves and flowers embroidered around its hem. The middle layer was a delicate gold lace. The top was a different layer of gold— white and gold— as if someone had taken gold paint and dabbed it sponge-like on white linen.

And I realize that in addition to food similes, somebody needs to take the paint away from LKH too.

Anita is confused by the flatware:

But two things confused me. First, there were way more golden utensils at each place than I knew what to do with. What the hell do you use a tiny two-tined fork for anyway?

Seafood. Specifically, for getting oysters, clams, mussels and bits of crab meat out of the shells. We have them at work for oyster season and Paella parties.You're welcome.

The other thing that Anita is confused about are the place settings on the floor.

Like I said. Captive of Gor flashbacks. I don't want to know. Seriously. No bananas, no dog leashes, no dogfood bowls. Please. God in heaven. Please.

The ONE good thing in all of this is the underage HUMAN CHILD Musette feeds on got shipped back home. So we don't have to deal with that. Yet.

JC then shows up to ask Anita why she isn't being social. Probably because writing one of those stab-you-in-the-neck formal dinners is fucking hard and LKH didn't want to fuck with it. (I've written one. It is in the to be released main novel and FUCK I hated writing it. I love it to itty bitty pieces, but tooling well crafted barbs that appear to come up on the fly is somewhat akin to that kissing scene in Fight Club. You know. The one involving the lye? It feels roughly like that.)

So Anita confesses that she's bolted from the party because Musette keeps asking Anita if she and Asher have had sex, and Anita apparently defines sex as vanilla intercourse, because she says no.

Asher provides sordid details of what they did to prove she's wrong. I'm not copy and pasting them in and no power on earth can make me. Let's just say that "Seed" isn't an improvement over semen.

So Anita asks him who will eat on the floor and he answers "Anyone who is food" because you don't invite the cow to join you for hamburgers. Which is bullshit because one, getting the hamburger kills the cow unless you are a god-awful sadist, and two, a cow can't have a detailed conversation about why J.J. Abrams is or is not a good pick to direct Star Wars (I think he is, but he's also one more major nerd franchise away from "One Ring to Rule them All" territory and I don't really want to have to haul a lightsaber up Mt. Doom) (...look, if you're eating dinner with me you're either talking nerd, storytelling or the History of Knitting. You want P vs. NP you go find somebody with more brains)

(I can manage a half-assed analysis of Pride and Prejudice involving dysfunctional family roles, but that's just because my Dad is a rehab counselor) 

Which means Jason and Nathanial will be eating on the floor.

This is all happening at Belle's request. And I have a bad feeling that the next chapter is going to be Anita valliantly rehumanizing the dehumanized victims, because Jean Claude doesn't have either the spine or the stones to stand up to his Maker and say "No". I guess giving JC something approaching a moral compass would just destroy the sexy sexy fun times.

Valentina shows up and apparently she's visited the Mother of all Darkness too, and she and Anita commisurate about it for a few minutes.

...can we move on to the awful sex and stop rehashing the not-a-plot please? It's getting boring in here.

Valentina also says that there's going to be a surprise, one that Musette doesn't know about, and only Valentina and Anita will understand how terrible awful it is to have that surprise happen.

And then we find out that Damian, Anita's human servant, is "a touch homophobic".

I hate this book.

And then we find out that Richard cut his own hair off, and this is apparently a substitute for self injury, and I will be right back, folks, but that requires serious medication.

this serious. No. That is not my glass or my bottle. But it is my poison of choice.


First off, I would like to call bullshit on that, because no. No, it's not. Maybe it's low grade baby stuff, but I know several happy sane, well adjusted people who cut their own hair because fuck hairdressers, that's why. Doing a shitty job trimming your hair does not equal S/I or suicidal ideation.

But let's say Richard cut his hair because he knew it'd piss off Anita. Sometimes that's a good vent after you end a relationship. But let's say Anita is exactly right, and he chopped off his hair because he is in an unhappy place. Well, one, it's better than actively carving on your own skin. And two, say it with me now:

ANITA FUCKING RAPED FUCKING RICHARD.

 Anita violated him when he was at a deep, dark, emotional low because her hunger was more important than accepting his limits and honoring his trust. He was at a point where he needed her, and all she wanted was sex. It's not okay when you are male, it's not okay when you're female. It's not okay ever. The last person on earth who should be worrying about Richard's mindset is the woman who did more than her share of damage to his psyche. Start fixing yourself, princess, because that log in your eye is starting to hurt other people too.

Nathanial shows up wearing a white g-string, boots, eye makeup, and nothing else.

Can we have the dancing girl in the bells and red silk and just get it over with already? Seriously, why is vampire society Gor? Why did it suddenly become okay for vampire society to be Gor?

Meanwhile Micah is amused because Rapey the Vampire has been hitting on him all night and he's just peachy with it, thank you.

