Chelsea Gaither's Blog, page 63

Some 'fo about PLANET BOB--SPOILER POTENTIAL.

I wanna be up front with all of ya'll first. Starbleached was not originally written to be a sequel. And it's got a couple other skeletons attached I want aired out.

Way back in June, I had a plan. I would release a little book of short stories, including two directly related to my Dream Project, WBR, the Book That Never Was (That Will Be Again). Those two were Silver Bullet and Rise of the Winterlord. 

In July, I released the books and started trying to work on the next set of short stories. I had a very vague idea involving The Price of Leadership or something like that (Inspired by a shit-for-brains manager we had for about three minutes at the restaurant), but I couldn't come up with any ideas that fit. Meanwhile, the idea that would become Starbleached rolled into my lap. And it wouldn't go away.

I do not believe in "My characters TAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALK to me" Characters are characters, stories are stories, and you as a writer should be self-disaplined enough to make them do what you want them to. But every once in a while you'll have an idea that is just so freaking full of itself, you can't shut it off. I didn't WANT to work on five more short stories for another omnibus. I wanted to work on this stupid space story. Which I couldn't work on, because the core idea...um...wasn't original.

This is one reason why I can't say "Fan fiction is evil". It's because...well, it's not. You write fan fiction because you want the story to continue. I have about four half finished continuations of District 9 saved on my harddrive, and I google District 10 about once a month because I refuse to believe Neil Blomkamp is that much of a bastard. (he probably is. I just don't want to believe it). But I couldn't justify writing fan work when I'm working on this whole publishing thing. So instead, I said "Fine. You have to warp the shit out of the source material to make this work, anyway. File off the serial numbers, write it, and put it away."

And then the idea of having FIVE NEW SHORT STORIES WRITTEN IN ONE MONTH (caps required for WTFness) fell through like a lead balloon. I had Blue Ghosts written, and I had a file titled "Alien Story 3" sitting in a nice little file, and that was it. And "Alien Story 3" was too long to count as a short story. And how could I publish something that was based a little bit on somebody else's--

Right.

So I did it, and that's the one book ya'll like, and I'm really happy for you. So now I had to write a sequel, and I knew I didn't want it to be another one from Adrienne's POV. I like Adry. She's a little like me, she's got a lot of cold hard bitch in her that I didn't expect, and she is much more resourceful than I'd thought she'd be originally. Having to write strong, self sufficiant female characters tend to do that. Bryan was another option, but...well, his POV is best saved for the next one. Because just because I didn't intend for there to be a sequel did not mean I didn't imagine what a sequel could be, and I already know there's going to be four stages to this little story arc, and a great deal more to come.

I finally settled on Bob. Bob Harris. The dude flying the shuttle in the beginning of Starbleached. He was pretty steady in the couple scenes he appeared in. I also knew that, for this story to work the way I wanted it to, I had to delve a little bit deeper into Bryan's past, and Bob was a pretty good vehicle for doing that. He surprised me too. I had all the players in place. I just didn't know WTF the story was going to be about. Oh, I had the Now part of the story down pat, but it was the Then part that I was stressing out over. It had to be entertaining, it had to be character developing, and it had to run close enough to the Now story to blend in. And I had no idea how to do this.

Then I remembered another story that I really liked. It'd be one of those "kids bonding" kind of things. Like It, or Dreamcatcher, or...Stephen King writes a lot about kids bonding, doesn't he? And then I remembered The Story of the Jato Rocket-Car, and I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do.

None of you have probably read the Story of the Jato Rocket-Car. I think it is fiction, I also think it has every potential to be true, because I grew up with these people. And as tomorrow is 24 hours away and I still have editing to do, I will provide it for your entertainment.

It is the greatest thing ever. 

Next NIC blog post is delayed

I just noticed something REALLY WEIRD about what I'm reading, and I've gone to fetch outside confirmation of this before I blog any more about this terrible, terrible book. You will get a blog about it soon-ish. likely late today or early tomorrow. IDK.

If I noticed what I think I noticed, LKH just let me down, bigtime. 

Narcissus in Chains chapter eight...and nine.

We open with a purple prose dream sequence.

I have mixed feelings about dream sequences. Part of me--the reader part--sometimes likes them. Like in Misery, where Paul Sheldon dreams about Annie Wilkes, and also the piling thing while under Norvil (if you do not know what I mean you have never read Misery). The dream sequences in Rose Madder were also good, but I didn't like that book much. The dream sequences in the Dark Tower series were cheating. But I want you to note the theme here: In looking for good dream sequences I went STRAIGHT to Stephen King. I am trying to think of another good author who uses them, and I'm having a lot of trouble. Rose McKinley in Sunshine, maybe, but those were less dreams and more summeries of dreams.

As a writer, I hate them. They're either cheating the plot or filler for the sake of filler. When they're done right, they work, but oh God are they so seldom done right. Most of the time they're like every dream in the Twilight series. Silly, pointless, and filler.

Dream one: Anita is both the hunter and the hunted. Dream two: Anita is sexing up Jean Claude on Narcissus's big bed. Dream three: Anita is being doctored up by Richard. Dream four: Cold water. Seriously. And then she wakes all the way up and is told that her body is healing and ran a high fever, so a doctor put her in an ice bath and the ice bath almost killed her and Jean Claude brought her back and uh...something something shapeshifter. It's not clear. The point is, they think the fight with the shapeshifters has finally infected Anita with some strain of lycanthropy. Jean Claude tells Richard, "You know what must be done" and Richard says "If I do it I've lost her"...and then Anita passes out again.

