Bookflog: Flirt chapter one

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The first chapter of Flirt is available to download on LKH's site! It's 18 pages of unformatted, PDF joy.  According to the promo page, this is what the book is about:

When Anita Blake meets with prospective client Tony Bennington, who is desperate to have her reanimate his recently deceased wife, she is full of sympathy for his loss. Anita knows something about love, and she knows everything there is to know about loss. But what she also knows, though Tony Bennington seems unwilling to be convinced, is that the thing she can do as a necromancer isn't the miracle he thinks he needs. The creature that Anita could coerce to step out of the late Mrs. Bennington's grave would not be the lovely Mrs. Bennington. Not really. And not for long.

This just makes me think that Anita will stand on the edge of the grave and wave Scooby Snacks over it, or have a fishing pole with marshmallows on the hooks while she coos, "c'mon, if you don't get out of your grave, I'm going to kick your dog."

It also says this about the book's release date:



I had to ask someone just in case it was a strange American crazy vowel thing, but apparently not. Oh dear.

The first thing that hits me about this PDF isn't just that it's got all its formatting marks in there and there's, like, zero effort to make it presentable, but that the formatting is eerily similar to that of Micah with the GIANT FONT SPACES AND MARGINS in an effort to pad the book out more than it should be.

Here's a screenshot to show you what I mean:



And here's a couple of pages from Micah:



And what's worse, the chapter beginning starts halfway down the page so there's fields of blank space before you even start.  I weep for the trees that will be used in this thing, and I really hope they don't follow through on copying the Micah format when each chapter got its own title page as well as starting each new chapter halfway down the next page.

Annnnd straight away we're in dire straits, as this is the opener for the book:

"I want you to raise my wife from the dead, Ms. Blake," Tony Bennington said, in a voice that matched the expensive suit and the flash of Rolex on his right wrist. It probably meant he was a lefty.  Not that his handedness mattered, but you learn to notice primary hands when people try to kill you on a semiregular basis.

It's nice to see a man who can coordinate his voice with his outfit and accessories.  Though, this does not necessarily mean that he's left-handed, nor does wearing his watch on the right mean this. Some people just like wearing their watch on their right hand. I don't know how many of them can get their voice to match it, though.

Not to mention, if it doesn't even matter if he's a lefty or a righty, why even bring it up? This whole thing might make more sense if Tony Bennington was trying to kill Anita (with his left hand!) in one of those semiregular attempts on her life.

But alas, this is not to be.

"My condolences," I said automatically, because Bennington didn't display any grief. His face was composed, almost blank, so that if he was handsome in that gray-haired, I'm-over-fifty-but-keep-in-good-shape way, the lack of expression took all the fun out of it. Maybe the blankness was his way of showing grief, but his gray eyes were steady and cold as they met mine. It was either some steely control of grief, or he didn't feel anything about his wife's death; that would be interesting.

*massages temples* Hold on a second and let me dissect this:

Bennington didn't display any grief.

Maybe the blankness was his way of showing grief.

It was either some steely control of grief, or he didn't feel anything about his wife's death;

PICK ONE. NO, REALLY, JUST FUCKING PICK ONE AND RUN WITH IT! And then, wow, what a revelation it would if the heroine found out later that she was wrong about reading her client's lack of expression.

But FOR THE LOVE OF RAINBOW-FARTING-PONIES, do not keep going with the "it was one thing, but not, only it was, but sort of wasn't," crap because this sort of unnecessary waffle makes everyone's eyes glaze over and the confusion of "wait, what? What the hell does this even mean? DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?" starts. Or maybe it's just Cassie Palmer me.

His face was composed, almost blank, so that if he was handsome in that gray-haired, I'm-over-fifty-but-keep-in-good-shape way, the lack of expression took all the fun out of it.

Cute older guy in the office, I get that part. But just back up a second here, the guy's wife is dead. I don't think he's going to be a barrel of laughs and the bestest guy to have around for fun stories around a campfire or strip club (remember that time when we had to bury a hooker out in the desert and then got totally drunk and punched a bear? GOODTIMES). But maybe not being so much fun is part of that crazy grief thing that may or may not be (but is? Or isn't?) going on.

