Chelsea Gaither's Blog, page 45

Cerulean Sins--24

Somehow we have managed to do in ten days what it took all of last month to do re: sales. Guys, I heart you forever.

Also, for those of you interested in the Self Publishing World, here's a heads up: Barnes and Noble has just changed their self-pub service from Pubit!--which is great, and I almost like them better than KDP--to Nook Press.

And while they did not require me to switch accounts, they used heavily pressured wording. Like "We're not phasing this out YET but you might want to move over there before we do."

Yeah. I'm side-eyeing them pretty hard right now. They have made promises of lots of shiny tools, which I have yet to actually see or explore because apparently doing anything to any of my current books will utterly bork them. It could be good, it could be bad, if it is bad you can bet your ass the Self Pubber/author world will fucking explode, and I will probably participate because those are my books you (bleep).

The other thing I am side-eyeing at the moment is Motion Books. WTF is that you ask? This. This is Motion Books. Some of you may not know that I started art through comic books, and I do still have a very old (and scary bad) webcomic floating around on the interwebs. So I have never been simultaneously excited and terrified quite as much as I am by Motion Books. Excited because HOLY SHIT THAT IS AWESOME AND I COULD DO THAT WITH A BOOK I WANT THAT TOOL LIKE NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW, and terrified because who the fuck is Madefire and why do they not talk about terms and conditions and what rights you're giving to whom? 

As to why there was no chapter flog yesterday? I have a cold. And I had to do taxes. And I could do a cold and taxes, but I could not put Anita Blake on top of that crazy cake.

So yeah. Shitty book time.

Anita is dreaming about Belle Morte.

...Anita has spent the last four (five?) chapters either passing out, passed out, in the process of moving from one faint to another, or waking up from a previous faint.

I will now be investing all of my money in developing a cure for Plot Induced Narcolepsy. Also, we all need to thank our lucky stars that LKH does not employ phonetic accents, because Belle Morte (...I spell that Bella every single time. So instead of the gorgeous goddess LKH obviously wants us to see, I'm visualizing a blinky, constipated Kirstin Stewart. You're welcome.) cues us in immediately that she is French. Via "ma petite" and not, thank god, by saying "zee" instead of "the" and "oh-la-la" every ten minutes.

Hey, we have to take the positives we can get.

So we get the usual new character pissing contest, and because Anita has no gun in her dream world it is about wheither or not she's going to sit next to Belle. And some of the details in this chapter are weird.

“No,” I said. It seemed like I should have been saying more, but I couldn’t think with her sitting there wrapped in candlelight, a bowl of old-fashioned roses on the table by her elbow. The roses were her rose, created and named for her centuries ago.

1. Anita, you go out of your way to make it clear you are not girly. You do not garden. You kill things. How the fuck do you know if a rose is "old fashioned"?

2. Why are we fixated on the roses as a critical detail? How about the embroidery on her dress? Jewelry? How she's got her hair done? These are all things that can indicate something about a character.

3. HOW THE FUCK DO YOU KNOW THESE ROSES WERE CREATED AND MADE JUST FOR THE CENTURIES OLD KILLER VAMPIRE WHEN THOSE ROSES WERE CREATED CENTURIES AGO?!? Why are you dropping into an omnecient POV for fucking stage props? 

 Also, I am now picturing the roses in the bowl as a rose salad. With ranch. You're welcome.

Belle stands. Apparently this gets Anita all sexed up because she immediately starts using words like "tightened" and gets a high pulse rate.

Anita freaks out and runs down a hallway full of people having graphic sex in the shadows. Belle demands that she be fed. Anita says "fuck you" and Belle shifts from Bella Swan to Jane and says "pain". And I'm not kidding:

“I offer you my hand, come, take it, and it will be pleasure beyond your dreams. Refuse me  .  .  .” she motioned, and that one small movement seemed to take in all the eager, leering faces. “It can be a dream, or a nightmare. The choice is yours.”

 I shook my head. “You don’t give choices, Belle, you never did.” 

“Then your choice is  .  .  . pain.”

One of my pet theories about vampire fiction is that Stephenie Meyer is an LKH fan. It'd make SO. MANY. THINGS. make sense again.

Anyway, Anita wakes up in bed with Nathanial, alone, and Belle Morte raises the Ardeur so that Anita now has to feed on Nathanial when he is already too weak to support her munchies. Belle is also half posessing Anita, and she REALLY likes how young Nathanial is.

Folks, if "young" is part of your sexy criteria, there is something wrong. Especially if you are under the age of thirty.

And then right before she jumps Nathanial's bones, Jason shows up.

It can only be what it is, folks. Anita Blake has to be rescued from her own sexual urges by a man. A man who, after ushering Nathanial out of the room, asks what he can do for Anita. And of course she says "sex". His reply?

His so-serious face split into a sudden grin. “I’ll take one for the team.”

