Why the downfall?

[easol.livejournal.com]

Hi, I'm new here. ;) Please don't toast me.

Anyway, I just wanted to ask if anyone knows why the Anita Blake series crashed and burned so dramatically. I've seen basically two types of series crumbling: the slow, steady variety (Anne Rice, Patricia Cornwell), and the kind where the author keeps things interesting for maybe two books, then suddenly crashes down into tedium (Robert Jordan).

But I have NEVER, EVER seen an author continue more or less steadily, with some improvement, and then very dramatically change the entire GENRE of the storyline while crashing artistically. The authors I mentioned always more or less maintain their own style; even when they deteriorate, they are remaining within the original parameters of their series. But LKH didn't just descend into tedium or bad writing, she threw out the very bones of the series.

Did she have some sort of midlife crisis, or a mental illness, or something of the sort? Does anyone know why she changed everything but the character names?

(By the by, a little "hi" and wave to anyone who posts over at the LKH Harlequin board on amazon! Snark forever, luvvies!).

Comments

[nightangel486.livejournal.com]

I think the ex-husband theory probably has some amount of weight to it. I mean you take a woman who already has issues and difficulty handling things, and put her through a divorce, and suddenly the books are her way of coping, not just with the death of her mother or insecurity about her appearance or writing, but with whether she, as a darkity dark person, can be loved. Anita has so many problems with trust and so many supposedly satisfying sexual relationships with mens she "loves" that it's pretty obvious that the divorce just switched the books from her dealing with past problems to dealing with the ones her divorce created.

So yeah basically I think the books were kind of always about LKH finding a way to try to cope with things, but not succeeding, as as more issues cropped up the books became more and more about her working through them or trying to satisfy herself.