Anita asks Tony why he'd like his wife raised as a zombie (...my first guess is that because she's dead - living people don't exactly zombify too well and there's all the yelling and screaming when you bury them), and he replies that he's willing to pay her ridiculously expensive rates, it really shouldn't matter.  Anita pithily replies with "It does, to me." and this pisses Tony off so that he snaps that it's "personal" and Anita "doesn't need to know it to raise [his wife] as a zombie."

Anita's big comeback is, "This is my job," and "You don't know what I need to raise a zombie." The zombie is not going to go to high school, let alone college. I'm pretty sure you don't need to start a trust fund for it, just buy it some lamb to munch on every now and then and you'll be okay. Remember, kids, a zombie isn't just for Christmas, it's a committment until it finally decomposes or you put it back. Also, don't poke the zombie with a stick, they can't feel it and you might pop something that oozes gross stuff that stinks. And then who'll be cleaning it up? You will be. Don't think that you won't.

Tony proves that he can Google zombies, and says his wife hasn't been murdered, wasn't a witch, or "gone near any other religion that might make her more than a normal zombie" - wtaf? Religion can now fuck with your mad zombie raising skills? PS, WHEN WILL THE FUCKERY ABOUT MURDER VICTIM ZOMBIES GOING ON A RAMPAGE END? This is my personal crusade for book canon consistency, I have been so OMFGNO about it since it first turned up in Incubus Dreams. I am not letting this go until I get some kind of answer.

However, lolling over the wife being raised "as a vengeful flesh-eating monster." Just...what the hell does he think zombies eat, regardless of vengeance? No, really. I want to know. I don't think you can buy zombie kibble. (Does Soylent Green count?)

Anyway, Anita is like "Wow, you really did do your reaserch, but I still need a reason," and being paid really isn't enough. I want to live in this crazy world where I can have a really great paying job, but still have the power to say "fuck you," to my boss and to clients because it's their fault for not giving me a good enough reason to do what they're asking (and paying) me to do. Honest to god, why the hell does Bert even keep her around? She's missed N many days at the office due to fuckery with vampires and lycanthropes, being beat up, being arrested that one time (and still somehow working with the police). I don't even know if Bert knows that she's in the office today. If he does, he'd probably have a heart attack that Ms Entitlement Bitch has deigned them with her glorious presence.

Man, I just realised that Anita is That Person in the office that everyone hates. You know the one.  If nothing else, she should get fired for pissing off her clients.

Back to the story -- Anita still wants to know why this guy wants his wife zombified, and we're treated to this stunning piece of conversation:

"What do you hope to gain from [having your wife raised as a zombie]?"
 
"Gain," he said, "I don't know what you mean by that."
 
"I don't, either, but you keep not answering my original question; I thought maybe if I rephrased it you would."
 
"I don't want to answer either question," he said.
 
"Then I won't raise your wife. There are other animators at Animators Inc. who will be hapy to take your money and they don't charge my rates."
 
"Everyone says you are the best."
 
I shrugged. I was never sure what to say to things like that, and found silence worked best."

Okay, fine, let the client go to one of the other animators! Let that guy get a nice commission on a zombie well done. But nooo, let's just now pander to Anita's sense of awesome. Tony's Googled her! He knows that she's a necromancer! And has killed a lot of monsters!

I shrugged. "That's a matter of record, so yeah, but it has no bearing on what you want from me, Mr. Bennington."
 
"I suppose it has as little to do with my request as your reputation as a sort of female Casanova."

O SNAP. I like this guy. Now I'm going to be picturing him as Jeffrey Dean Morgan. I hope this doesn't mean I just condemned Tony to die.

Anita goes on the defensive to say that this has nothing to do with raising a zombie (WHICH IS WHAT HE JUST SAID!), but then Tony continues to sass with, "If you can truly control all manner of undead, then it might explain how you can slay vampires and still date them."

