lkh_lashouts | (no subject)

Hello! I'm a newbie--found the comm through the Amazon discussion threads and Google.

Speaking of Amazon... I've been going through my recommendations and something hit me: there are an awful lot of vampire, shapeshifter, fae, whatever books out right now. I don't just mean the paranormal romances, but adventure stories, too.

"How does she stay published/how can they publish this crap?" (especially in light of the recent Harlequin spoiler) is a frequent lament here. It occured to me, just looking over the recommendations here, LKH going bad was perhaps a gift to publishers. People drawn in to 'vintage' Anita Blake and unhappy with the current books have gone looking for something better, but in the same genre. There is demand... and there are sales. Lots of sales.

So it's kind of a 'no press is bad press' thing, but it's in favor of the publishers, not LKH. They let her churn out her sexploitation dreck, and the number of disappointed readers grow, they look for other authors, other titles, other series-length stories. Then the publishers smile and produce several books with, "If you liked the early Anita Blake..."

Her sales drop, but they make up for it by selling other books, books that become more popular as more disgruntled fans say, "Hey, I know you liked the Anita Blake stuff when it was good. Try this!"

The savvy marketing isn't LKH's doing. It's the publishers. She didn't create the genre, but the decay of her storytelling ability created a market.

Threaded | Flat

I swear I read something about her once saying how there really wasn't a paranormal romance / alternate reality sci fi section until the Anita books got big. I thought really rude thoughts about her, and your totally right. She's creating a market. So many people say exactly what you said "If you liked old Anita Blake you'll LOVE this."

I'm interested in new Harlequin Spoilers. Since I refuse to buy it - but was happy it had Edward/Olaf (obsidian butterfly was kick ass). Where do I read spoilers? *L*

LKH helped to popularize the genre - and move it out of the 'supernatural romance' genre (which ahd been going on for some time). However, her sales are not dropping. If anything, they're increasing.

It's true that the genre existed before AB.

But publishers were going after similiar books before AB started sliding downhill. You could go so far as to say that the genre was thrown into the spotlight by AB's popularity, but that's not really the same as what LKH is trying to claim.

Basically, one publisher looked and saw what was going on and said "Hey, urban fantasy is coming back, let's jump on the bandwagon and see if we can make some money" and then a bunch of others started doing it, too.

After Christine Feehan got popular, a rash (and I DO mean rash) of paranormal romances involving vampires descended upon the unsuspecting public.

After Harry Potter got really popular, publishers began scooping up every "kids with magic" series under the sun.

Doesn't mean they weren't there before, that they weren't good before, or that they had not had popularity before. Just that as the market grows bigger, the exploitation of it does too.

I didn't think of AB in the beginning as paranormal romance. Matter of fact my town's library had Guilty Pleasures in the young adult section of the library ( I think because it was more on the adventure side then).

However, I like theory. It is what capitalism is all about-Creating new markets to get money. I just wish it didn't require so many brain cells dying to get to that point.

I just object to LKH claiming that she started out with "hard boiled detective fiction". No, sorry LKH, but my film noir just shot you in the head and ran down a dark alley to dump the gun and then framed the gumshoe hero.

I also object to LKH getting big and popular (really, I liked it when she was sorta on the fringe, but that was back when she was writing stuff with plot) because of all the clones that have flooded the genre -- and I cannot express how entirely fed up I am with the clones, and first person narrative of said clones. Seriously, I cannot even begin to care about whatever romantic problems said girl with superpowers may or may not have. I want corpses. I want gore. I want madness. GIVE ME BACK MY HORROR GENRE, BITCH! *cries* Goddamned chick lit.

On the subject of looking for new writers... I've been watching (or lurking) on this website of Rachel Vincent for quite awhile now. She has been writing a book, I think this is her first one, called Stray. Well, it is out in bookstores now (though the due date isn't til June). I scraped some money together to buy it and have begun reading the first chapter. So far, it's pretty good. The main character is a female (feline) shapeshifter. Anyway, the book looks promising. No excessive angst, there is 618 pages that look edited, interesting plot, and all for the reasonable paperback price of $6.99. This looks refreshing.

So, though I don't think that lkh has invented this genre, I'm glad that there are so many new writers out there to take a look at. In fact I look for the blurbs on the books that say "if you like early lkh, you'll love..." You do have to wade through a lot of crap to get to the good writers, but thank goodness there is quite a variety out there. Some have been around for awhile and just get better (Kim Harrison, Kelley Armstrong), there are some promising new talent (Rachel Vincent, Ilona Andrews, Vicki Pettersson) -- and sadly there is lkh. Just as sadly there is me, who continues to buy her books, waiting in vain so far for her to stop proving that she'll write whatever she wants, as badly as she wants, as long as she proves that we (the fans, or former fans) DO NOT GET TO QUESTION HER HIGHNESS! HER HIGHNESS MUST TAKE MANY BOOKS (and a lot of your money) TO WORK OUT AND BEAT TO DEATH THE ARDEUR/ARDER/ARDEUUUUER whatever. IT IS SO VERY IMPORTANT!!!!!

Okay then....

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NEW book coming out