You know, I managed to fall into a hellpit of bad fan-fiction the other day (it was all being mocked. It was great) and I just realized...there is not much difference between the self-fulfillment sex slave fantasies involving *sigh* Sonic and Naruto and *double sigh* My Little Pony, and the way Anita is now crawling across the bedcovers to get to Jason's Penis. And I don't mean that this is wish-fulfillment for a girl. I've had a couple incidents (thankfully years ago, when I was dealing with my SI issues and usually had a complicating factor like cold medicine in the equation) where I became so upset or overstimulated I did things I regret. And that's over and above the cutting issues. I cannot see this whole "lose control and have sex" thing being romantic to anybody. It's fucking terrifying. I do not understand why anybody would write this over and over and over and over and fucking over again and not have the heroine do SOMETHING to take control of her own damn body again.

And that doesn't even cover half the wrongness in this sex scene. Here's this gem:

He was smooth, the head wide and rounded, graceful, straight and fine, running slightly to the side, so that he nestled in the hollow of his own hip.

It took two read-throughs for me to realize she's writing about Jason's penis. And I have to say this: Laurel K. Hamilton writes sex scenes as if the man is a butcher carving a brand new T-bone out of the female's pelvis. And it is exactly that sexy.

And then they discuss how good Anita is in bed.

The boat bunny scene in Ghost is more respectful towards women. By the way, if you read that book and you just visualized that scene, I will send you brain bleach to make it go away.

This immediately segues to how small Jason's penis is compared to Jean Claude and Micah. I'd say that this is insecurity on his part, but Anita is the one who will soon have to install high traffic carpeting in her vagina.

THEN we move on to how orgasmic Asher's teeth are.

PLOT. THERE WAS PLOT A FEW PAGES AGO. It barely existed but it was THERE. CAN WE GO BACK TO PLOT NOW?

...I am literally skimming this chapter because it is now about who Anita loves the most and I really really, REALLY do not care. Because I know she loves Asher and Jean Claude and Damian and Micah and Nathanial and the other upteen million lovers in her future unconditionally. And because this is starting to sound like highschool. BUT YOU MUST LOVE MEEEEEEEEE NOW MEEEEEEEE!

 And of course it goes back to Richard. Because all roads lead back to Richard.

Laurel, I understand the need of having to work your issues out through your writing. JUST DON'T PUBLISH THAT SHIT, OKAY?

Oh, but it's not just Richard, and it's not just her long-gone fiancee that cause Anita to fear commitment. It's her mother. Yes. We have mommy issues now, too!

FINALLY, ANita goes off to take a shower.

The plot. It has not moved in four chapters.

Cerulean Sins--Chapter 23

You guys totally rocked my socks yesterday re: buying books. IDK who it was, but you are all awesome and this April might just be the best month ever.

You know, there are a handful of things that I can't forgive an author for. I can put up with not getting the nuances for racial stuff right, I can tolerate a lot of violence towards women (when the women kick ass in return). I guess I'm not the most sensitive person in the universe when it comes to tropes and things. Story, to me, overcomes just about everything else. It's why I can read John Ringo and Stephen R. Donaldson without exploding. But you know...

 “What did Gregory say?”

 “That his father tried to contact him,” Cherry’s voice. 

“Why is that bad?”

 “His father is the one that pimped him and Stephen out when they were children.”

There is just some shit that should not be done casually.

In other words--

I am not even touching the "Gregory as the perpetual victim" stuff with the proverbial ten foot pole. But that's an abuser contacting the abusee, and it's some pretty awful abuse being contacted about. Even if you don't have room to address it as a primary plot, it should be handled with tact and as part of character development, and to make a point , and to show that the characters are, you know, real breathing people. THIS SHOULD NOT BE NOVEL FILLER.

So yeah. This chapter isn't off to a great start.

 There's a thing I call plot bunnies. I expect there is a real name for it--probably tropes--but that's what I call them. Author realizes that they cannot introduce an new character, drop a plot bomb or institute a plot twist (or better, a plot Crazy Ivan) so they reach for a bunny. The food porn in Sunshine, the clothes porn in Hunger Games. The songs in Lord of the Rings (OH GOD THE SONGS. THE SONGS). Anything that makes you go OOH LOOK A BUNNY while you're waiting for the plot to move.

So far in this book we've had a sadistic asexual pedophile AKA Musette, a rescue threesome, murder involving nailing to walls, murder involving liquifaction of body, and now we have gross child abuse.  I do not think LKH has any bunnies that are not terrible. 

And of course this is all a terrible revelation to Anita, who has only been the Pard's emotional support for, like, a solid fucking year.

Micah tells Anita that he's going to go get Gregory and...uh, that's it. The chapter is mostly about Anita talking about how she can't wake up, and it ends with her going back to sleep.

I am wracking my brain to figure out why this chapter is here, and I can find no reason for its existence whatsoever. I'm just going to bed now.

Cerulean Sins--chapter 22

YAY I HAVE SURVIVED ANOTHER WEEK. I am alive. I can take a nap as soon as this review is done!