And that's the end of the chapter.

WHY. WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY?

Nevermind. We'll do chapter nine too.

Anita wakes up in an bed full of naked people.

...

There's lots of talking about how happy and safe Anita is, and how this is definately the wolf pack she's snuggling with. Also a detailed description of the guy she's spooning. Somehow, she still manages to have this not make a lot of sense.

He had rich brown curls cut short in the back, but long on top, so the curls tickled my skin as he made a small movement in his sleep.

Did you seriously just describe a reverse mullet?

And then we meet the guy she's spooning with. You ever want to know what a Gary Stu sounds like when you describe him?

His face was too triangular, almost too delicate, crossing that line into androgyny, the nose perky, a little less than perfect, his mouth wide, bottom lip thick and pouting. It was a sensual face. But it was the eyes that made the face, or ruined it. My first thought was that his eyes were yellow. But there was a thick ring of gray green around the pupil; the overall effect was a deep golden yellow-green set in a tanned face. They weren’t human eyes, and don’t ask me how I knew, but they weren’t wolf eyes either.

Geesh.

The guy's name is Micah. He is also, apparently, hung like a horse. Micah is the leader of a clan of were felines, and he was invited into Anita's territory by one of her people, the same stupid broad who dumped Nathanial off at this damn club in the first place. It takes about three seconds for things to devolve to the pointing guns at each other part. And apparently everybody sleeping with Anita was a way to help her heal.

And then Anita's arm starts giving her trouble. Micah offers to heal it for her, because he can "Call flesh". Meanwhile two of Anita's wereleopards show up and they know what "calling flesh" means, and are suitably impressed. They have to almost hold Anita down to get her to let Micah heal her arm. The healing must be done with the lights off, for some reason, and Anita is...not at all freaked out about being in a locked room with no light and an awful, awful lot of strange men.

Again, it is very confusing. There's a lot of pawing and patting, and comparsion of blood to food--"Exotic candy" in one sentence, "Icing" in another. We cut to Jean Claude in a jail cell at one point...and then all of a sudden we cut to the sexy-sexy.

Only it's not so sexy-sexy. Jean Claude needs power, and as he's locked up in a jail cell he can't get it himself, so he uses Anita to seduce Micah so he can feed off the power of Anita having sex with Micah, and also off Micah's blood. So basically, she's having sex against her will with Micah because Jean Claude has told her to.


This is a rape scene.

And it's also the end of the chapter.

I'm going to go take a shower now.

Narcissus in Chains--chapter seven

I remember reading on a feminist thing that the biggest difference between a male writer writing a woman and a female writer writing a woman is the male writer writes as if the woman is aware of just how many goosebumps she's got on her breasts at this particular moment. Since then I have paid attention to this, and it is sometimes true. Sometimes it is not. It most frequently crops up when the writer is trying to write about a woman, as opposed to just writing a woman. John Ringo has many, many, many many many MANY issues with women (...I read Ghost, okay? I read Ghost more than once.) but he has not, to my knowledge, done that "feel of the fabric brushing across her small breasts" thing that a lot of male writers do (...given that his sci fi novels have a tendancy to devolve into either harem scenes, BDSM orgies or all of the above, I guess he figures he doesn't have to) (Also: WHERE IS THE NEXT COUNCIL WARS BOOK?!?)

Why do I bring this up?

Jamil paced up the stairs on point, his muscular upper body showing in tantalizing glimpses through a series of black leather straps. The pants fit his narrow hips like a second skin, and I’d learned long ago from watching Jean-Claude undress that you didn’t get that smooth line if there was underwear between the skin and the pants.

Also, forgive me, but I read "on point" as "toe shoes" and I now have the image of a BDSM punk racing up a staircase with pink toe shoes wrapped around his calves.

Objectification of men is not the solution to equality between the sexes. Also? this Jamal has waist leingth corn rows. He either has the world's most patient hair dresser or he is vain up the wazoo.

So they're up in the hallway running after Anita's missing leopards, and the truely disturbing thing is, I recognise some of the men she's got with her from the later books, and it does not fill me with confidence. Anita also proves she is a self-centered, egotistical bitch by rambling in her head how she'd rather have Asher be with Narcissus as gallant self-sacrifice, rather than because Asher actually wants to be there. Because nobody else deserves to have self- fulfillment. Fuck you, 'Nita.

The description of the companions continues. Apparently knowing that spraypaint shirts are in this year is more important than RESCUING THE FUCKING WERELEOPARDS. Also:

Her leather top showed a very discreet line of flesh from neck to waist where a belt cinched in her tiny waist. Her breasts seemed to stay magically on either side of the line of skin, as if they were held in place by something more than a bra.

It took three read-throughs for me to understand that this character has Elvira's neckline and is using boob tape to keep "the girls" from coming out to play. It's so delicately and carefully described that it makes no sense whatsoever. For someone who has written porn for the last twenty years, LKH has some real issues with describing actual nudity. And sex, for that matter.

And it still amazes me how we're having to rescue wereleopards from other weres. If these were chickens or geese or baby hippos I could understand. But they're leopards. Big scary cats who WILL eat you. There is one eating people in India right now. They are not pretty kitties purring on the rocks.

