Oh how she chips away at my foundation

[witchwillow.livejournal.com]

Oh for the love of all that's holy!



LKH: Italics
Me: Regular
My Emphasis: Bold

In A LICK OF FROST what I made notes for was, names of characters and physical descriptions, especially of eyes. When I first created my version of the sidhe, the high court of faerie, I had this neat idea. I read one account of a man who had met one of the sidhe. He described her as beautiful, then said she had three eyes. Now I'd read all sorts of true accounts of people that had interacted with the fey. I studied reports of people from the 1700s and before, and after, that said they'd been abducted not by aliens, but by fairies. They do not describe anyone as beautiful that has three eyes, or any extra bits. That is like considered a sign of being 'evil'. So, how to reconcile beauty with three eyes?

I walked around for a day or so, trying to decide what it meant. I passed a news stand and saw a cat magazine. It had a gorgeous cat on the cover with a closeup showing it's eyes. Eyes that had three distinct rings of color in it's iris. I knew what I thought the man had meant when he said the beautiful woman had three eyes.

So I gave most of the sidhe multi-colored irises. Great idea, very visual. Problem, it's sometimes hard enough to remember who has gray eyes, or brown, or blue, but then also to remember who has three rings of different shades of blue, and who has grey rings, or which of them has eyes that are just green. It makes a small problem that most writers have with a large cast of characters even harder. Yes, yes, if I would just keep that running list of physically characteristics on file, I wouldn't have to worry about it. I've been meaning to do that for years. I just never quite do it.

There's more to this blog. So much more. Stuff about dyslexia and her two degrees blah blah wankcakes blah beer blah. But this is what makes me scream:

ARRRRRRRRRRRGHHHHH

The following rant will be quite rambly and may be somewhat incoherent.

Do we need reminders that vampires drink blood? No.

Do we need reminders that weres shift shape? No.

Do we need reminders that the fey use magic? No.

Why then, if she's properly introduced the concept of tri-ringed irises does she feel the need to continually remind people, over and over again with description after description that she can't even keep straight?

If it's not important enough for her to remember, if in fact she finds the concept confusing, how can she not think that the readers aren't confused. If her own characters don't impress themselves into her memory, how can she not understand why some readers don't really give a damn?!

I know I could well be missing something, much in the same way I read the first Merry book and I don't remember the tri-ringed irises at all. But this whole thing strikes me akin to the long haired men in the Anita Blake books. People can't keep the men straight (no pun intended) because they're all beautiful and long haired and pony-tail wearing.

And now having seen her solution is to write NOTE CHARACTER B _ INSERT HAIR COLOR / EYE COLOR; I 'm all no wonder men in both her books come across as empty shells.

I'm not going to get into the couch pop-psychology about why LKH can't hold onto the characterization of a male character; his personality, what makes him tick, etc. Because I think she can't hold onto any characterization. And this is why it's so much easier for her to have all other women as bitches, all major character women defined by the crown on their head, or their physical appearance and all the men just walking dicks with long multi-coloured hair and eye colour.

When I was a little girl, I think I wanted to meet a mer-man with sea-foam green hair and green eyes. I've now been on livejournal for going on almost six years now and my participation in fandom has helped me place that childish longing in it's place. It was the infantile longing for the exotic that's created to be tamed. It was my first fantasizing about a magical universe. I don't really remember much about my little mer-man, but I knew we were going to save the world together from a great evil (Blame Tolkien).

I have been actively straining to learn all I can about writing and characters and world building and various nuances of writing for the past six years. I've written fan-fiction and done rpgs and called it all my Outside The Classroom College Writing Experience.

I've seen myself grow.

How the hell is LKH managing to move backwards? She started off with characters who've stayed in my mind precise and clean for years ( Edward, Rafael, Ronnie, Olaf, Jason). Now, however, everytime I read reviews I have no idea who's being talked about. People go 'The one with the hair and the eyes' but it all gets jumbled for me because they all have 'special hair and special eyes and special penii'.

My personal memory can suck, for a shitload of reasons (stuff I can safely say would make LKH run screaming). But as books were always my comfort, I could and can remember storylines from books I read when I was 5, 6 and 7. I can almost always remember the characters involved and what they were supposed to look like and more importantly what they felt like.

LKH's 'progress' in writing, terrifies me now. Because I can't remember the characters, the people she's writing about anymore. Which means I can't remember what I was doing at the time I read the books. Which means I can't remember parts of my life, because her work has no hook.

I'm sure that's not the way it feels for everyone else. I know I have a unique mental take on things. But surely I'm not the only one thinking that her characters have become soulless. It's more than they're now pod!people. They seem empty inside. And the knowledge that she just sticks in 'HIS EYE COLOR IS WHAT?' just makes things creepier to me.

http://blog.laurellkhamilton.org/2007/05/taking-my-own-advice.html

Comments

[sinanju.livejournal.com]

I think it's very clear how LKH has managed to regress. She used to thank her writing group for their help on her books. That was back when she still believed she was a mere mortal, and her work could actually benefit from criticism by other human beings. Back when she actually solicited criticism and considered it (however ungraciously I suspect she did so).

This was back before she became a Big Name Author and could dispense with them (and with editors). And to the degree that she has cut her ties with anyone and everyone who was willing and able to provide guidance, her work has increasingly sucked.

At this point she doesn't even take her OWN advice. She _knows_ she ought to be maintaining a bible for her series. But she doesn't.