...that means this book is standing between me and my post-sunday brunch nap.

I hate this book.

So Anita wakes up in a hot tub, again, surrounded by men. Somebody brought up a few days ago that the blood pressure drop that occurs when you leave a hot tub is not a joke, so technically these books should be short one over-sexed steriotyped heroine. But it is not. Because the first thing you want to do after you've passed out from blood loss and co worker stupidity is have sex in a hot tub.

Also, in addition to having startlingly lime green eyes, Micah has apparently graduated to the Mood Ring category, which is probably up there with naval lint and grease traps on my list of "least favorite things ever". (I had to clean a grease trap out at work once. We all agreed never to speak of it again)

Look. I get that eyes are important. I am an artist. They are the single most important part of any picture. But there is "the eyes are important" and then there is what LKH writes. The only thing you need to do to eyes in a picture is 1. make sure they look wet and 2. never use red. Unless you are painting Satan. And we don't remember eye color as well as we think we do, and while I can tell the difference between the Blood Orange and Prickley Pear purees at work and nobody else can (One is purple, one is red. WHY IS THIS SO HARD) I cannot for the life of me tell green eyes from blue eyes from violet. The best description of blue eyes I ever got was "Faded denim" from Dark Tower re: Roland Deschain's eyes.

"HIS EYES CHANGE COLOR TO FIT HIS MOOD" is less "getting the description right" and more "SHOVING HEAD UP OWN ASS". You need one adjective for eyes, and this is a color. The simpler the better. We have many many many more interesting things to read about than we do the exact shade of emerald chartruse verte greeny green Micah's eyes happen to be when he pairs them with that particular shirt.

Those eyes sat in a face that was beautiful in the way a woman’s face was beautiful. Delicate. There was a line to the jaw, a chin that was male, but gently so. His mouth was wide, with the bottom lip thicker than his upper, giving him a permanent pout.

Yeah. No. I get what she's saying and I kind of like the picture, sort of, as long as I don't actually read the things being written here. But underneath that varnish of "oooh pretty" it's just creepy. First...why is "beauty" feminine? The first time I realized a guy was pretty was Captain Dallas (I think) from Alien, and the prettiest male I ever saw in my life was (and still is) Randy Orton (...DO NOT JUDGE ME. The alternative to WWE RAW is spending three fucking hours of my one night off a week camped out in my room playing minecraft...and yeah, Randy is pretty.) Viggo Mortessen as Aragorn still gives him a run for his money. Anyhoo, you could describe Micah as pretty without dipping into gender here. And then that second sentence. "A line to the jaw and a chin that was male". I think what she means is he had a male jaw-line, but Jesus Christ is that garbled. I get that she's got a no-edit clause on her contracts, but--

--she sent in the first draft of Affliction in and it went straight to copy-edits. Nevermind.

 He was my Nimir-Raj, and from the moment we had been together it had been deeper than marriage, more permanent than anything words or paper could bind.

Isn't the standing anti-fan theory that Micah is the stand-in for her current hubby?

Moving on.

If I have to read the words "my beast" as a stand in for "I wanted to have sex with him" or "I wanted to rip his clothes off" one more time I think I'm going to punch something. Preferably Micah. LKH is using Anita's latent shapeshifting...stuff (really, was it necessary to break your entire universe to give Anita all the things?) as a filter for actual feeling and actual sexuality, so that Anita herself is still purified purely pure and pure. And it is getting old.

And then...yeah, I read ahead a few days back, so I've been like doing this all week:

So even though Anita has been passing out due to blood loss all day, and has only just woken up, she and Micah have sex. And instead of taking whatever migrane/headache type issues Anita might have and turning them up past 9000, it lets Anita into the magical metaphysical world. And in the MMW, there is a shadow-thing feeding off Jean Claude, and Jean Claude's "failsafes" AKA his innate dickishness, kicked in and instead of feeding off Jean Claude the shadow-thing has been feeding off Anita and, she assumes, Richard all day. Which is why Anita has been all fainty.

 So Anita and Micah send their "beasts" to attack the shadow thing. And because my mind is perverted, instead of imagining a pair of beautiful leopards I imagined a pair of boobs and a penis. That's your image for today. You're welcome. The Beasts shred the shadow-thing, thus hand-waving away the hand-waving (...shouldn't that be like, divide by zero kind of impossible?) and Anita follows it--psychically, again--to Musette's room.

You'd think a thousand year old madame of the undead would know how to sheild properly, but I guess not. Anyhoo Shadow-thing goes directly to Musette, thus pointing out its mistress and giving Anita a big fat honking NO SHIT clue as to who is responsible. So she comes out of the psychic orgasm Micah gave her, grabs her cell phone and has one of the staff at the Circus hang crosses on everybody's door.

It's the first time ANYBODY has done something practical, and I half expected her to go racing off with cedar stakes and a bucket of holy water instead of doing the one damn thing she could have done nine million times prior to now.