ZING! I really love Tony right now.

Anita goes off into an internal monologue about Jean-Claude, where he stands in their relationship (hint: somewhere near the back of the closet, but not quite in Narnia) and says, "Jean-Claude and I were in the papers recently, so that didn't take much research."

That's your cutting comeback? "Hey wow, you can read something that wasn't on the internet. Or maybe it was. Anyway, you can read. Go you." Anita gets all embarrassed because Tony said she was PRETTY and then Anita does that thing where she realises she's dumb but still can't figure out what's she's missed in her state of dumb. There's no clarification as to what that thing might be, and she doesn't even ask.

Tony says that he needs to know how much of her reputation is bollocks, and Anita replies, "I've earned my reputation," YES, YES YOU HAVE, SWEETIE. But she continues to say that she doesn't raise zombies "for kicks, or thrill seekers, or tormented relatives unless they have a plan."

Wait. Wait. What. So, you can't raise a zombie just to say goodbye to a loved one? You can't be a tormented relative with a will despute? What about that guy that abused his daughter, she killed herself, and he had her raised as a zombie and refused to put her back? Anita sure as hell made an exception on that one, albeit to put her back rather than dig her up. She also stepped in real quick in GP to help Zach raise a zombie so that vampires could torture it. She's accdientally raised zombies, too.

Oh my god, and then it gets dumb again:

"A plan, what kind of plan?"
 
"You tell me. Why--do--you--want--your--wife--raised--as--a--zombie?"
 
"I understood the question, Ms. Blake; you don't have to say it slowly."
 
"Then answer the question, or this interview is over."

Yes, let's talk to the paying client who Googled your embarrassing public love-life like he's a retarded toddler. That'll totally win him over and get him to confess his dark desires for his zombie!wife.

Tony sits and stews, and Anita gets up to leave. She'd "been polite because [she] knew how much money he'd paid just to talk to [her], and since [she] was going to refuse [she] wanted him to feel he'd gotten something for his money, but [she]'d had enough."

Really? This kind of behaviour is appalling to me. If this is her definition of polite, Anita needs to be slapped with a frozen fish and sent to deportment college. At least there, she'd learn how to sit in a chair with her knees together. This could be a valuable life skill.

But threatening to walk out and leave the client without her awesomesauce is enough to get him to spill! There isn't much left of Deady McWife because she was exploded. No, really. She was exploded. Other animators need a reasonably intact corpse, and well...Anita's raised zombies with much, much less. This is actualfax book canon rather than fanciful retconning (iirc, this would be Bloody Bones when Anita raised the Bouvier ascendants). So, Laurell gets a star for remembering this much. But not a gold one. Maybe a yellow one.

I'm going to take a moment here to just pause. It's been six pages of text to basically lay out all this; one third of the opening chapter to assert that Anita is a bitch even under the best circumstances and has no respect for grieving widowers, even ones that can read and use Google.

Seriously, if she'd been trying to grill me about raising a zombie, I'd probably just throw out, "necrophilia," as a reason, and watch her get squicked. She asked for a reason, doesn't mean it has to be the honest or even right one. Barring that, "FOR GREAT JUSTICE!" is always a good one.

Okay, back to the chapter. And oh man, way to continue to be a dick, Anita. She points out that yes, she can raise an awesome zombie and sometimes they don't even realise that they're dead, but Tony can't keep his zombie wife. She'll rot. And he's suddenly turned into a mess of, "NO ONLY YOU CAN DO THIS THING!" and Anita's like "WELL IF I COULD RESURRECT HER FOR REALS, I TOTALLY WOULD. BUT I CAN'T."

Or she could just put the woman's soul back into her body and stop the corpse from rotting like Dominga Salvador did in The Laughing Corpse. It might not be a true resurrection, but it's the next best thing.

This is like a broken record. Anita says again that she can't resurrect Tony's dead wife. He gives her a plaintive look and asks,  "It's too late for her to be a vampire, then?"

