The Tale of a Disenchanted Creative Writing Major

[spittingfish.livejournal.com]

Hello! I'm new here, been a lurker, but I think I've finally hit my breaking point.  Like the title says I'm doing a double major featuring Creative Writing at a fine university in St. Louis Missouri.  When I first started reading LKH I was like, "Wow, an author who lives by me, describes the roads I drive down, etc, *insert general awesome qualities here*".  That was before the darkness struck or, in laymen's terms, everything after Obsidian Butterfly. 

I've continued to buy LKH's books, even purchasing Blood Noir, more because it's like, "being unable to look away from the train wreck" and because I get great prices at Barnes&Nobles then because I'm "so in love with Anita Blake, OMG!1!!".  I never finished The Harlequin.  But, after falling asleep reading the catastrophe which is BN, THREE nights in a row and finally forcing myself through the pages I am just... so done. 

I think for me the moment I realized I could never respect LKH as anything other then a goth-darkity-dark 15 year old in a grown woman's body was when it hit me that LKH is posing for Anita Blake and finally through this delightful little conversation I got a chance to have with her.  I've written quite a bit over the years and when I got a chance to meet her I had just killed off one of my most beloved characters for the benefit of a plot.  (Because you know, sometimes, an author is actually in charge of a story versus her make-believe friends handling the circus) It was hard, as most people know, but I'm brave little engine so I pushed through it.  Little did I know that when you're a world famous author things like death have no such designs on your work!  If only I'd been told this before!  Because as LKH very sweetly informed me, "she doesn't kill off the people that she loves".  Well... doesn't that just make me a right B.

Silly me, assuming that the real world still bore any semblance in LKH fiction.  Silly me for believing that, if people die in the real world, people are bound to die in the fake world too.  Silly, oh so silly, me.

And no LKH, killing off a random character is not the same as killing off one of the fifty leading men.  It's just not.

Comments

[moonsinger.livejournal.com]

Go to some writers cons and meet other writers. So many of them are cool people and not stuck on themselves and their ART (if that's what you call the soft core badly written porn that LKH is writing these days).

[dreamstrifer.livejournal.com]

Hey, another St. Louis area person!

What university do you go to?

[spittingfish.livejournal.com]

Webster. =P I'm double majoring in Creative Writing and Film Production. Yay for being artsy-fartsy.

[dreamstrifer.livejournal.com]

Ah, Webster. A good friend of mine goes there. I was thinking about it, but my parents made me go to the cheap school first (and as they were paying for it, there you go).

And hey, you're artsy fartsy, but I'm a music major theater minor so there you go. :-)

[spittingfish.livejournal.com]

Yeah I'm paying for it all so I took the plunge and decided to be in debt till I'm 183 years old.

My sister's a music major. Ah Saint Louis, such a wealth of artistic people... where did LKH go wrong?!

[dreamstrifer.livejournal.com]

Well, St. Louis also has some pretty stupid people (I know, I waited on most of them at my old job). I don't actually live in STL per se, but 12 miles across the river (close enough to go there all the time for everything).

[no-ron.livejournal.com]

in her head.

[lucidscreamer.livejournal.com]

:snerk: This is true.

[bookgroper]

When I first started reading her books I had the same reaction you did. There was a certain little thrill to recognizing locations in a book, which doesn't happen that often when you live here. :D
You certainly lasted longer than I did! I haven't been able to bring myself to buy another of her books after Cerulean Sins (the plot of which I had forgotten to the point I wasn't sure I'd read it by the time ID came out) and Incubus Dreams (which I didn't finish for a couple of years because I couldn't get past the first 50 pages)-- both of which I bought in hardcover, what a waste-- and I don't think I'll even be borrowing BN. I've just heard too much about it already.

[spittingfish.livejournal.com]

Yeah, she'd mention Watson or one of the highways and I'd be all giddy like a four year old just discovering those massive lollipops. "What?! I drove down that YESTERDAY!" *facepalm*

No more of that.

Now I'm trying to figure out where the best place is to sell all my hardbacks. I even got one of them signed so I'm thinking I might try my hand at Amazon. >.> Lucky me for keeping all my books in good shape, hopefully all those head=desk inducing migraines will offer me some profit!

[popelizbet.livejournal.com]

If you want urban fantasy set in your city that doesn't completely suck rocks, try M.R. Sellars. :D

[spittingfish.livejournal.com]

Ooo I'll be sure to check that out, thanks!

[popelizbet.livejournal.com]

He's awesome, and pretty nice in person too. No vamps and werewolves, but otherworldly goodness and police procedure (actual police procedure at that.)