Having saved herself from psychic vampirism, Anita then moves on to discussing how her sexual vampirism is sucking the life out of Nathanial. Apparently he collapsed at his club while dancing.This conversation gets REALLY creepy when Anita admits that she wouldn't be sleeping with any of these men if she didn't have to feed the arduer. Ardeur. However the fuck you spell it. And she's avoiding getting more men because she doesn't want to hurt anybody's feelings if the ardeur ever goes away and she can finally close down the amusement park. Which is her vagina.

I don't know for sure WHY I find that so creepy, but oh holy God I do.

And then we move on to "Would you sleep with Richard again?"

“Micah, I still have feelings for Richard, but he dumped me. He dumped me because I’m more comfortable with the monsters than he is. He dumped me because I’m too blood-thirsty for him. He dumped me because I’m not the person he wants me to be.

HE DUMPED YOU BECAUSE YOU RAPED HIM. YOU RAPED HIM. HE TOLD YOU FLAT OUT HE DIDN'T WANT YOU TO FEED ON HIM AND YOU JUMPED HIM ANYWAY. YOU. RAPED. RICHARD. You proved to him that you have no self control, that you cannot be trusted to respect his bounderies or physical, mental and emotional safety and that you value your promises about as much as I value disposable gloves at work. OF COURSE HE FUCKING DUMPED YOU.

Richard wanted, more than anything else, to be human. He didn’t want to be a monster. He wanted to be a junior high science teacher, marry a nice girl, settle down, have 2.5 children, and maybe a dog. He was a science teacher, but the rest  .  .  . Richard was like me, he would never have a normal life. I had accepted that, but he was still fighting. Fighting to be human, fighting to be ordinary, fighting not to love me. He’d succeeded on that last.

See, that's why I love stories like what this used to be. That fight right there. The struggle to define humanity and personhood and Self when those bounderies get shaken down. A measure of surrender would be required to cope--to quote the serenity prayer "accept the things I cannot change"--but never surrender to the point where other valuable human lives are put at risk because of your behavior. In the first books that was Anita's fight AND Richard's fight. To figure out what they couldn't change and then smash the everloving shit out of the rest of it. But Anita hasn't just accepted to the point of healthy coping. She's wallowing in being a real live, honest to god physical danger to the people around her and she's doing absolutely nothing to protect the people she has in her life from the nasty side effects of who and what she's become.

There's a long paragraph about how "the world is what the world is and you need to accept that" and I call bullshit. The world is a terrible awful nasty place, and the job of good human beings is to try to make it a better one. You don't give up and wallow in the mud just because you can't get out of the muck. You keep on walking.

LKH seems dead set on condemning any attempt at improving the world, and I have no idea why.

There are two fundamental issues in Anita and Richard's relationship. Richard is naturally monogamous--he can't sleep with other people, and he can't share--While Anita is naturally poly, and HELLO MCFLY, Anita raped Richard.

The healthy answer is MOVE THE FUCK ON. Which Anita will never do because apparently she's also got a grade A certification in STALKING.

Like I said before: I hate this book.

New artwork!

So I finally finished something that isn't cover art!

Yes. Technically it is Starbleached art so it is book related. But it is SO kickass I had to share.

PS Yeah, and don't forget about Overseer's Own. Weekend read, anyone?

Cerulean Sins--chapter 21

It probably goes without saying that Texas is pretty fucking white. Except for South Texas. We have a very large hispanic population. Not quite fifty-fifty, but sixty-forty wouldn't be much of a stretch. Which is why I found it a little interesting that my city (TINY city) has an Asian population large enough to rate its own asian market. And we have this little vietnamese boy at work. If I have his story right, his parents and grandparents immigrated and he was born over here.

This is all important.

Last night we had a four top. Three of the men were wonderful. One of them was that special blend of male, white, money and drunk that makes you want to punch them repeatedly until they stop talking and/or flirting with you in circumstances that pretty much obligate you to flirt back (because you want their tip.) They had been obnoxious all night, first requesting that we violate state liquor laws and let them bring their own wine and THEN demanding they get a discount on our most expensive bottles of red because hey, they went through all that trouble and bought expensive things that they can't use now. We gave it to them. Then they asked for my name.

I hate telling customers I don't know what my name is. Because they will use it like it's a dog leash to rope me into their table no matter how many other customers I've got. Which is exactly what happened. By the end of the night I was thinking longingly of showers and what I would do if one of them grabbed my ass (hint: It would probably involve one of the chef's uber-sharp knives. Or possibly the blunt ones, depending on how feelsy they got)

Finally it is time to shut things down so I go in back to start cleaning refridgerators. The vietnamese kid is in the back busing tables. He comes back with this look on his face, that mingling of horror and humor I'd been swallowing all night long, and he says that the guys want their check. Then he adds that when they asked for the check, they interpreted his expression of boredom (it was a slow night) with incomprehension--and had Token Hispanic Dude start repeating everything White Douche said in Spanish. 

