Hamilton and her repetitive redundancy, in which she repeats herself repeatedly

[naeko.livejournal.com]

So, as you guys know (and as some of you probably hate), I've been going through the community from entry one and tagging everything. Obviously, to do this I've actually been reading a lot of the posts, to know what to tag things. I skim a lot, mainly looking for keywords, but the one thing I've noticed is that Hamilton has a finite number of blogs that she pretty much just posts over and over. There have been a few times that I've actually gone through the blog itself and read the entry, convinced that I just got done tagging that same blog flog not ten minutes ago.

I think 99% of her blogs can be summed up under the general topics that follow:
• "Woe, my deadline!"
• "Oh noes! I HAVE to write sex!"
• "Jon and I are awesome and not as goth as you think"
• "HALP! I HAVE TO TRAVEL FOR A TOUR WHATEVER WILL I DOOOO??"
• "I'm fighting with my characters!"
• "I am an awesome writer cuz I let my characters run freeeee!"
• "MY MOTHER IS DED! MY FAMILY IS BROKEN! I AM SOOO DAMAGED!"
• "I am a tortured artiste, and/or I know everything ever! Let me teach you all about it."
Topics made more ridiculous for humour's sake.

It's a pretty rare blog that doesn't fall under one of those loosely defined categories. It got me thinking about her books and the repetitive themes that they all follow, at this point. We pretty much all know she hasn't actually written a "new" book in awhile. Every book past Obsidian Butterfly could probably be summed up with extremely similar wording. Anita has to save the day; sex happens; her men angst; everything is fixed with sex-fu!

Speaking of sex, could anyone pick what sex scene is from what book, if you were to take out the men's names? Hell, leave them in and I'll bet you still couldn't tell.

The sad thing is, I don't think that Hamilton has any idea that her writing- every bit of it- has become a game of copy/paste. I think that a smart programmer could take her e-books and then write a program around them and make the computer write Hamilton's next "masterpiece." No one, not even the hardcore fangirls, would know. Hell, said programmer could probably add a blogging engine into that program and no one would even know that Hamilton had stopped.

Actually, maybe that's just what's happened! Jon is secretly an evil genius, and all his html/spelling/fashion mistakes are just designed to throw us off! He and Hamilton have moved to Guam, and they only show up to tours, spending the rest of their time getting paid to do nothing, while a poor, overworked program spits out all her blogs and books! She tweets a few times a day, but that's the extent of it, and I'm sure she's even got a document full of pre-written tweets that she just- ha ha!- copy/pastes when she needs to look busy. Evil geniuses, both of them!

Hmm, if only.

Comments

[archanglrobriel.livejournal.com]

They say Louis L'amour (he of the copious cowboy fiction) used to have four different typewriters with four different stories going at once. If there would've been a cut and paste utility at that time, I have no doubt he would've used it. So L.K. ain't the first and unfortunately I doubt she'll be the last.
I saw an article recently in which Laurel K. said that anybody who was writing vampire fiction now, especially in present day times, was mining a genre she established. No word yet on what Anne Rice thought of that little bit of hubris. Clearly someone is heavily buying into her own press...

[archanglrobriel.livejournal.com]

She sure did. I think it was in Entertainment Weekly's "Vampire" edition this summer. I was just kinda stunned that she would say that considering the fact that Anne Rice y'know...still exists and there were lots and lots of other writers who came out at about the same time she did who were working the modern day vampires genre. Poppy Z springs to mind and I know there are others. It just struck me as such a wildly arrogant, totally grandiose, utterly false, thoroughly Laurel K thing to say.

[oo3.livejournal.com]

Not just vampire romance but all vampire fiction? Seriously? Oh, LKH.

[runetraverse.livejournal.com]

Wait - wha - WHAT? *shakes head* My brain, it burns. Somehow, "the village just called - they're missing their idiot" doesn't even BEGIN to cover that little piece of WTF.

(for the record, I mean her claim of "establishing" vampire fiction, not L'amour - I've read his books, and yeah, some of 'em are fairly similar.)

[rameena.livejournal.com]

One thing that drives me crazy is not only the repetitiveness of her plots and stories, but the way she repeats herself in her writing. She constantly has paragraphs like, "Anita wore a red shirt. The shirt she wore was red. She took off her red shirt." (obviously not real, but im not near any books right now, so i cant find any examples.) But it makes me wonder if she has a specific word count she has to reach.

[sharkcowsheep.livejournal.com]

Her goal word count is acceptable novel length. Since she's got enough action for a slim novella, tops, damn right she's padding.