I have just reached the point where I am convinced Laurel K. Hamilton wrote this with the genders reversed, and then just did a find and replace for the pronouns. Everything about that is so fucking wrong I don't even know where to start.

Finally Bobby Lee shows up and tells everybody they need to get back out there, and everybody piles out into the Vampire Ice Cream Social. 

COVER IS DONE! COVER IS DONE! YAY YAY YAY!

There you go. We are go for cover.

Now. We just need to get go for book.

Cerulean Sins--Chapter 43

Anita now describes her clothes. The dress gets less than a paragraph. Most of its description is actually complaining that her clothing is girly, that it shows off her boobs, and that her hair and makeup (another paragraph) was done by one of Guilty Pleasure's strippers. Not sure why that detail (which is worded exactly like that) is necessary. I'd say that it's a relief, but we went from OMG TOO MUCH DETAIL to "Yes, but what does this dress look like?" Does it have fluffy skirts? Is it slender and slinky? Easy to move in? Will it block her gun hand? Or worse, is it like the slit-to-the-waist-dress she wore in the second book? (won't block your gun, but you'll flash the world when you put it back)

And then Micah shows up, and his clothing gets described down to the stitch. This is the difference between the two paragraphs. Anita's girly clothes:

I HAD, OF course, complained about my clothes. The black velvet and blue silk seemed to be offering my breasts up like pale ripe fruits. The colors emphasized the near translucence of my skin with the undertone of blue highlights. But I knew what the blue highlights really were— blood. Blue blood inside my veins that would burst red when oxygen hit it.

So it's a black and blue sack with a boob window? This is Micah's outfit:

The color was turquoise blue, with enough green to make his eyes blaze green. The shirt had holes at the top of his shoulder, in the middle of his upper arm, and two in the middle of his forearm. Black cord was threaded through the cloth and tied around his elbow, above and below the holes to keep the cloth from sliding around. The cuffs were wide and stiff, with shiny black buttons, with cutouts on the underside so the skin of his wrists was bare, just as the holes at his elbows left those spots bare. His skin looked very tanned, very smooth, very warm against the turquoise. The pants matched the shirt— and not just in color. There were holes on the sides that flashed the perfect smoothness of his hip, down to glimpses of thigh. The holes probably went farther down, but black boots cut off the view just above his knee. The pants were so tight that he really didn’t need a belt, but there was a black cord threaded through the unnecessary belt loops that swung as Micah walked. He was actually almost to me when I realized there were holes on the inside of the pants legs, too.

Because we needed to know the shirt has holes, and has to be tied down with cords, and that his pants are leaving nothing to the imagination. I'm amazed we didn't get a fucking button count. Seriously. We get to know exactly where every little stitch is, and we don't find out how Anita's going to get to her gun when the inevitable happens and she starts shooting things.

You know, just for the hell of it, I'm C&Ping my two favorite bits of costume porn from Hunger Games, so I can see why this bugs the crap out of me. One: Katniss's post-Games dress:

I am still the “girl on fire.” The sheer fabric softly glows. Even the slight movement in the air sends a ripple up my body. By comparison, the chariot costume seems garish, the interview dress too contrived. In this dress, I give the illusion of wearing candlelight.
“What do you think?” asks Cinna.
 “I think it’s the best yet,” I say. When I manage to pull my eyes away from the flickering fabric, I’m in for something of a shock. My hair’s loose, held back by a simple hairband. The makeup rounds and fills out the sharp angles of my face. A clear polish coats my nails. The sleeveless dress is gathered at my ribs, not my waist, largely eliminating any help the padding would have given my figure. The hem falls just to my knees. Without heels, you can see my true stature. I look, very simply, like a girl. A young one. Fourteen at the most. Innocent. Harmless. Yes, it is shocking that Cinna has pulled this off when you remember I’ve just won the Games. 

This is a very calculated look. Nothing Cinna designs is arbitrary. I bite my lip trying to figure out his motivation.

It's about the same amount of wording as we got for JC and Asher. But there's a difference. Let's take a look at my other favorite bit:

Girl talk. That thing I’ve always been so bad at. Opinions on clothes, hair, makeup. So I lie. “Yeah, he’s been helping me design my own clothing line. You should see what he can do with velvet.” 
Velvet. The only fabric I could think of off the top of my head. 
“I have. On your tour. That strapless number you wore in District Two? The deep blue one with the diamonds? So gorgeous I wanted to reach through the screen and tear it right off your back,” says Johanna.

 I bet you did, I think. With a few inches of my flesh.