Let me repeat that. The embodiment of everything rich, white and male had his hispanic friend talk to a vietnamese boy in spanish so that the kid would understand that they wanted his check. When the kid has a better understanding of English than I do. (Seriously. He is an awesome kid. He is leaving in a few weeks to focus on family and his ROTC stuff so that he shoot for a Naval Academy scholarship.)

I can't make that level of asshattery up. 

And of course when I come over there Rich White Douche not only demands Desert That Takes Too Much Fucking Time, he demands that we light the fucker on fire. Just for him! Because it's his birthday.

I'd say "And that's when I shot him, your honor" but Token Hispanic Friend proved to also be incredibly awesome by paying, apologizing for how his friend was acting and buying everybody on staff over 21 a shot. He is now officially Awesome Man and I hope I get to see him again. Without his friend.

That is why there was no review last night.

 Right. Sucky book.

Anita is lying on a bathroom floor with Tammy Reynalds holding a washcloth to her face.

Anita should be in a hospital right now. She fainted down a flight of stairs and was unconscious long enough to be carried into a bathroom and be comforted with wet, cold washcloths. But this crowd of trained professionals really can't be bothered to do the right thing and make sure Anita isn't dying.

Great friends.

Anita doesn't point out that, given her mutant shapeshifter stuff, being put on cold things is the worst thing you could do for her, which is actually the kind of thing she should be talking about given that the last time she was stuck in an ice bath SHE ALMOST DIED. She and Tammy talk about being the only two people who have passed out at the crime scene, and they're both women. Boo Hoo.

Or you could be the only two people at the crime scene who feel intimidated by their gender and thus pushed themselves further than they could actually go, whereas all the men felt the upchuck urge and stepped out because they didn't feel they had anything to prove.

Or it could be that LKH is a terrible writer. One of the three.

Tammy and I weren’t actually friends. She was a Follower of the Way, Christianity’s version of witches. Most of the Followers of the Way were zealots, more Christian than the right-wingers, as if they had to prove they really were worthy of salvation.

I'm gonna be glad when Tammy is gone, because again: NO. IT DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY. I am sure that there are some zealots in the group, but again: You get thrown out of both clubs once you go public. I mean...let's define what you mean by "Christian" here, Blake? Do you mean the do-unto-others, blessed-are-the-peacemakers, take-care-of-widows-and-orphans, communal property, self abnegation, faith as a mustard seed part? Or are we talking Westborough Babtist Church style prudery and bigotry. Because most Christians that I know want WBC and people of that ilk to go the fuck away just as badly as the rest of ya'll. Also, if you seriously want me to believe in Evangelical Christian Witches you REALLY need to do better worldbuilding. Because that combo just made me snort soda up my nose.

And of course we have that "women need to be bigger men than men" nonsense.

 As women we needed to be tougher just to be accepted. Today hadn’t helped either of us.

Says who? And hey, weren't you just sneering at the whole "Christian Witches need to be more Christian than Christians" thing a second ago? Isn't this more than a little hypocritical?

And then Tammy reveals that she's pregnant.

And then she pushes Anita to reveal that she's pregnant too, I guess to justify the whole passing-out-at-crime-scene thing. And by "Pushes" I mean she says "You can lie to me if you want, but everybody will figure it out so you might as well come clean now."

Nobody acts like this. NOBODY.

Jason comes in and carries Anita off like she's a precious little flower, and of course this is caught on camera by everybody in the media and there are lots of questions. Jason says that Anita needs Micah and Nathanial and the hot tub because she's so badly hurt and the chapter ends with her fainting again.

Empowered woman. Finds her empowerment threatened by health issues. Right.

Cerulean Sins--chapter 19-20

I am so happy right now it is insane.I thought the new tablet would be kind of a downgrade because it is smaller than the old one (Both are intros, but the old tablet was like, first generation intros, and the 9by12 model, whereas the new one is intros 4 and 8 by 5) but OH MY GOD, HOW WAS I FUNCTIONING WITH THAT THING BEFORE? The pressure sensitivity was breaking down. IDK if it was because the tablet itself was breaking or because photoshop CS5 doesn't talk nicely with the old drivers, but HOLY SHIT I HAVE MISSED HAVING WORKING TABLETS.

Best. Investment. Ever.

Right. Sucky book.

I think the one thing Laurel needs to unlearn is copy and pasting things together. I'd say "copy and pasting her outlines" but I'm pretty confident she doesn't do that. Because we're going to another crime scene and it is basically second verse same as the first, until we get to Dolph.

There are cop cars, there are reporters, this time it is upper middle class instead of the dwelling of the one percent, and instead of a pissing contest involving a cop concerned about actually doing his job, it is the press trying to get a picture of a dead body or Jean Claude's lover, whichever comes with a bigger paycheck.

I think Laurel K Hamilton leaves her house every morning and sighs because she doesn't have to fight fifteen reporters just to take the dog for a walk.