[sharkbytes.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking that that's why she no longer writes about the werewolves and the wererats...they were left out of the program that generates her new releases. Probably the work of Jon, lol.

I do think that in a lot of ways, LKH is feeling a bit threatened within her genre. Saying she started vampire fiction is absolutely ridiculous, and delusional because she was about 200 years too late. BUT (and allow me to play devil's advocate here) she did start writing at a time that there weren't a whole bunch of mainstream vampire series. And by mainstream I mean that they have a separate shelf in the book shop, and 9 out of 10 people know what you mean when you mention the character's name. Perfect example: One of my favorite series, the Blood Books by Tanya Huff (the first of which predates LKH by two years) were all but impossible to find in a book store until the vampire phenomenon hit and there was a tv series made. Now they have shiny new covers with the actors on them.


And there are tons of other examples; in fact, a lot of the vampire novels that are being pushed as new are in fact older books that didn't sell through the roof when they were first published (Vampire Diaries, for one)

I think a lot of these wanky interviews and her constant rush to publish her next book (run it through the generator! quick!) is at least somewhat related to LKH's utter shock that the market is glutted with vampire fiction right now, and people aren't exactly beating down her door with movie offers, hefty merchandising deals, and constant praise for her ~innovation~. She seems to have conveniently forgotten Stoker, Rice, Huff, Brite, Joss Whedon, and, hell, even Lord Byron.

It kind of reminds me of how Paris Hilton must be feeling right now, lol. Sitting back and wondering how so many young celebrities are getting famous for partying non-stop, having a sex-tape, and winding up on the wrong side of the law. She was one of the first of her generation, sure, but tons of far more talented hollywood personalities did it way before she did.

[naeko.livejournal.com]

I always end up playing devil's advocate when this conversation comes up; LKH never said she invented vampire fiction or even paranormal romance. She said she pioneered it, in that the success of her ABVH books is most of what made the genre explode into what it is now. From my experiences reading her books back in the mid-90s, I completely believe that to be true. When I first started reading her, not only could I not find much that was similar to her, but I had strangers everywhere telling me they loved her books when I would read them in public. People knew who she was, but could never name anyone that wrote quite what she did.

I can completely see where you're coming from, too. I'll admit that she may have been the driving force behind all the pure shit that's hit the shelves right now (I won't admit it's a good thing, though ;), but because the genre is so stuffed, her books are in danger of being forgotten. Should this happen, it would be both because she may not survive the over-saturation and because there are so many alternatives that she may not be a best-seller even if she does pull through.

[telaryn.livejournal.com]

Oh just wait - IFC (Independent Film Channel) is supposedly developing an AB:VH series last I heard.

[sharkbytes.livejournal.com]

That's exactly what I mean...not that she's totally deluded herself into thinking she did it first, but that she hung on and thrived during the time when you really couldn't get too much vampire fiction unless you were ordering the fanzines. You articulated it far better than I did!


I'm not even faulting her for being worried/annoyed about it; in fact, I bet it really sucks to hear people saying how Twilight single-handedly brought vampires into the mainstream when you've been writing them for almost twenty years and somehow, without the rabid teen fans and such, managed to make a few bestseller lists.

That icon! I love it so.

The original quote

[naeko.livejournal.com]

The quote was brought up a a few months ago (http://community.livejournal.com/lkh_lashouts/494012.html), and, unless it was mistyped, it was, "Stephenie Meyer has come and she’s taken the genre that I sort of pioneered."

She often talks about how she pioneered the paranormal romance genre, and she says frequently that she's the reason it's popular, but I've never actually read her saying she invented it.

[shalanar.livejournal.com]

See, in the mid 90's when LKH was 'pioneering' the genre, I was reading Anne Rice, LJ Smith, and Mercedes Lackey. There were plenty of books on the market at that time that were the same genre, and all of them came first. I think the reason LKHs books were so popular is that they were accessible. They weren't YA (like LJ Smith), but they also weren't obnoxiously long (as some of Anne Rice's were), and that's all she was known for writing (unlike Mercedes Lackey)...so she became identifiable as a vampire writer whose books were easier to read than Dracula, and not as sexual as Anne Rice, etc, etc...

She helped pioneer the genre, certainly, but in no way is she solely responsible for it, and it is hubris on her part to think so .

[pandaemonaeum.livejournal.com]

Stoker, Rice, Huff, Brite, Joss Whedon, and, hell, even Lord Byron.