[melaniedavidson.livejournal.com]

Um... good try, LKH, but having rings in your irises is not even close to having three eyes. What the heck?

[slayra.livejournal.com]

I have tried to read 'A Kiss of Shadows' three times now. I dread what is to come, so I never got past page 50. *sigh*

I've read 14 AB books and the characters were never LKH's strong point. At first there weren't that many (and, wow, she actually killed a semi-important character, Phillip) but I never much cared for their development. They are too two-dimentional for me. Anita, JC, Richard have a number of automated responses to situations a few character traits that are repeated book after book. They don't grow much as characters (unless you count their superpowers), they don't get deeper, they stay the same.

When she started adding more characters (male) it got worse. All her characters are automats, with little or no personality (and the little personality they have is horrible). It's a problem that comes from having way too many characters. I honestly have a hard time remembering names and hair colors and eye colors... I just can't connect with the characters as they aren't fleshed out... they don't seem real and most of them are little more than sex dolls.

[stefflebug.livejournal.com]

Ok, this woman breaks my brain.

I agree with her first paragraph : he advice I give beginning writers is not to get bogged down in the first draft. The example I usually give is from my own first book, NIGHTSEER. There was a moment when I had to get her undressed for the night, and I had no idea what a society equivalent to about 1300 to 1400s would wear under their clothes. But I was smart. Instead of running off to the library and researching 14th century underwear I just typed, "NOTES; WHAT DOES 14TH CENTURY UNDERWEAR LOOK LIKE," and kept writing.

This is fine advice, it doesn't break the flow of writing and lets you get the points of the story down before you lose them. Then you go back and fill them in.

But then she starts wangsting, and going on about how now it is details like name and eye colour that she needs to fill in, just no. You make a character list, you plan things like that, or they all end up penii with pretty coloured hair (I love that description).

Oh and : I am dyslexic. .... It made so much sense. I can't spell because the blasted letters in the middle don't stay still.

Does anyone else think that she is using this as an excuse for not being able to remember the spellings for the ardeur, raphael, etc?

Sure, dyslexia can interfer with things, but then you have someone who is not dyslexic to help you out. Like, I don't know, an editor.

[fangedsekhmet.livejournal.com]

"I read one account of a man who had met one of the sidhe."

Says it all, really. She believes this waaay too much.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

sdfkjasd;fsdkfj;aoeih n;

*deep breaths*

Now I'm suddenly glad that I keep character profiles of DOOM (no, seriously, the proforma is like 5 pages long and asks you everything about a character and their preferences in kitchen sinks) and files on world babble/building so I can help cobble together a coherent timeline and evolution of people.

But oh, LKH, back in the 18th century, people did not know what aliens were! They would have described them as otherworldly beings, and indeed, fairies. *headdesk* I DON'T THINK JOE CITIZEN WOULD HAVE RUN THROUGH THE STREETS YELLING, "OMFG! I JUST GOT ANAL PROBED BY LITTLE GREEN CHEESE MEN!!! AND THEY TURNED MY COW INSIDE OUT!!!"

Though, I don't see why she had to try and "reconcile" three eyes with beauty -- a chick can still have three eyes and be hot, Third Eye open, or like, an extra eyeball on her cheek, or hip, or whatever. The thing that's probably irking me the most about this is that LKH is focusing on the Unseelie, who are meant to find all manner of perversities and deformities as beautiful, and she's prettying them up and then pointing out that the Seelie are so damned vain and all LA LA LA WE ARE SO GREAT! *prisses in front of mirrors* Because right now, there's no difference between the two courts. Both are dying, both have omgsocrazyanddangerousperverted rulers that are in denial, both have the same sorts of prejudices and court systems. It's like pretty much everything else -- please insert name and description here, move to next sex scene.

I'm just waiting for the Wild Hunt to just ride along and inadvertantly flatten the Sithen, then get drunk and dance on the rubble while the hell hounds eat the corpses of Merry and her harem. It'd be better for everyone, really.

[nightangel486.livejournal.com]

I think what irritated me more was one of the previous blogs where she talkes YET AGAIN about how unique and innovative the AB:VH series was and how she was the FIRST ONE to do paranormal romance/urban fantasy. I distinctly remember reading other urban fantasy series which came out either before or around the same time as Anita Blake. This if anything really demonstrates just how egotistical she is.

[lyo.livejournal.com]

Yo, LKH:

Is this why Nicca was PURPLE in the firstbook and BROWN in the second?



>_> That's been irking me for a while. I just needed to get it off my chest.

[alex-lebeau.livejournal.com]

Huh. I kinda have that problem with left and right, or used to: if someone just asks me where left is, or right is, I can answer. But if I have to think about it, I get muddled, though not nearly so much anymore. I also don't drive much, if ever; when I started to seriously do so to work on getting my license, I mostly solved the problem, because I just never needed to worry about such directionals otherwise.

I do tend to flip numbers around at work (like telling someone they have $10.40 instead of $10.04, or telling them their paid amount instead of their change), but I still usually give them the correct money. But I'm also horrible at math, so there you go.

[catskin.livejournal.com]

How, how, HOW can you have written a 14-book series WITHOUT ever making ANY kind of notes on your characters' physical appearance? That's surely the BARE MINIMUM you'd need to keep up consistency? I'm two books into my series and there's already loads of stuff I couldn't keep track of without my bible. Not just looks, but dead characters and how they died, magic systems, places, types of monster, who's dating who...

Every time I read something like this, it just makes me incredulous that LKH is a bestselling novelist.