This time Anita mentions she left her crime scene kit at home for reasons that make no logical sense (something to do with the coveralls getting in the way of the animating job, but it still doesn't explain why she couldn't keep the thing in the car) and tells Jason not to touch things until she finds gloves.

You also need a hair net and booties for your shoes, but we'll take what we can get.

The other cops look like they're puking, which means its a bad one. They discuss this and make misogynstic jokes with each other because it keeps them from thinking about whatever it is in the back room, and you know what? Even my stunted little feminist soul would tolerate a couple cracks at womanhood and genitalia if it meant the cop in front of me didn't have a full on breakdown due to whatever they saw in there.

And again, we're pretty much pretending that Defense Attorneys do not exist in this universe, because nobody makes Jason wait on the civilian side of the yellow tape.

They go into the kitchen and run into Dolph.

Dolph has totally flipped his fucking shit.

One of my personal heroes is Dave Reichert, the cop who was with the Green River case from the day they found the first bodies to the day they arrested Gary Ridgeway. I've probably said this before. Mostly because anybody who could spend most of his career following some of the most hideous crimes in the history of his state and then sit in the same room as the little weasel and not shoot him is a better human being than I will ever be.



This is the vid with his interview with Gary. It's...interesting. I want you to watch it (the relivant part starts at 3:01) and then keep that dude in mind when you read LKH's "respectful" representation of a senior cop.

First thing Dolph does is try to kick Jason out because he isn't human. Let me recap that the ONLY reason Jason is on this side of the tape is because Anita might faint. He's got no business there for real, he knows it, Anita knows it, Dolph knows it, and the only reason he's there is Anita wants him and she's not going to listen to the other cops tell her that she can't have an uneducated, untrained civilian tramping through an active crime scene when the bodies are still on the ground.

And then Dolph sends her out. The text says it is because of somebody non human, but it really looks like Dolph is just sick of her shit. (or that the author left her logic with her other publisher) 

He took one step towards me. He loomed over me, but I was used to that, a lot of people loomed over me. “Never question my professionalism again, Anita, never.”

 “When you act like a professional, I won’t.”

 His hands were clenching and unclenching at his sides. “You want to see why I don’t want him at this scene? You want to see it?”

 “Yeah,” I said, “I want to see it.”

So he drags her into the bedroom, literally, so that she's stumbling and struggling along behind him and is given every reason in the world to file a harassment suit against the department, and she's thrown into a crime scene where half the body (female, of course,) has been liquified and thrown all over the room.

“What do you think?” Dolph said, and he pushed me, trapped between his big hands, towards the bed. “Pretty enough for you? Because one of your friends did this.”

Congradu-fucking-lations, Dolph, you have just graduated into "moron". Obviously, cops in this universe do not look for tool marks or alibis or trace evidence, and they don't question friends and relatives. Nope, they go for the most obvious: Random werewolf.

Other cops begin insisting that Anita has seen enough crime scene for today, but Dolph takes her over to a random scratch that could be a claw mark or a mark from a claw hammer for all they know, because it's still an active crime scene, and shoves her face in it like she's a dog that piddled on the new carpet. 

Dolph turned on him, and I think only the fact that his hands were already full kept him from grabbing Perry. “She knows. She knows what did this, because she knows every fucking monster in town.”

Guys, this makes Strawchick from Gor look like a well rounded and realistically developed character.

Dolph keeps on manhandling Anita until she finally commits a felony and stomps both his instep and solar plexus to get away from him. Of course she isn't arrested. Instead she literally crawls out of an active crime scene on her hands and knees, reaches the top of the stairs and then either collapses there or faints and falls down the fucking stairs because NOT having our female protagonist faint every other fucking chapter is asking too fucking much, apparently.

Seriously. Did she just faint down a flight of stairs?

Cerulean Sins--chapter 17-18

Alright, my loyal blog readers. I have half a bottle of honey whiskey. If I make it through this chapter without finishing it, we will be golden.

I read ahead. I do not think we are going to make it.

Why?

MY BADGE ON its little cord around my neck got us past most of the cops. The few that questioned us recognized my name, or had worked with me before. Always good to be known.

EVEN THE TEXT ADMITS ANITA BLAKE HAS NO REASON TO BE ON THIS SIDE OF THE YELLOW TAPE. Seriously. The people who have worked with her before are the ones saying "What the fuck are you doing here?"

THIS SHOULD BE YOUR FIRST CLUE THAT MAYBE YOU ARE NOT A GOOD INVESTIGATOR.

There is banter involving Zerbowski and another cop and Jason, who REALLY has no business being on this side of the yellow tape. Also? Thanks to John Dies At The End it will forever be "Do not duck casually under this tape" tape. Which your main character will always duck casually under because it's DNDCUTT tape.

There is half-assed flirting with Jason that somehow involves Micah, even though Micah is nowhere to be found. Okay. Anita finally points out that Jason is there to catch her if she faints.