This one, I know why I like. You never see this dress, but you have a good idea what it looks like, and it develops Johanna's personality while they're talking. ...I probably ought to mention that this conversation happens while Johanna is shucking her tree costume and standing in the elevator bare-ass naked. I think I love the description of Katniss's interview dress for roughly the same reasons. Clothing in these novels is consistantly a weapon. Throughout the entire first book, Katniss's clothing is carefully chosen to make her look like a halfway decent contender for the Games. Now, however, she's a threat, and Cinna pulls out a metric ton of little girl clothes to compensate. In other words: THE COSTUME PORN EXISTS FOR A REASON. The long descriptions of the interview dress, the chariot ride clothing, the post-games dresses, the (SPOILER REDACTED) dresses. You get an image of pretty clothing, but you also get a looming sense of dread. You are always reminded that the reason Katniss is getting the pretty clothes is because she is probably going to die in the next few days, and this dress might give her a shot at survival, or it might not. It's a calculated move in a political game, and that's what makes the upteen millionth description of Katniss's new dress interesting.

So. Why are Asher and Jean Claude so pretty?

“One of the vampires coming tonight has an eye for a beautiful man. Both Asher and I fell afoul of him, more than once.” 
“And,” I said. 

“To flaunt such delectable meat in front of his table, yet not allow him a taste or a touch, pleases us.”

...they're dressing up to say "Fuck you" to their rapist.

I honor the sentiment, but god non-con as a primary motive for action is really getting old.

LKH then blows it by explaining exactly what I just said--Belle sent the rapist to say Fuck you to JC, so JC is dressing pretty to say "fuck you" to his rapist--in horrific, excruciatingly polite and way too fucking long detail. It. Goes on. For paragraphs. And it ends with what we already established in Musette's intro: Belle Morte has sent everybody JC's way because JC and Asher left her and she's more than a little miffy about it.

That's it. That's why the big bad vampire is tormenting JC and Asher. Because they told this abusive drama queen to get screwed and set up shop in another town.

I know my reading habits aren't the best in the universe, but dear bleeding god, even Charlene Harris isn't this fucking shallow. I hate Sookie, I hate her guts with a passion, and I would much rather read about her giving four guys the shaft (Eric, Bill, Alcide and Sam) all at once while trying to pretend her lack of commitment is "romantic indecision" or what the fuck ever you can use to justify deceptive bed-hopping (It's not the fact Sookie sleeps with all four that bugs me. It's that she promises commitment and then lies her ass off when she can't follow through. If you can't do monogamy don't do monogamy. But don't lie to your partner and promise something you ought to know you can't pull off) than I would read about how powerful rapists choose to trigger their victims and have this get passed off as a political power play. Seriously. ALL BELLE WANTS TO ACHEIVE IS THE REVICTIMIZATION OF JEAN CLAUDE AND ASHER. She has no political goal beyond "make the boys feel bad". She's not trying to get control of St. Louis, she's not trying to take over one of JC's clubs. She's not trying to make them come back to her. All she's doing is fucking with them because Book. I'd say "plot" but it's chapter 43 and we still don't have one.

And then the book goes on to say that Belle's power base, the source of all her security, is based on being the most desireable woman in the world.

And she killed Juliana because Jean Claude and Asher's devotion to her challanged that power base

And Anita is now in the same position, so Jean Claude has to convince Belle Morte that Anita isn't a challenge to Belle Morte's beauty!

AND HE IS GOING TO DO IT BY HAVING A HAREM'S WORTH OF PRETTY MEN AT THE BANQUET. Because Belle Morte doesn't consider men to be a threat, so JC is going to dress all the pretty men in his employ in pretty, pretty clothing and convince Belle that he's not here for Anita, he's gay for his "harem" of men!



Because, you know, it can't possibly be that Jean Claude is, at minimum, bisexual. Nope, he has to pretend to be gay to save his girlfriend's life. Oooh, but why is Anita such a persistant thorn in Belle's side?

“She thinks like a woman, ma petite, and not a modern one. You think more like a man, so it is hard to explain to you.”

You know, I think they forgot to give me the "this is how you think" gender memo when I got out of the crib.

The chapter ends by wandering off and getting drunk while Anita wonders about motives.

You don't really need to, Anita darling. In this book, they're all filed under "Stupid".

Cerulean Sins--chapter 42

So the whole apology thing turns into costume porn. Yeah, there's a banquet tonight involving Musette (you remember that part, right?) and Asher and JC are all dressed up and spiffy for it, and this is more important than anything else.

The descriptions go on for pages.

Hunger Games was also a lot of costume porn. Even the chariot ride costumes only got a couple paragraphs each. Jean Claude's Opera Coat and *sporfle*  crotch high leather boots (seriously. Buy the man a leather onsie and get it over with) (ALSO: YOU CANNOT MOVE IN SKINTIGHT LEATHER BOOTS.) should not outweigh Katniss Everdeen's second chariot costume. Those were instruments of carefully regulated psychological manipulation. These things are just silly.

Anita's reaction is, "yippy-skippy, I get to play with both."