I SHOULD THINK SO, WHAT WITH HER BEING EXPLODED.

Anita waffles that it probably is too late, because the wife would have needed to have been bitten by a vampire before she died.  And then she exploded. There's more monologue about how fire kills pretty much everything, and it's really difficult to raise a zombie from chargrilled jerky pieces. But, Tony does make a good point in asking if it's the fire itself that presents a problem with the zombie raising rather than the chargrilled jerky pieces themselves, and Anita has to mull it over. She doesn't give him an answer, because she doesn't think it's ever happened.

In any case, she starts to show him out, and Tony points out that Anita's dating Jean-Claude, so if she can't bring back Tony's wife, then maybe JC can. Anita has to repeat that no, rules is rules and the wife would have needed to be bitten and not exploded for this to work. She also monologues internally about how she's JC's human servant and the police mistrust her because of it.

Then it gets creepy with Tony asking if Anita could raise the wife so that she didn't realise she was dead. Anita says yes, she's done it, but points out the whole rotting thing while Tony is like "I just want to say goodbye! I want to be with her!" And Anita takes a moment to be "Ew, necrophilia? Do not want." No, really. "I almost asked if by 'be with her,' he meant sex, but I did not want to know. I didn't need to know because I wasn't raising this zombie."

I was having a discussion the other night about how this is a sad indictment on Anita and the series in that she automatically assumes this is a sexual thing. The guy's wife died in a horrible manner, and he wants to say goodbye. For all we know, he would want to take her on a picnic at the beach at sunset and appreciate the person she used to be. It doesn't have to be about getting your freak on.

Anyway, Anita goes back into monologuing that sometimes zombies have been raised for surprise! necrophilia and there's something now in the contracts that they make very clear to clients that zombies will not be raised for these purposes. If you want a zombie, it goes back in the ground the same night as it was raised.  Foo to that, Dominga Salvador was pimpin' corpses and rolling in the dough.

But foo, looks like I won't be getting zombie!sex in the books after all. "[Anita]'d seen too many zombies to think sex was ever a good idea with the shambling dead." WAY TO DASH MY HOPES, LAURELL. You're abandoning the crack! And since LKH has claimed that she hasn't found her squick limit in writing porn, I ask why the hell not have zombie!sex? If Anita can raise a zombie that's so alive that it doesn't realise that it's dead, where is the squick factor?

For the record, I do not support necrophilia. But for the purposes of AB:VH Sex Bingo, there should totally be a zombie square. And one could argue that boning vampires is technically necrophilia because they're dead too. So, if Anita hasn't got any problems with doing vampires, she really shouldn't have a problem with a well-raised, non-rotting zombie.

Anita shows Tony the door. Again. Still? IDEK. He leaves.

And then Nathaniel shows up, and Anita's brain totally shorts out. God, I don't need to read Nathaniel's description again, I know who he is.

But lol.

I tried to look reasonably intelligent before he turned around, beacuse if just seeing him from behind made me stupid-faced, the front view was better.

BOY PRETTY, ANITA LIKEY. This could be why Nathaniel has such long hair, so she can club him over the head and drag him back to her cave.

Oh look, and Jason's here too.

He had that look in his eyes, that mischievous look that said he was going to push his luck in some way. There was no malice to Jason, just an overly developed sense of fun. I gave him the frown that should have told him, Don't do anything that I'll regret. It did no good to say he would regret it, because he wouldn't.

Everyone take this opportunity to go get a sandwich while we're treated to his description. Or just stand there with a coffee and mock it.

What made Jason appealing -- than the blue eyes, the yellow-blond hair now long enough that he'd started having Nathaniel French-braid it for dance class, which was where they'd been, which explained the almost-not-there tank tops and shorts, which showed that he had his own muscular and very nice body, all packed into a nice five-foot, four-inch frame -- wasn't the packaging, it was that grin, that light of mischief that made his eyes bright with thinking naughty thoughts.

THIS IS ONE SENTENCE. brb, weeping for the English language.