(Speaking of which, I saw Life of Pi the other day, it was FUCKING INCREDIBLE, and you all need to go see it, every one of you, but most importantly the tiger. Oh my god, the tiger. They did not humanize the tiger one little tiny bit, and you realize how scary-wonderful those cats are. They are not pets. They will never be pets.)

Right. Sucky book. *sigh*

So they finally get to the door, and one of the vampires decides to stand in front of it when they go in. Anita legitmately points out that the idiots inside were armed and may still be armed, and it's stupid to stand in front of a door someone might shoot through at any second. The vampire (Faust) decides it's more important to prove he has a bigger penis and just...stands there.

Nothing shoots through the door, so they all go inside and discover it's the knife room. No. Seriously:

The room was white— white floor, white ceiling, white walls— like a room carved of hard snow. There were blades on the walls— knives, swords, daggers, tiny glittering blades, swords the length of a tall man. The bodyguard by the door said, “Welcome to the room of swords.” It sounded formal, like he was supposed to say it.

Also? Laurell? Hard snow is called "ice". You might need to check your thesaurus for that one, though.

And they are greeted by a werelion, and then a weresnake, and then by Gregory the wereleopard chained up and bleeding. Apparently the weresnake came here looking for wereswans Aka "Swanmanes" and figured the dude they were playing with was their leader, when instead it was one of Anita's leopards.

So far we have:
-werewolves
-wereleopards
-wererats
-wereheyenas
-weresnakes
-wereswans.

Actually I think that last one would be kind of cool. There is flying and dancing and whenever somebody tries to go "oooh, lookit the pretty birdy, lookit the pretty birdy" you can break both their legs.

I want a weresheep, though. If we can have all of those, I demand a weresheep. Merino breed. Because every time it shape shifts it grows a whole new coat to sheer. I would live with being a weresheep if it meant I got a lifetime supply of merino wool to play with.

Right. Sucky book.

So the weresnake and his people tormented Gregory by cutting at his...yeah, I'll stop there. Let's just say they hurt him bad, and Anita rushes to get him off the wall. The bad guys in the room use this moment to attack her. The other guards leap to her defense and...uh...

...yeah. Okay, time to discuss the shit I'm not that good at.

The concept of a partial change was brought up in chapter six. When Narcissus is trying to force Anita to shift, he starts shifting himself. Anita comments on it:

The really powerful alphas could do that, partial changes.

It's hinted at that being an Alpha gives you power over the whole pack and allows you to draw power from it. This sentence, then, implies that this is something only alphas can do. However, in chapter seven ,this happens:

The really powerful shapeshifters could do that— partially change at will.

Right now, I'm editing Planet Bob. I've got the first set of edits written out, and I'm typing them into the computer now. Probably as you're reading this. The way I edit is pretty simple. I print it out and read it, because editing on a computer makes me feel claustrophobic. I mark it up using a red pen and post-it notes for things like names and quotes that I'm not sure about. When I've gotten all my edits entered into the computer, I print it out and read it again, make lots of marks on the pages and so on. When I'm making maybe one mark every ten pages, I give it to somebody else to read. When they give it back, I go through their suggestions, discard the tiny handful that are less "this doesn't work" and more "this isn't to my taste" (these are usually the ones that add words rather than remove them) and use the rest.

I run into things like this alphas/shapeshifters mess ALL THE TIME in my own writing. But I fix it, because this? This is a really important point. Can ONLY the alphas shift, or can other shapeshifters shift too? Which one is it? This isn't something basic that an editor should catch. This is something basic that the author should catch, LONG before it goes to the editor.

Okay, moving on.

So they have a sword fight in the knife room, and Anita draws on Jean Claude's memory of fighting to survive. It's cheating but I'll give it because Anita herself gets pretty fucked up in the process. The snake dude gets pretty upset, though, and Anita sees why. They used Nathanial as a sword pin cushion, and he's still alive because he's a were and weres tend to do that.

I am not posting the description of this, and you cannot make me. It's that bad.

But I'm not criticizing this moment itself. Sometimes very bad things happen, and characters need to be able to deal with very bad things. This whole thing has been leading up to something bad happening to Nathanial anyway. Anita is very calm, very collected about it, which would normally indicate that a number of people are either going to hurt or become dead. Which I could agree with. Narcissus's guards are all like, "We don't owe you an excuse". In a normal universe the main character would reply, "You fucking well do, this is a human being, you Lion King reject, now get off your fucking ass and go call an ambulance before I go all Van Helsing on your tail."  but Anita does not.

The problem with the violence is it's accepted as part of this world. Anita is the outsider, not the voice of reason. Other people get to be playthings, not people. Anita does wind up rescuing everyone, but the concequences of that rescue are negative, as if she has done something wrong. The leadership of this world--Jean Claude and Richard included--shrug their shoulders and go, this is the way of the world. And it's that attitude--Nathanial was penetrated by multiple swords? it's alright. He'll heal--that makes the violence in this book more than a little unforgivable. It's violence that is accepted for the sake of retaining power, and that is such utter bullshit.

I jumpped series from Anita Blake to Mercedes Thompson. Mercy is an entirely different kettle of fish. First you have Mercy herself, who is a werecoyote (somewhat) and a mechanic. Then you have Adam Hauptman, the local werewolf alpha, who is bad-ass, and Stefan, her vampire contact, who is not a good guy but who somehow...still is a good guy (it's complicated. He has a volkswagon van painted like the mystery machine. As in Scooby Doo) And then you have Bran, aka the Marrok, the Alpha of All Alphas in the United States. You do not fuck with Bran. Bran helped raise Mercy when Mercy's mom realized she couldn't handle having a coyote for a daughter. Adam is scary. Stefan is scarier. Mercy isn't all that scary at all, but you don't fuck with her because if you're  fucking with her, you're fucking with Bran, and as I said, you don't fuck with Bran.