Because that's how you react when you're moving into a meal with life-or-death implications.You think about sex. That's not even the ardeur talking, though I'm not entirely convinced it's Anita. Anita does not say yippy skippy.

The worst part for me, of course, is I keep on imagining all the clothes as the cheap costumes in late night porn/a low grade B movie. You know. They obviously rented them from the costume shop, they have to get them back before nine because they'll lose their deposit...that kind of costume.

So Asher finally apologizes for draining her dry, because he didn't know he'd make her that sick, and Anita is all like "It's okay" and nobody brings up that Musette is what made them all sick. Anita would not be all bouncy right now if it was the blood loss and not the psychic vampirism. You don't get over losing a good chunk of your vital fluids in 24 hours.

Anita finally admits that she'll sleep with Asher because he's something Jean Claude won't compromise on, Asher turns into an angry drama queen because of the implication, and yes. I'm using the word "queen" deliberately. I keep waiting for the snaps and the "oh, Honey, those jeans and that shirt totally clash" because Asher is less realistically gay--as in a human being that likes men, not girls, and happens to have a penis himself--and more MTV gay. It's not there when he's being nice to Anita, but when he's rejecting her he turns into a character from Thanks for Everything Wong Fu, Julie Numar.

And then Asher and Jean Claude have a moment, and Anita is quick to say this:

I wanted to say kiss and make up, but I knew they wouldn’t. I don’t know what issues they had about each other, but they seemed unable to do things like that without their Julianna. She’d been the bridge between them. The thing that allowed them to love each other. Without her, they stood on the brink of the abyss and gazed at each other, separated by a chasm that neither knew how to cross.

This is "YEAH THEY ARE IN LOVE BUT THEY ARE TOTALLY NOT GAY YOU GUYS" because, you know, actual homosexuals that aren't emasculated jokes are just icky. Also, it's hard to say "They need a woman to have sex" when you've been blatantly clear if JC sleeps with Asher you dump JC and you've become critical to his power base.

Anita then casually mentions the MOAD. As in "Oh, and I got psychically attacked by a bigger big bad than Belle Morte, it's a big deal, so let's stop discussing our sex life and go get me dressed for the party."

BLACK HOUNDS Update! With 'nother WIP pic!

I knew when I wrote this book, it was going to be dogs on the cover.

I was not looking forward to this.

However...

I think it's looking GOOD.

Cerulean Sins--Chapter 40-41

Progress on Black Hounds is very meh, my loyal blog readers. Very meh indeed. At least, that's how I feel. Cover image so far is going swimmingly but I am cringing at painting all that dark dog fur.
The adorable Alice-on-Angel-Dust look, though, is going rather well.


Oh, and I've updated the Publishing Schedule again. If you are a book-reader as well as a blog reader, check it out and mark whichever items interest you.

...I still have no goddamned title for the dragon book. I'm leaning towards Dragonbreath, but it's a little too much Pern for my taste. I probably will not have a title until I am halfway through editing the first third and ready to start throwing gaskets.

Yeah. I don't want to review this chapter, kids. NOTHING. HAPPENS. Anita drives home with Jason and spends the entire time discussing how Jason is now on her radar as a male. They discuss how Dolph would have sent Jason to a residential facility. Anita checks Jason out and finds his scratches to be sexy.

Jason identifies the killer whatever in this book as a werewolf because he smelled it.He stretches and Anita almost causes another car accident.

Next chapter.

I officially like Bobby Lee. He greets Anita at the door, and they discuss the racial undertones of white terrorism, and he is cleared for racism because he works for a hispanic guy. Because, you know, as a were-rat he has a choice about his Alpha and all. But what makes me like him is how he considers Missouri to be a northern state.

Meaning Bobby Lee is probably a Texan. HOOK 'EM HORNS, GO COWBOYS, GO ASTROS, hey Texas REPRESENT my man.

If I'm wrong, of course, he goes back on the shit list. Especially if he's from some wasteland like Oklahoma. (...no offense if you're from Oklahoma. I just spent most of my time in that state looking at Olkmulgee and Morris. AKA a small town and a stoplight in the middle of not much else. The lakes are pretty. I really liked the lakes) But yeah. If you are in Texas EVERYTHING ELSE IS NORTH. I consider Dallas to be North because it takes eight hours for me to drive there. If you are driving across country and your start point is South Texas, day one of your travel plans is "Leave Texas".

Anyhoo, they continue shooting ideas about what to do about the white supremacist terrorists watching Anita, right up until she gets called down to Jean Claude's room. Because Jean Claude and Asher owe Anita an apology.

I'm not even going to react to that. I'm going to save it for the chapter where it actually happens.

Yeah. Bye, plot. It was nice to brush shoulders with you for a minute.

Oh, yeah, and the chapter ends with Anita being smug because she gets an apology.

I really really hate this book.