Not sex, though that was in there, but just a host of things he knew he shouldn't do, but so wanted to do.

Yes, it's totally necessary to tack that onto the end to clarify everything that that was already said in the previous paragraph.

To cut off any boy related shenanigans before they even start, Anita loudly offers more condolences on the late Mrs Bennington, which makes Jason shut up, but Nathaniel, the sensitive soul that he is, continues to melt Anita's ovaries.

[Nathaniel] knew what kind of work I did, and knew that I dealt with more grieving relatives than most police.
 
I had a moment to see those huge violet eyes, like an Easter surprise in a face that was somewhere between beautiful and handsome. I could never decide if it was the eyes or all that hair, then he'd put the hair back so you could see the face, and I'd gazed at him often enough asleep to know that he was just that beautiful.

...okay, dissection time again.

[Nathaniel] knew what kind of work I did, and knew that I dealt with more grieving relatives than most police.

O RLY? I'm gonna guess it has something to do with raising people from the dead. You don't usually deal with grieving relatives when police have to bust up a rowdy party, or issue a speeding ticket.

On a side note, why is it that none of the animators have to go through some kind of grief counselling course so that they can handle other people's trauma in a more effective and possibly even helpful manner? Why isn't there a psychologist on staff to help both clients and the animators deal with their issues? Do animators hang out with funeral directors and coroners for support?

...face that was somewhere between beautiful and handsome

...I'd gazed on him often enough asleep to know that he was just that beautiful.

So he's beautiful. Not handsome, or stuck in-between, he's definitely beautiful. And Anita is Edward Cullen in watching Nathaniel sleep. I'll bet she'd oil his window, too.

JFC, why so clinical in "the face" and "the hair" -- they're totally attached to a living breathing dude that's standing right there, not this abstract wig or face just floating around in the admin area. That sort of thing only happens around Picasso, Dali and Jackson Pollock.

Too soon?

Tony finally notices the guys that Anita is all but drooling over, and asks her to introduce him to them. Wait, what? Tony's still there? He left already. *scrolls* No, he did. But now he's inexplicably back. Cher's had less farewells.

Anita replies, "Maybe they're not mine to introduce,"even though she's still stupid-facing over them in the worst possible way. Tony further dazzles with his knowledge of Google and says tha the knows the guys are strippers at Guilty Pleasures.  This is a great opportunity for Anita to infodump about stripper names, and why the guys have them. Because there might be someone who reads this book who has never seen an episode of Law & Order, or any other cop show, and they may not know these things. The information stream turns to how there's still discrimination against shapeshifters, legal hunting due to varmint laws, and how Anita is some kind of "living vampire" thanks to all the metaphysical fuckery with marks with JC, some wiki on JC including his entire life history starting with Belle Morte, the need to feed on "love and lust as well as blood, but I'd inherited the need to feed through sex and love. If I didn't feed periodically I began to die."

It doesn't take a biology degree to realise that. Food = not dying.

But this is where we get to marvel at how selfish Anita is, because she admits that she could be stubborn enough to refuse to feed the ardeur and die anyway, but then Nathaniel would die and Damian would die, and Jason possibly could die. Everyone dies. Woe. But it's okay because she's getting good at controlling herself now! (She's been saying this since Incubus Dreams) And the guys are getting really good at controlling there lycanthrope-ness so they appear to be normal, so normal that even she can't sense their beasts.

Meanwhile, everyone's just standing there. Tony gets out his phone! "It was one of those phones with the big screen so you could watch video on it, if you don't mind having the picture be the size of your palm." The wonders of technology never cease. So, he scrolls through and finds a photo of his wife to show everyone. Jason does not recognise her, neither does Nathaniel. Tony gets his Batman on because HIS WIFE IS DEEEAAAAD! and then basically shoves the photo in Anita's face.

The woman was blond, and beautiful in that Hollywood way, so that she was truly beautiful bu tthere was nothing to make her stand out from a dozen other blond beauties. It was a type of attractiveness that always seemed artificial, as if they were all made at the same factory and sent out into the world to seduce and marry well.