At this point? She should be wearing hair restraints, one of those paper haz-mat suits, something over her mouth, something over her shoes (booties or rubber bands, but only if you are Amelia Sachs as played by Angelina Jolie) At this point? She is wearing none of these things. She is wandering around an active fucking crime scene with no hair restraint, no paper suit, no paper booties and thinks she will probably fall face first into prime evidence-collection territory at any given second.

Even Zerbowski is asking why she's here. Text says it's because he's worried about her health. Logic says that he realizes he had a prime chance to not have to explain to the DA why chain of custody got so thoroughly borked and they wound up playing polo with a victim's head or something, and they blew it because Dolph doesn't trust...yeah, we're getting to that.

Chapter eighteen opens with a crucifixion and random norse runes written all over the walls.

Hey, fun fact kiddos? LKH was in the process of converting to Paganism while she was writing these books, and her chosen branch of Fluffy McBunnikins has a heavy seasoning of Norse. So I think it's a safe fucking bet that the info dump about how fucked up the norse runes are in this murder scene (as in they are copied less like a spell and more like ABCDEFG) is here because she was studying norse runes when she wrote this part of the book.

I leaned forward too far and had to put my fingertips out to catch myself. My fingers touched dried blood on the wall. Only then did I realize I’d forgotten my surgical gloves. Fuck.

...Yeah, I'm getting a shot of whiskey. Be right back.

Seriously. HOW. THE FUCK. DO YOU CROSS COP TAPE AND NOT HAVE FIVE TECHS SCREAM "GLOVES" AT YOUR SORRY ASS? I worked in a bakery and we could not set foot inside the work area without having the hair net bag shoved in our faces. Gloves were everywhere. And we were just dealing with bread. Not murderers who need to be put away TONIGHT.

WHY DID THEY LET ANITA ONTO THE SCENE WITHOUT GLOVES? WHY? SHE JUST CONTAMINATED BLOOD SPLATTER. NOW THE DEFENSE TEAM CAN ARGUE THAT THE SPLOTCH GOT BUMPED WHEN ANITA BLAKE TOUCHED IT WITHOUT A GLOVE ON.

And then Anita brings up the whole Christian Witch thing. And I just. I can't.

“Bull-fucking-shit, Zerbrowski, he doesn’t trust her because she’s a witch. She’s a Christian witch for heaven’s sake, a Follower of the Way. You can’t get more mainstream in your occult expert than a Christian witch.”

Uh...what? Seriously. What the fuck are you talking about? You honestly expect me to believe that Witchcraft can mainstream in Christianity? Seriously. You really want me to buy that a Christian Witch is going to "win" the acceptance game any more than a "regular" witch is? This is what you are actively trying to do with your worldbuilding?

Did you even bother to ask any Christian witches about this before you typed that up?

Laurel, I could buy that if you had wasted three fucking seconds on this prior to walking onto the crime scene to build it up as a concept. But you've done nothing to differenciate this from the IRL concept, and IRL Christian witches get thrown out of both clubhouses faster than Anita can say "Let's fuck." Pagans see the Christian part, Christians see the Witch, and neither side really wants to have any of that get on their hemlines. And most of us them are fine with that, because you make that choice, knowing goddamned well which bridges you're burning on your way down and you're doing it for reasons. Most of which you're not going to share with another soul because you know you could see the fireworks from here. 

Yes. Magic is real in this universe and the Christian God is a deity of power most excellent, as proven by what happens whenever a vamp gets close to a cross. But you don't get to say "Christianity hates magic" and THEN say "Hee hee, ho ho, Christian Witches get accepted everywhere" and not take time to build that as a concept when in reality things are very fucking different. It's a lazy as fuck assumption, is all I'm saying.

Also? "Follower of the Way" is the laziest fucking title you could have possibly come up with. Yeah, Christian Witches are organized! And they are hyper fundies!



Anyway, after shitting on religion for a few paragraphs, Anita and Zerbowski identify that this is a very rich house. Anita says the fake crucifixion and the runes were to throw everybody off because this dude has money and somebody wants it.

And then I find out that Tammy Reynolds, the Christian Witch, is dating Larry Kirkland, Anita's trainee animator, and I am now pissed. Because Tammy turns into a royal...erm, pain in the later books and it is implied explicitly that it is her Christianity at fault. Because, you know, people in service to the Goddess have to follow threefold laws and Do No Harm and other things like that, but Christian Witches obviously get to ignore the book of rules, laws and examples central to their faith, because Special and Mainstream and Christianity is meaningless restrictive and LKH obviously knows all. And, you know, it's not like God ever brought the fucking roof down on somebody just for disrespecting his drinking cups or breaking an oath they made to God in private. And it's not like somebody swearing themselves into service with a Deity with that kind of history would feel driven to obey and respect that Deity in the way he commands, which in the case of Christianity means not shitting all over other people and their things. And...

Yeah, I could go off on this all night, so I'm going to stop here.