Actually, Lord Byron never wrote a vampire novel. It was his physician, John Polidori. However, he did base the main character on Byron, and it was written after the challenge on Lake Geneva, so it's disputed to this day. Byron himself disowned the piece, despite contemporary reviews which say things like "the greatest thing Lord Byron has written".

I don't get the Whedon thing either, as the AB:VH novels are not YA, and came out around the same time as the series aired. I don't think that there are enough similarities personally. Of course, BTVS just didn't appeal to me that much. I watched the film because Rutger Hauer was in it, but the TV series was too angsty for me.

[sehkmetschild.livejournal.com]

I think the latest Anita book is the best she's done in a while and it is specifically because she didn't have sex until the 375th page (then of course it fell back in line with the other ones.)

Although, we know she's in Vegas, LKH, you didn't need to tell us every friggin' page!

I think her two best books were Killing Dance and Blue Moon (Maybe Obsidian Butterfly if I'm in a bitchy mood).

[sehkmetschild.livejournal.com]

Agreed.

Buffy TVS the show came out in '97 though, four years after the first Anita. The movie came out a year before the first book, but LKH says she shopped it for four years.

The IFC is actually making Anita movies the first one slated to air next summer.

[pandaemonaeum.livejournal.com]

See, should could still have been Queen of the Genre, if only she hadn't introduced Micah/ Nathaniel. I think she could have gotten away with the ardeur, and even some of the supersparklyspeshul powers, but when you add in the ultimate yes-men and eliminate the sexual tension in favour of orgies, you lose sight of the original books.

What annoys me is that she was about to hit the bestseller lists without adding all the stuff everyone here hates to the books; Obsidian Butterfly had come out in hardcover, and publishers don't do that if they aren't going to shift units.

[magdalen77.livejournal.com]

I know, OB is the only LKH book that I ever bought in hardcover. I think I started reading her books around about CoD. I remember waiting for Lunatic Cafe to come out. This really pisses me off. I used to wait longingly for these books to come out. I'm glad that I read NiC at the bookstore before I bought it or I would have been po'ed at wasting the money for hardcover.

uh-huh redux

[cherose228.livejournal.com]

Hi, all:

Yeah. right. It was SUPPOSED to be out at Christmas, too. First it was a series, then a set of tv movies, then a series again. This is, what? the third or fourth time that somebody's tried to buy the books to make a series/movie out of it, isn't it? Is it out there yet? no!

DO you really think that lkh will give up creative control and allow ANYBODY to edit her deathless prose, as Charlaine Harrison did?

Yeah, I believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, too.

-,'-,'-,'--@

Re: uh-huh redux

[magdalen77.livejournal.com]

Hey, but it might be as good as the comic books. :P

Re: uh-huh redux

[cherose228.livejournal.com]

Hi, Mags:

GODDESS . . . what a TERRIBLE thought.

BRAIN BLEACH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

-,'-,'-,'-,'--@

Re: uh-huh redux

[magdalen77.livejournal.com]

If it actually gets made I expect it to be every bit as "good" as the comic books. Like you said, she won't give up any artistic control and I'm sure she'll insist upon all of her "deathless" prose being used in the script. Can you image a tiny, whiny, trashy twat who's dumber than a stump solving paranormal mysteries. Like the mystery of where JC's balls went.

Re: uh-huh redux

[the-mome-wrath.livejournal.com]

LKH will probably insist on having a cameo in it as well >.

[denelian.livejournal.com]

BTVS may be marketed as "YA", but TV is different than written - the people to whom BTVS was *aimed* were "young professionals" - that lucrative just-graduated-from-college age bracket 22-28 or so market (although every friggen place has it's own specific field - 18-25, or 20-29, or whatever) which is not, strictly speaking, YA - YA is fiction targeted primarily towards people 17 or younger.

Re: The original quote

[x-trickster-x.livejournal.com]

I gotta say I do agree with her on that. A lot of modern paranormal/romance is just LKH with different names.

[x-trickster-x.livejournal.com]

And then Polidori (probably) killed himself. Sad times. The Vampyre always seems to be forgotten but I think it's had more influence on the genre than people give it credit for. Lord Ruthven has more in common with modern vampires than Dracula does and it was the first English vampire story.

But then again, I'm weird because I preferred it (and Carmilla) to Dracula (awesome book, matter of preference) even though I hate Anne Rice-style vampires with a passion.