Oh that explains everything. The wife was a tall pretty blonde, naturally she had to die horribly by being exploded. *facepalm* What are the odds that she was also evil in some way?

Nathaniel said, "I'm sorry."
 
"Why are you sorry?" [Bennington] asked, and that flash of anger was back.
 
"Anita said she was sorry for your loss; isn't your wife who you lost?"
 
Bennington nodded.
 
"Then I am sorry."

No, Nathaniel, she's dead. "Lost" implies that she might be under a couch cushion, with some lint, spare change, a remote, and Jesus. Or possibly wandering around a tropical island with Matthew Fox.

Anita goes to let Tony out....again, only this time Micah shows up. Cue more brainsplosion.

Micah had been planning to join us for lunch, if he could, and there he was, joining us. He stepped in, my height with brown hair that curled past his shoulders, tied back in a ponytail that had too many curls to make his hair lie flat. His eyes were green and yellow, and not human. That beautiful face -- and for Micah it truly was beauty, not handsome, more delicate jawline, more slender -- was only just masculine. The leopard eyes in that lovely face just added to the impact. He wore sunglasses most of the time to hide the eyes.  He started to get the glasses out automatically as he glimpsed the man behind me.

MICAH IS A PRETTY PRETTY LADY, I GET IT OMFG. HE'S A PRETTY LADY WITH A GIANT WANG. But this description does nothing to set him apart from all the other pretty ladies with giant wangs that are in St Louis. So Anita? Don't you go judging Tony on his choice of cookie-cutter wife, you're just as guilty.

Tony also knows who Micah is! Because he knows, Micah does not Horatio his glasses! Somewhere, the Who is sad. :(

Micah stopped trying to fish his glasses out of his suit jacket pocket and just stepped in with a smile. "I believe if [lycanthropes] keep hiding what we are, it just adds to the fear factor."

If that's so, then why the hell does he wear sunglasses to hide his eyes? And why doesn't he just wear coloured contacts? They have those now.

In any case, Micah and Tony shake hands and it's wonderfully normal. Anita tries to usher Tony out the door (still!) and Tony maintains that he'll find another animator to raise his dead wife. He'd still prefer Anita because of her major ju-ju, and she points out (again) that the zombie won't actually be Mrs Bennington, due to being a zombie. But he's okay with that so long as the wife doesn't realise she's dead. It's really creepy to me just how important it is that the woman doesn't realise she's dead.

But this mention of Mrs Bennington being dead (still!), sets off a new round of condolences, this time from Micah. He adds that Tony should listen to Anita, because Anita's right about everything.

Tony gets even creepier with a, "It's a terrible thing to lose the one you love, Mr. Callahan."And everyone else seems to miss this oblique threat in favour of staring at each other. Finally, Tony is resigned that he won't get a zombie wife, Anita still can't get her Jesus on and perform a real resurrection and...then Tony asks if Anita loves all three dudes that are standing in the middle of the reception area. Anita has to think about it! She splits hairs on the difference between love-love, and like-love, but in the end it doesn't matter because she's having sex with all of them, and they all know where they stand in this weirdo relationship. Finally, she replies with a yes.

Tony continues to be sad and creepy. "I've never been able to love more than one person at a time. It would be easier if I could."And he said that if three of Anita's boyfriends show up at the office, then Perez Hilton the rumours about her must be right.

Anita's got no comeback for htat.

"You keep leaving me not knowing what to say, Mr. Bennington."
 
"I thought women always knew what to say."
 
"I don't."
 
"My wife was a very different kind of woman than you, Ms. Blake."
 
"I hear that a lot," I said.

