lkh_lashouts | (no subject)

The introductions to all the short stories in Strange Candy (and yes I gave in and bought it but it was on sale) are actually very interesting. And by interesting I mean, ‘O wow this is going to give me a headache if I think about it too much’ interesting.

I’m not going to post the entire introductions, just the parts that I think are important.

This is the introduction for A Lust of Cupids:

Editors loved it but not enough to buy it. One editor at one of the top-paying magazines at the time actually told me the truth: that since they published only one piece of fiction in each issue, I wasn’t a big enough name to help their magazine sales… When I was a big enough name to make a difference, I did not send the story back to her for another chance… Two, I’m petty… I rarely give second chances.

And this is exactly why you have gone from a decent writer to a bad one. She’s a petty woman (and she even admits it) and takes her revenge on the people she doesn’t like through her books.

I’m mean, there’s nothing wrong with getting some childish revenge every now and then, but she has taken it to a whole another level.

The Edge of the Sea:

The idea of it-that fear and longing that the ocean fills me with-will be visited at more length in an upcoming Anita book. Some of the characters introduced in Danse Macabre will be helping me explore some of the themes of this story in more loving, and even more frightening, detail.

Yeah okay she claims that the scary merman from this short story will be making a more frightening appearance in an upcoming Anita Blake book. And yet I have a hard time trying to be hopeful. When was the last time Hamilton actually wrote something dark? It’s been so long that I cannot even remember.

I’d mention A Token for Celandine but I don’t see the point of it. She just dares to compare herself to Tolkien and thus incites in me a homicidal rage. Really its best for everyone if I don’t even touch it with a ten foot pole.

Here be Dragons:

This is the only science fiction story I’ve ever completed. Hardware-oriented science doesn’t interest the writer in me. It’s the softer sciences that fascinate me on paper. Of course, just because it’s soft science doesn’t make it a soft story. One editor rejected this story by writing that it made her feel unclean. Cool.

This was my favorite story and it was everything that has been missing from the latest Anita novels. It was dark, it was creepy and it kicked ass. I want Hamilton to write like this again. Somehow I’m getting the feeling that it is not going to happen.

Oh and did anyone else noticed that the editors who rejected Hamilton’s works were all females?

Now to the two Anita Blake stories she gave us.

The Girl Who Was Infatuated With Death:

This story is set before the novel Narcissus in Chains. This is back when Anita is fighting the good fight to try not to give in every time she gets too close to her vampire boyfriend. Ah, how the mighty have fallen.

Truer words, I swear to God, have never been spoken. See! Even the author admits it!

Those Who Seek Forgiveness:

How different things would have been if I’d stuck to my original plan. No Jean-Claude, no Richard, not much of anybody except Anita. What a bleak world it would have been, with just Anita and me in it.

She says it would have been a bleak world but I can’t help but wonder if it would have been a better world.