So if it were Mercy in this situation, with Adam instead of Richard and Stefan instead of Jean Claude? Narcissus would not have been all "Give me presents or the leopard gets it". He would have been all "...you're the coyote that Bran raised? And you can tell Bran what's going on...oh, shit. Go get your Leopards. No, wait, sit here, have some tea, I'm going to send a medic up to their room right now. No, no, don't get up."

And even then, Bran would probably fly in to personally disassemble that little club. Bran's potential for violence in the Mercyverse shuts down more violence than it causes because, as I said before, you do not fuck with Bran. And Bran, meanwhile, shows up on your doorstep looking like the pizza delivery boy you forgot to tip last week.

Violence in the Anitaverse? It's just something that, you know, happens. get over it.

No thank you, Ms. Blake.

So Anita tries to take the swans with her, and gets attacked again. There are big snakes and leopards and feathers flying everywhere, and then...


...Anita passes out from blood loss.

Of course she does.
 

Narcissus in Chains, chapter 6 AKA the chapter that broke me

Business first--We are ONE BOOK away from hitting 100, guys. Please, oh please oh please oh please fix this. Also, be here on the 15th, when I will show you an excerpt of Planet Bob, Starbleached's sequel.

...Can I put this off mommy? Can I please?

One thing that you need to remember, my lovely loyal blog readers: I loved this series. Yes, it is not the best. Yes, the main character is annoying as fuck. Yes, the clothing is insanely stupid, the triangle is more of a trwhyangle, and there were many many many many many things that did not make sense. In a sense, this was my Twilight. It was dumb as hell, but that was part of the reason I liked it. Also, unlike Twilight, there was lots of sex, usually in the climax, and the guilty pleasure factor was always nice.

And up until now, we haven't deviated too far from what the other books were like. Admittedly, by now there would be several bodies on the ground, Anita would have visited a bloody crime scene and played "who vomits first" with the preternatural cops, and Jean Claude would have spent at least half of chapter five trying to get into Anita's pants only to be rebuffed, but there was hope for redemption. I kept repeating to myself, "Kidnapped wereleopards, Kidnapped wereleopards. This will get better. This will get better." And Richard being not a whiny bitch (so far) was a welcome and much needed change. It fueled the hope.

This chapter dashed all hope for me. Oh, it gets worse from here, trust me. I actually kept reading, and it took another couple of scenes of stupid for me to throw up my hands and fling the book across the room. But this was when I realized things had changed forever. Ready to read it?

Good. 'Cause I'm not.

Anita and the boys have gone into Narcissus's "office". Now, please remember that this is a wereheyena dressed in June Cleaver's black lace dress. I want you to keep that picture in your mind.

The room is black, save for the shiny, silver plated torture objects. Silver in this universe burns the everliving fuck out of any shapeshifter that touches it. So these are, like, literal torture impliments. There's also a bed big enough for the entire club, apparently, with enough chains to make it fun for the whole family!

...I almost want to paint this because it's so insane it loops right through stupid and back into bad-ass. But then I remember what this scene did to me.

Everybody sits on the bed, save for Narcissus, who gets a chair. Jean Claude settles in on the sheets like he's about to seduce virgins, and Anita notices that there's a loop in Richard's collar for a leash.

Richard did not want to have sex with Anita until after they were married. SO. OUT. OF. CHARACTER.

And then Jean Claude reveals that, when somebody else was Master of the City, Narcissus raped him in this room, on that very bed.

When I re-read this book, my jaw dropped. I do NOT remember this being in here, and I am really hoping that I just skimmed this part. Because Jean Claude is terrified of Narcissus. It is implied that it was well, WELL beyond bad, and that the biggest reason Jean Claude became a Master vampire was so that he would never be passed around like the vampire's party favor, ever, ever again. Jean Claude even starts having flashbacks to other events not related to Narcissus, and Anita experiances these because for a minute he's too upset to shut their magical link down.

 This is something that, as far as I know, never gets addressed again. It wasn't in the early books, it wasn't in the later books I skimmed, and most importantly, Narcissus doesn't die.

If I were a powerful preternatural creature and I knew that ANYBODY was doing the shit implied here? Rape as part of political deals? The rapist would be dead. The cops can't, or won't, deal with them, and they are a level of evil that should not continue to live. This is treated as tra-la-la, another day in the life of a vampire. Sexual trauma galore.

And then Narcissus tries to touch Jean Claude and Richard hulks out. Richard also experianced the memory of rape, he's realized his friend has been brutalized past endurance countless times before, he understands that the pig sitting in front of him is one of those abusers, and he is not going to allow Narcissus to come within six inches of his buddy. He breaks the fucker's wrist.

Which breaks the truce. Narcissus, who is all riled up and eager to "play" (gag me) with somebody, uses this as an excuse to threaten Jean Claude via Anita. He's been hurt, so he needs a toy to make everything better. Everybody else important used to give him toys to play with, and because everybody's been distracted he's now an equal power in the city, he can negotiate on his own terms, and he wants somebody to give him somebody else to abuse for a few hours.