Really? You heard that Ilsa she-wolf of Hollywood wasn't like you and you heard this all the time? There's one last-ditch effort to get Anita to raise Ilsa, Anita refuses, Tony leaves (again! Finally!), and whatever awkward the whole situation caused is forgotten because Anita gets to kiss Micah. Nathaniel still wants to go to lunch, he promises, "Jason and I will flirt outragiously, and make you smile."And Micah has a moment of DNW. There's something about how he doesn't mind Nathaniel flirting with him at home, but in public that's bad. Jason offers to leave, but there's a group hug! Jason comments about how Anita's clients suck, and she's like "yeah, it's a good job except for all the people who have lost loved ones."

And finally, Mary the secretary chimes in, because they're crowded around the front desk and she still works there. Alas, she's all flirty and "oh Anita, I wish I had your mad skills for hot dudes, if you happen to find one that's over thirty, throw him my way!" and there's some laughter because this is the jokey-banter part of the chapter. Anita takes a moment to internally monologue that maybe she failed the client but reconciles that she told the truth and ultimately that will hurt less. And then she replies that Mary isn't into vampires, which is when Mary gives a girlish squeal and tells Anita to have a long lunch IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN AND I THINK YOU DO *conspicuous wink to mens*

Jason kisses Mary's cheek and then they all traipse off to lunch. The end!

But I can honestly say it's kinda disturbing that Tony is hell-bent on having his zombie!wife not remember that she's dead. I'm sure in the hands of a clever writer, this would be some tragic and touching tale of a husband that wants to fulfil one final wish with his wife. Or he could decide to bring her back as a zombie so he can hack her to pieces with an axe because she had the indecency to get exploded before he had a chance to kill her, but since she's a zombie he can be creepy and grope her a lot. Or he could be Donnie Pfaster, and lop off her fingers to eat later. I mean, if you're going to have the necrophilia, you might as well have the cannibalism too.

The point is, someone else could make this story interesting. And less repetitive.

I still can't get over the razorblade on the front cover of a book named Flirt. These things don't go together in my brain, romanticising self-harm aside, this doesn't make sense to me unless someone's putting razorblades in Valentine's candy.

Comments

[ellenel13.livejournal.com]

Oh GOD, it's shit like this why I can't read these books anymore. Why does Anita need to be a condescending asshole about everything?

Also, I maintain that LKH needs to start watching anime.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

IDK, but I sat there apalled at Anita's behaviour in the office. I would really hate to work with her, because you just know that everyone else would be picking up the slack around her. There'd probably be celebrations when she doesn't come in, because things would actually get done.

IIRC, she watched some Naruto?

[lady-fellshot.livejournal.com]

At least in the earlier books there was still the possibility of someone beating the crap out of her later for it.

[mneiai.livejournal.com]

Bitch needs to get fired.

Also, my head is now killing me.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

Ugh I know. Even with the new structure of things, Bert can call a meeting with the other animators to buy Anita out of her share in the company and kick her to the curb. Right now, she's hurting the business more than promoting it.

[mitrian.livejournal.com]

Out of curiosity, I grabbed a random page (page 7), removed the sentence fragment at the end, and ran it through a readability tool I found here (http://www.addedbytes.com/code/readability-score/).

This particular one uses several readability calculators and gives scores for each of them, plus an average.

So, how did she do?

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level 4.60
Gunning-Fog Score 7.20
Coleman-Liau Index 6.30
SMOG Index 4.70
Automated Readability Index 3.20
Average Grade Level 5.20

So.... She's writing, on average, on a fifth-grade level.

I am very tempted to compare this to her earlier books - the ones that went through many rounds of editing....

[naeko.livejournal.com]

If you do, definitely make a fresh post about it to add to the statistics tag!

[mystoflare.livejournal.com]

Am I the only one who's wondering if we're closing in on something like Stephenie Meyer's hissy-fit over the online leak of "Midnight Sun"?
Granted, I didn't pay attention to if LKH posted the first chapters of anything before ST before, but since a lot of the stuff like new cover packaging for old books is coming out, I have to wonder.
I honestly would not put it past LKH to pull something like that, because as much as I see evidence people still buy her crap, I'm also seeing evidence that fans are leaving in droves. What better way to draw back at least a fraction of the fans who left, than by creating some drama for the ones who aren't the brightest bulbs in the box?