Re: uh-huh redux

[naeko.livejournal.com]

I don't know where you got that it's coming out for Christmas; none of the press releases said any specifics, as far as I read. A few gave a general statement that it would be out in 2010, but I haven't seen anything that said when, next year.

[naeko.livejournal.com]

Her exact quotes (http://community.livejournal.com/lkh_lashouts/494416.html) on the matter follow:

Why do I say I pioneered the genre if there were books before? I’ve never said I invented the sub-genre, only that I pioneered it or popularized it. ... What I’ve been hearing from writers and editors for years is that my books have helped them sell theirs, or made the editors want to buy things like mine; Hamiltonesque. I mean there were techno-thrillers before Tom Clancy, but his popularity made the genre into the monster it became. Someone has to sell well enough before there’s enough market for other people to jump on the bandwagon. No one blinks in publishing at the idea of mixing vampires and supernatural beings with anything now. It’s all game, though nothing is quite as hot as vampires right now.
(bolding mine)

She even admitted that there were books before hers and that she didn't invent vampires or the genre. She's saying she popularized it, that the success of her books paved the way for the genre explosion. However, she seems to think that's a good thing, which I disagree with, strongly. I think the glut of paranormal romance out there is a terrible thing.

Re: uh-huh redux

[cherose228.livejournal.com]

Hi, naeko:

Release date of the Merry book is 8 December 2009.

SORRY! I got the two series mixed up, since that's all she's been talking and plogging and TwitIdioting about for the last several months now. NOT that it makes a difference, does it?

No matter what, the next book is going to be the same fubar, the same dreck and the same excuses for lateness - isn't it.

-,'-,'-,'--@

[flaveur.livejournal.com]

I'm personnally very fond of the shorts novels of Barbara Hambly. Very very fond. old style, i know, but she's a good writer, easy to read, and with PLOT. Very english too. I like english style.

"My name is Don Simon Xavier Christian Morado de la Cadena-Ysidro, and I am what you call a vampire."
-Ysidro

With a so wonderfull name.... and subtil writing, I hightly recommande Immortal Dead ant Those who travel with the dead. A pity she did'nt make more with Ysidro. Well, you can consol yourself with other work of her. (WinterLand with the dragons, a very good serie too). It was WAY before Hamilton, maybe even before Rice ? Not sure there.

And to say, in the translate french version, it seems you have less of these repetitions. Hehe. Obsidian is out, and I Can't Wait to see the reactions of the french fans. Niark.

And in post-it, I want to say that.

Vampyr Don't Sparkle. No NO NO.
it's possible for Fairies, Sidhes and other being probably, but Not Vampyr. GRAH

I amuse myself to think what Don Simon or Alucard from Hellsing will say when confronted with that one, and shudder for Meyer. In glee.

[pd-singer.livejournal.com]

Much love for Barbara Hambly's take on vampires- they are properly dangerous. Don Simon would never consider sparkling, and even his cats are afraid of him.

[naeko.livejournal.com]

1. You should make a new post about this so everyone sees it! We love book recommendations (http://community.livejournal.com/lkh_lashouts/tag/book+recommendations) here at lashouts!

2. Speaking of post-its, about a year and a half ago, I started what I call The Anti-LKH Ninja Post-it Campaign. Basically, anytime I go into bookstores, I slap a few post-its onto Hamilton's (and Chance's (http://community.livejournal.com/like_zorro/1208.html), now. UGH!) books that say, basically, "Don't spend money on her! She's not worth it!"


(I have an action shot, here (http://pics.livejournal.com/naeko/pic/002sqp23))

[flaveur.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and I like the fact the hero is a bitter guy that know he is weak against those. And is really intelligent, not in the whoua I'm the best, but in the real side with studies and experience, with background and all. Weeell I've got to go read those two again... for the hundred time.
And I don't mind at all that James is older than his wife. And have a mustache. Have To Read it Again.
And I'm so taken by those, I've almost forgotten the subject.

I think nobody like the repetitive in any book. It's hardly evitable in any series, and I've been tinking it's the tink that make you really like or not an author. it's what you can recognize a Style.
It's what make a difference in a good or bad Author.

With a good author, the repetitive doesn't bother you. Because the style is so good, the phrase are so finely conceveid and it's edited.

That's all I think.

[alex-lebeau.livejournal.com]

Is it easy to find her books? I know a lot of vampire books I have that I would cheerfully recommend are difficult to find outside of Half Price books or Powell's; they simply aren't printed anymore.

[zombiexbunny.livejournal.com]

That is just awesome....