I. Am. Not. Making. This. Up.

Narcissus shrugged. “Perhaps, but have you not wondered what I’ve been doing since Marcus died and you took over? I wondered when the gifts would start arriving, but instead all gifts stopped, even the ones I’d begun to count on.” He looked at me then. “Some of those gifts were yours to give, Nimir-Ra.”

Nimir Ra is the title of the Wereleopard leader. And those "gifts" are fucking people.

Narcissus mentions that he's never had Nathanial, and he asks Anita for him. Anita says no.

Narcissus says, how about for a day? Maybe even an hour? Anita says fuck off. Richard does the same when Narcissus asks for a wolf. Fuck. No. Narcissus thinks Anita is some kind of in-the-closet shapeshifter, something never hinted at in the other books, so he tries to force her to shift. This fucks up the other two guys for a couple minutes, but nothing comes of it. So Narcissus turns to Jean Claude. How about a vampire plaything?

Asher steps up to the plate. He asks if Narcissus only wants a toy to play with, or if he wouldn't mind being "topped" for the evening. Narcissus says sure, but it needs to be somebody special. Asher shows off how screwed up he is from being tortured with holy water, and Narcissus goes "Yep, you'll do."

Jean Claude asks why Asher is willing to torture Narcissus for the evening, and Asher replies with the following:

“And do you know the best part of all?” Asher asked. Jean-Claude just shook his head. “It will cause you pain to think of me with Narcissus. And even after I am with him, he will still not answer the question you have been wanting, so desperately, to have answered.”

So to sum up what just happened: In order to save her missing wereleopards, Anita Blake must get her vampire lover to have the most fucked up individual in his retinue give himself over to a sadistic, masochistic wereheyena for an evening, when the were heyena is the bottom.

It turns out that all this is Asher's temper tantrum because Anita won't let Jean Claude sleep with other men.

...YOU ARE SLEEPING WITH RICHARD, DAMN IT. THIS SHOULD NOT BE YOUR CONCERN.

And then Asher starts torturing Narcissus and Anita runs to rescue the damned wereleopards who are the reason everybody's here in the first place.

So. Did any of that make sense to you? It did? great. Explain it to me, please.

I'm going to go drink until the pain goes away.

Tomorrow: It gets worse.

Narcissus in Chains Chapter 5

Okay, first up: Remember, boys and girls, you'll get an excerpt of Planet Bob on the fifteenth. That is three days from now.

Second up: Buy Things that I have written so that my stepfather will stop talking about tattoos.

Third up: 12:12:12 12/12/12. There. I posted about it. The world didn't end at midnight, it won't end at noon. This is the kind of thing that happens when you have calendars. It didn't end at 06:06:06 6/6/06 either (and technically it would be 06:01:06 because our ability to do math in hebrew really sucks)

Why we think the world will end Dec 21st is beyond me.

...do I have to blog about this book? Really? You're gonna make me? Fine.

Chapter five opens with a non-consensual kiss between Anita and Richard.

Oh, but you see she gets into it after he kisses her. She was going to tell him no but she didn't get the chance, and now...yeah. Sorry. If you are thinking no and it happens anyway it is NOT something you really want. Why write it like this? Please explain.

Also? Laurel K. Hamilton has a thing for food.

But all I could do was taste his mouth, feel his lips, try to drink him down my throat, as if he were the finest of wines and I was dying of thirst.

This is NOT the first time something sexy has been compared to something edible. Also, if you are dying of thirst wine is the LAST THING you should be consuming. Water is much better for you, and it tastes better. I recognise dehydration when the thought of drinking caffinated beverages makes me feel sick. That is my body screaming DRINK WATER, STUPID.

But yeah, things are always chocolate and cupcakes and cookies, shapeshifters, magicians and, apparently, BDSM clubs are "flavors". I guess I feel like I'm watching that kid in A Christmas Story lick the flag pole, only it's not a flag pole.

(...hey, if Bella ever...um...yeah...since Edward is so icy, does that mean her tongue got stuck?)

Anyhoo, back to the suck.

Richard is wearing a needlessly detailed costume of black vinyl pants. more knee high boots and a studded dog collar. This is SO OOC for Richard it's kind of nasty. Richard's character has been driven by his absolute hate for violence, his absolute disgust with how werewolves run themselves, and the Mr. Rogers dignity of a high school teacher hiding a dark and ugly secret for the sake of the children. Richard wasn't even made by violence, he was made by a fucked up blood transfusion where nobody caught the lycanthropy until it was too late. And now he's in a massively sexualized costume that the dude from two books ago wouldn't be caught dead in.

This is not character development. This is a lobotomy.

Richard and Jean Claude apparently had a deal that whomever Anita called first would then call the other one. Because...uh...magical werewolf/vampire/necromancer connection thingy? I don't know. Remember: Six months of no contact between any of these people. Only Richard asked Jean Claude to keep it a secret because

“Because if I’d played fair I still wouldn’t have gotten a kiss. I couldn’t stand the thought of seeing you tonight and not touching you.”

One: you don't know that. She was drooling long before you kissed her.

Two: FUCKING. EW. That is SO very rapy. So very, very rapy.

And then Jean Claude asks if they could go back to "Marrying the Marks" which is the only reason the three of them are together again, only they're going to do it ON A STAGE in front of the ENTIRE CLUB. EW. EW. EW. Also: KIDNAPPED WERELEOPARDS. FOCUS, ANITA. DO NOT MAKE ME BRING OUT PEANUT.