Anyway, Anita says that there is no magic involves and asks if she can go home. Zerbowski just tells her to go to the other crime scene, because nobody's fucked that up yet and they both need to be even. She and Jason leave and the chapter ends.


Well, at least she's shitting on a "safe" subject. Last time it was gay people. So far, this time it's just a little teeny tiny piddling disorganized sect of the largest religion in the world.

...Yeah. It's my sect. I'm pissed.

State of the CW

So I have just spent ALL of my free Spring Break money on a new tablet.

The old one worked sort of fine, but DAYMN. CW is happy CW.

Also, you'd think that after seven books and a handfull of short stories I'd have the hang of this "Make the retailers display the books" thing. I forgot a few steps.

That's fixed now.

Amazon link, Barnes and Noble Link, and the hub page for the series should be updated any second. Also stuff for DA because DA still has the best split.

I'm going to go scribble with the new toy now.

Cerulean Sins--Chapter 16

THE BOOK. IT IS DONE. IT IS OUT. IT IS LIVE.

GO FIND IT.

In other news, Laurel K. Hamilton needs to never write another police procedural ever, ever again.

Seriously. No more cops. No more pretending that she gets cops. No more crime scenes.

Jason drives Anita to a crime scene in a rich neighborhood. Because murder is much worse and much more important when it happens to rich people. Right? Anyway, Anita is badly sick from her feeding session with Asher. Jason implies that it's her fault for not sleeping it off, and maybe a little asher's fault for not curbing his bite-y-ness.

And then we get big time basic human fail. Yeah. This isn't even research fail. This is "not having logic" fail.

I got my badge out of my suit jacket pocket. I, Anita Blake, vampire executioner, was technically a federal marshal. All vampire hunters that were currently state licensed in the United States had been grandfathered in to federal status, if they could qualify on a shooting range. I’d qualified, and now I was a fed.

Fail. Fail on so many levels.

First of all, and it's the most obvious thing in the world, ANITA BLAKE IS THE LAST HUMAN ON EARTH WHO SHOULD HAVE A GUN. 

Second...no. It doesn't work that way. "I can shoot" does not equal "I am qualified to work police cases that will eventually be presented to a DA and then to a jury". Folks, I couldn't even get hired as a baker without having to sit through sensativity training, which Anita would flunk out on. Anita, as we will soon see, fails in every way possible when it comes to preservation of evidence, let alone collection. SHE SHOULD NOT BE THERE.

But no. She's brought across the tape because ONLY ANITA can handle magical murder things.

But for me, more than most vampire hunters, there was an extra benefit to having a badge of my very own. I no longer had to rely on policemen friends to get me into crime scenes.

Oh fuck me, that is so...so...



Yeah. Moving on.

Great, he didn’t recognize my name— so much for being a celebrity— and he was going to play ‘don’t want the feds pissing in my pond!’

Okay, look. I read a lot of true crime. I mean, a lot. I am not an expert, but you know what I don't read a lot about? Inter-departmental pissing contests. There are a few books that show the locals getting pissed at the feds, but it's less "pissing contest" and more "You guys don't know what the fuck you are doing and you're going to fuck up this case and nobody is going to get arrested. At all." because the feds don't usually show up until the cops have to start using their toes to count the bodies. Or they have reason to believe the murderer crossed state lines. And even in that case they shove a lot less than the media implies. Reason being that human beings are dying and they want to stop this from continuing.

So yeah. This is kind of disrespectful of law enforcement on every level.

Then clothing is described, and it must be said: this is the first book I've read in a while where Anita shows up to a crime scene wearing something that couldn't be charitably described as "it'd get you thrown out of a club."

the officer in front of the crime scene continues to obstruct Anita. I am reading this as "you are an idiot and I don't want you fucking up our chain of custody" instead of "EW GIRL" which is probably what LKH intended. (I think the first question any judge in St. Louis asks now is "Was Anita Blake at the scene before X was bagged". And if the answer is yes, it gets thrown out of court. See the scenes where she and the other officers played "Catch" with human body parts.)

Anita finally points out she can't be kept out of the crime scene, because badge. Cop does not take obvious route, which is "Hey, we have to confirm this--GUYS GRAB WHAT YOU CAN AND FIND REASON TO LOCK SCENE DOWN BEFORE SHE GETS HERE" and instead says that Jason can't enter the crime scene because he is not a fed.

Anita flashes her vampire bite.

I have no idea what this should accomplish, but it throws the door guy enough for her to get into the crime scene.

End of chapter.

I'm going to bed now.

OVERSEER'S OWN IS LIVE

Yep. It's the Obligatory Announcement Post.

We are live on Smashwords as of right now

Amazon and Barnes and Noble are processing. It should be live sometime tomorrow morning.

And let me say once more: DAMN that cover is fine. :D

PS 200 BOOKS SOLD OH MY GOD PEOPLE YOU ROCK I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE YOU. WE WILL CELEBRATE SOMEHOW SOON I PROMISE.