And finally, FINALLY, the make out session commences. We get a play-by-play of how difficult it is to french kiss a vampire, Anita cuts herself on his fangs, and things get more urgent as

the urgency of it grew, until it was as if he were feeding from my mouth, trying to drink me down.

Yay, more food references. But they're not done:

Then the boundaries that held our auras in place gave way. Think of it as if you were making love and suddenly your skin slid away, spilling you against your partner, into your partner, giving you an intimacy that was never imagined, never planned, never wanted.

Please note: This is the SECOND non-consensual sexy-sexy in this chapter. This is supposed to be romantic, and i do not find it so. See, when stuff happens during romantic things like sexy kissing and you don't want it, in the real world what happens is you get turned off.

So, in front of the ENTIRE CLUB, two of the most powerful men in their community lick their way to Anita's holes--in her aura, mind--and...uh...then the world exploded? It's not really clear. The whole club applauds, though, so it must have been really special. Asher comes up to make sure everyone is okay, and he's all like "blink if you can hear me" which sounds less like post-sex afterglow and more like what you'd say to somebody in a coma.

Then Narcissus comes out and is all like "ha ha, ha ha, a good time was had by all. Show's over, everybody go home." And then he force-kisses Jean Claude, who pushes him away using magic. Narcissus asks to have a private talk with everybody, Anita agrees, and Jean Claude looks bothered. Really, scarily bothered. The men help poor, fragile Anita, she of thigh high boots with the knives at the knees, into Narcissus's office. The chapter ends

Next chapter: Fair warning? This is the chapter that broke me. This is the chapter that was, without a doubt, THE worst reading experiance of my life.

The Tattoo Challenge

My stepdad wants me to get a tattoo.

About a month ago, when I was very emotional about how much I suck (I'm better now. At the emotional part. I still feel I suck) I told you guys that I will get a tattoo if I sell 100 books in one day of one title. And that was bullshit, because I know that's never gonna happen.

However, my stepdad REALLY wants me to get a tattoo.

So here's the deal. I was going over my stats, because I like numbers, and I discovered that since July I have sold 93 books. Which, you know, ain't a lot. But it's something.

So I told my stepdad that I would get a tattoo if I sold 100 books before the end of the year.

And then, because I want to make it worth something, I decided that I would have the tattoo done on my ankle. On my left ankle.

The ankle that I used to cut on when I got really pathetically emotional.

See, at some point last year, and I don't really remember when, save that it was early-ish, I broke my SI "Sobriety". I don't remember when, only that it was between January and April (because I remember everything about April) and that it was...uh...probably the worst relapse I've had to date.

So basically, what I'm saying is, buy another seven pieces of my shit before the end of the year, and I will go get a small-but-emotionally significant tattoo.

And I will take pictures of it and show you. Because you guys are awesome. 

Narcissus in Chains chapter 4

BUSINESS NOTE: I will post a sample of Planet Bob on the 15th. Be here for my awesome. It will be awesome.

...I hope.

I re-read this book up to THE scene. You know. The one that broke me.

I forgot every single thing about how terrible this book is and I need to go curl up beside my bed and whimper for a few hours.

So Anita drives up to the Club in standard club-going clothes. We get an explination about why the club has to be all the way over here, which we do not need to hear. We find out where Anita parked. I would be begging them to move on but I am now traumatized and will do whatever it takes to stall. Then we get the List of Sharp and Shooty Things that Anita has on her person. One gun, one long knife in each boot that will give Anita bruises on her knees. We also find out that Anita has a black belt in judo and is working on another belt in another martial art.

You know, someone once pointed out to me that a black belt is a lot like getting an online digree. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's the equivilant of a diploma mill, and it doesn't really mean squat. Given that Anita is yet to kick ANYTHING in this book I do not give a flying fuck.

Oh, and this is what she's wearing:

My skirt was so short that even with boots that came up to mid-thigh there was a good inch between the hem and the top of the boots.

It takes a lot to make me say "She's asking for it." An awful, awful, awful lot. But even I have my limits. You have the right to dress however you want, but for the love of GOD, why would you go interview kidnappers in an outfit that advertises your altogethers? WHY WOULD YOU THINK THIS IS OKAY? I am picturing this, and the picture leaves nothing to the imagination. Also...thigh high boots. Have you ever worn leather? Have you ever noticed how you cannot fucking bend in leather?

And then paragraph after paragraph after paragraph on magical sheilding. We don't need this either.

She bounces off of a werewolf named Jason on her way into the club. Jason is Jean Claude's boy toy. Yes, Jean Claude is bi, in theory. In practice, he is Anita's Only, because having things make sense sexually isn't fun, right? Of course right. Also, he's wearing a silver body stocking that leaves even less to the imagination than Anita's outfit.

Now, I know I complimented Laurel K. Hamilton's narritive voice. And it's a good one. But it also has problems. That problem being that every once in a while she will use a word so often, it'll stop looking like a word.

As Jason led me up the steps, I had to look behind him. The cloth that covered his groin was only a thin thong at the back, leaving nothing but a fine glitter over his butt. The shirt was not attached to the pants, so as he moved I got glimpses of his stomach. In fact the shirt was loose enough through the shoulders that when he took my arm the shirt pulled to one side, revealing his smooth, pale shoulder.

Jason takes Anita into the club to see Jean Claude. This is what Jean Claude looks like:

His long black hair fell in soft curls around his shoulders, nearly to his waist... He was dressed in a black vinyl shirt that looked poured on...His skin looked unbelievably white against the shiny black vinyl, almost as if it glowed with some inner light...Vinyl boots came up just over his knees, gleaming as if they’d been spit polished...He was beautiful. That heartrending beauty that was masculine but treaded the line between what was male and what was female. Not exactly androgynous, but close to it.

And this is how I react to what Jean Claude looks like:


Seriously. He's wearing latex pants and latex boots that come up over his knees. I really hope he'll never have to do squats. Also: What kind of porn is LKH watching?

Hey, aren't we supposed to be rescuing were-leopards?

“Breathe, Anita, remember to breathe.”

Because I definately remember there being a ransom call at the beginning of this book. Not a romantic issue call. One of your charges has been kidnapped, and you are here to save him.

Jean-Claude made me feel like that, like I should weep at his beauty. It was like being offered an original da Vinci, not just to hang on your wall and admire, but to roll around on top of.

Well, the book figures out that Anita is going to stand there and look at Jean Claude all night, because Narcissus shows up. Narcissus, the owner of the club. As for how he's dressed...

*sigh* I'm not going to quote it. Here's the list:

-Makeup. But not, you know, in a feminine way.
 -curly black hair cut very short
-"spiky" heels.
- nail polish
-stockings with a "delicate" spiderweb pattern.
-a black lace dress that makes him look like June Cleaver. No bullshit.

He's also an alpha something. So let me repeat this. He is an alpha something dressed up like June Cleaver in hell. He demands Anita give him the gun. There is a lot about how Narcissus is not passing for a woman, he's just "secure". It doesn't say what he's secure in. He's just "secure". His club is neutral territory and he doesn't want Anita killing anything in here. I would agree, but I can't stop picturing a muscular, dominant male dressed like Glenda the Good Witch's goth phase.

It's also revealed that Narcissus is a werehyena.

One of the fucking awesome things about Sunshine was the weres. Specifically the mention of werechickens, and how they'll pay anything for the anti-change drugs, and how the were-skunks are such a problem the police have to have a special flying unit to take care of them.

You will not be seeing any were-chickens in the Anita Blake universe. They're not cool enough.

I've been reading for five minutes. There is posturing and posing, and Anita still hasn't given up her gun yet. Her people might not be safe, she says. Lady, you've got the strongest vampire in the city on your side, and SPOILER the Alpha of the local wolf pack is on his way. Also, your people are WERELEOPARDS. THEY CAN EAT THE PEOPLE HOLDING THEM IF THEY WANT TO. You don't even have silver ammo. You can raise the dead using blood from a paper cut. You do not need the gun. Why have you not given up the gun?

“Nathaniel is one of those bottoms that will ask for more punishment than he can survive. He has no stopping point, no ability to keep himself safe. Do you understand?”

Ugh, I am pretty sure this thing does not EXIST, and if it does, why are we exploiting a broken human being this much? GIVE UP THE GUN AND GO RESCUE YOUR BROKEN WERELEOPARD, YOU PSYCHOTIC BITCH.

Narcissus asks why Nathanial didn't have a keeper. Anita says he did, but the chick ran off. And...

wait. Why are wereleopards living in a pack? Leopards are not pack animals. Wereleopards are "Are we mating? Are you nursing? No? Then fuck off" animals. This is not realistic. I am beginning to doubt your story about vampires and wereheyenas in a BDSM bar.

Anyway, this chick running off is a big threat to Anita's authority, and she's sick of the authority and having a whole pard of wereleopards on her back is such a hassle and blah blah blah blah blah. Twelve books later, she's still got the leopards and I think she's fucking Nathanial, so all this is, is a delay of the plot.

Finally, she surrenders the gun. Narcissus compliments her, because her costume appears too skimpy to hide a gun that big. Nice. It's also too skimpy to hide a human that big. she had the gun at the small of her back in a holster under a skintight shirt. In exchange for the gun, Narcissus has promised the cats will be perfectly safe until Anita arrives.

So now it's time for sex.

Anita has to reopen the bonds between herself, Jean Claude and Richard. Otherwise nothing will be protected. And they have to have sex to do this. Or touching kissing make out  session. In public. Likely in front of the people who have kidnapped the wereleopards.

Okay. Whatever. Let's do it and get it over with.

...hello? Have the make out session so we can get back to the plot. Hello?

No. Jean Claude has to explain that Anita will get more abilities when the marks are reopened. Uh...am I reading the wrong chapter? Did I already do this? No, no, this is still chapter four. I thought we'd already covered this. Yes, we did already cover this. How about we get it done and move on?

Please?

And then we have the handfull of sentences that utterly ruined the entire series.

They were both wonderfully powerful, but there was nothing too terribly extraordinary in their powers. Well, there was one thing about Jean-Claude. He could gain power by feeding off sexual energy.

This is going to bite us all on the ass so hard, we could market it as weight loss surgery.

So Anita and Jean Claude go to "their" table, where Jason, he of the silver spandex, and another man are sitting together. The other man is Asher.

Asher is an interesting character. He, his girlfriend and Jean Claude were a menage a trois back when the Spanish Inquisition was a thing. They caught the girlfriend and burned her, and tortured Asher with holy water, which burned him like acid. Basically, Asher is the two-face of vampires. One of Jean Claude's enemies sent Asher to the states to throw Jean Claude off his game during important negotiations, and Anita brought Asher over to the side of the angels...using a makeout session in which she channeled Jean Claude's lust for Asher and kissed him all over his scarry bits. This was the...ahem...climax of that particular novel.

Look, I said the early books were good. I did not say they were great.

Asher is pouting because Jean Claude won't rekindle their relationship. Jean Claude won't rekindle their relationship because Anita will throw a hissy-fit if he does. So Asher has been pouting for a couple of books at this point, and will jump at a chance to make Jean Claude hurt.

Anita and Jean Claude still have not made out. The plot cannot advance until they make out. Another character approaches their table and tells Jean Claude that they'd better get the magic sex (god I wish I were joking) done before the club's next floor show starts, because interrupting the show using magical sex would be, you know, rude. Now they have a time limit to make out. DO IT AND GET IT OVER oh for fuck's sake. Anita freaks out during the make out session (This is a clue you're doing it wrong) and Richard shows up and grabs her.

The chapter ends. And they still have not made out.

State of the CW

There are days when I hate writing. I hate every part of it. Every word, every letter. I know what I want to say and it does come out, but it all comes out wrong. It's bad when I know everything I'm doing is wrong. It's worse when I know that everything I'm doing is RIGHT. That I'm on the right track, that things are going to go great, that there is every chance that you guys might be happy when this thing is over and you finally get to read it (if any of you will) but it doesn't matter because writing is the LAST thing I want to do right now.

when that happens you keep on going, of course. Release is a satisfying thing. It's like...yay, it's over, it's done, we don't have to pick at that scab any more, we can go on to something else for a while.

But that day is a long way off right now (...okay, twenty days as of this writing. Damn countdown). In all honesty? I know what exactly one of you thinks, and you know who you are, my lone precious commentor friend. The rest of you...I don't. I don't know if you come here to read the flogs, if you come here because you read my books, if you even like my shit...I know nothing.

Well, i know everybody fucking hated This Found Thing. Which i guess is what makes me so nervious about this one. I have no idea what I did wrong with TFT and right in Starbleached, because, uh, you may not have noticed this? But I am not that great of a writer. So realizing that it can be THAT EASY to fuck things up is kind of scary. Some of you REALLY liked Starbleached...I think. (I don't know if anybody who read Starbleached is also reading this blog) and I am terrified that I'm going to mess up.

BUT! I WILL SOLDIER ON. Or, to be more blunt...I dug the goddamn hole. I can fill it back up.

Narcissus in Chains--chapter three

In the ongoing accounting of the minutae of Anita's life, we get a step by step account of how Anita tried to find Jean Claude to ask him for help. Remember, boys and girls, one of her charges, a wereleopard named Nathanial, has been kidnapped and is being held for fuck-knows-what by fuck-knows-who at a BDSM bar equipped with whips, chains and a great many things that blur the line between happy fun times and hell on earth. In these circumstances one wants to sustain a sense of urgency. You can't do montages with writing, but you can do summeries and you can cut directly to the fucking point and mantain the "oh fuck" energy of a call for ransom.

Instead, we get an account of Anita playing phone tag. Also, she is horrified to realize that after six months with no contact, her men might have moved on. 

Jean Claude finally comes on the phone and he is beautifully and coldly polite to Anita, who doesn't understand why. I mean, it's only been six fucking months since she elected to contact him.

This is the conversation in which Anita asks her vampire lover to help her find her lost leopard.

“Sarcasm is my department,” I said. 

“And what is my department?” 

“I’m about to ask you for a favor,” I said. 

“Really?” He said it as if he might not grant it.

 “Please, Jean-Claude, I’m asking for help. I don’t do that often.”

This. Goes on. For pages. To sum it up: Jean Claude knows where the club is. The owner is named Narcissus, he is a shapeshifter, and he'll keep the leopards from getting hurt too much more until Anita and the others get there.

This is the point where I'd be going "So NOW can we go to the club?" But I remember this book. I remember what happens when we get to the club. The stupidity nearly gave me a cerebral hemmorage. I am in no hurry to revisit.

Jean Claude asks Anita why she's stayed the fuck away and if she'd ever come back. Let me make one thing really clear. If I had an ex I'd chased the way JC did Anita, and they blew me off the way Anita has JC, I would not be this calm and polite. I would be like "Fuck you" followed by click. Jean Claude is supposed to be a no-bullshit man-killer scary monster, but he is being very cool and extraordinarly polite.

Anita explains that she needs to fuck him and Richard to plug up the holes the two men have made in her aura. I'm paraphrasing, of course. Jean Claude warns her that allowing him into her life will allow the magical connection they have to share each other's magic. He'll get a power boot from Anita, and Anita will probably share in his magic too.

Jean Claude having special magic is something that was never brought up in the books before.

Basically, that's the whole chapter. The conversation continues LONG after Jean Claude agrees to help Anita. He asks her what she's wearing. He asks her what she wants to do when they get there (Save leopards, kill things). He asks her why she didn't call Richard (Because he would be opposed to the "kill things" part) and then if she's scared because she's turning into a sociopath....and we have to stop there.

One of the symptoms of being a sociopath is that you don't give a fuck. The only thing in your universe is you. Other people do not matter. A sociopath would not care that they are one. They would, in fact, feel better than the rest of us.

You don't evolve into a sociopath, in other words.

So yes. That's this book so far. One chapter for a ransom phone call, one chapter for a freak out, and one chapter for another phone call.

God, this shit sucks.