And for the record, I always thought Anita was a bit of a condescending asshat from the start. She just threw out everything but the ass-ness when she became a magical rapist with a metaphysical penis.

[moonbeamdancer.livejournal.com]

It would not surprise me at all. My response to Meyer's fit was "If you don't want someone posting unedited work, then don't pass it around like it's fucking candy." If I were a professional writer, the only ones who would see my work before it was to be printed, would be me and my editor or editors. My agent too maybe, but I don't actually know on that one.

[ever-obsessed.livejournal.com]

the yellow-blond hair now long enough that he'd started having Nathaniel French-braid it for dance class
OH GAWD.

as if they were all made at the same factory and sent out into the world to seduce and marry well.
It's like I'm watching SNL. Really GOOD SNL.

Nathaniel still wants to go to lunch,
he promises, "Jason and I will flirt outragiously, and make
you smile."And Micah has a moment of DNW. There's something
about how he doesn't mind Nathaniel flirting with him at home, but in
public that's bad. Jason offers to leave, but there's a group hug!
I wish I had a gif for my reaction to this. ALAS, I DO NOT.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

PRENTISS' FACE KIND OF SAYS IT ALL.

I'm still bewildered as to why Nathaniel and Jason are in dance class, and then that conjures mental images of Flashdance that I'd rather not have.

[knowthyself.livejournal.com]

"...hair now long enough that he'd started having Nathaniel French-braid it for dance class, which was where they'd been, which explained the almost-not-there tank tops and shorts..."

Funny, this description says nothing to me that includes a man who is sexually attracted to women.

[knowthyself.livejournal.com]

Also, I missed the part where she was "full of sympathy." Did that honestly get skipped in the snarking, or was it in fact as non-existent as it seems?

[tsubaki-ny.livejournal.com]

"...it was that grin, that light of mischief that made his eyes bright with thinking naughty thoughts.

Not sex, though that was in there, but just a host of things he knew he shouldn't do, but so wanted to do."

Why isn't that a direct contraction?? His naughty thoughts were "not sex," even though sex "was in there" -- in his naughty thoughts? Or is "in there" somewhere else? Or -- you know what, never mind.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

I don't know, I keep expecting Jason to photocopy his butt and then switch out the sugar for salt in the break room.

[fangedsekhmet.livejournal.com]

A guy with a French braid. Epic LMFAO!

[bloodredroses1.livejournal.com]

I'm honestly curious, what's so funny? I know more than a few guys who wear their hair that way when doing something very physical.

[oo3.livejournal.com]

This is why I can't read the Anita books anymore. The dialogue is bogged down and repetitive. I can't believe this exchange - "Please raise her!" "No!" - took a whole chapter, and it seems it was mostly rehash.

And I love how she just randomly goes off on tangents. Is it really important, during this particular scene, that we know the history and purpose of stripper names? How is that at all relevant?

which explained the almost-not-there tank tops and shorts

No matter how much I loved someone, if they came to my place of work dressed like that I would be embarrassed, and I love how she goes on to say that what made Jason attractive was his grin and not the physical package... after going on, in detail, about the physical package.

Something that I've always wondered is why vampires can get almost legal standing, or whatever they have now, but shapechangers are still treated like they have leprosy or something and have no rights. Unless that's changed?

[dwg.livejournal.com]

I know, right? Since LKH has also said that dialogue is her strong point, this is spectacularly painful. When it comes to the random tangents, I like to believe that Anita stands there with her head tilted to one side, her eyes glazed over, while everyone else stands there and shuffles from foot to foot, checks their watch, maybe orders a pizza. The secondary characters could probably resolve all their problems if they just used their words, but if Anita doesn't see it, then it doesn't happen.

I have no idea about the shapeshifter thing. It was set out initially like lycanthropy was akin to HIV/AIDS and the stigma attached to it, but it's more like the whole "don't ask, don't tell," deal where if people don't know you're a werewolf, they won't judge or be scared that oh dear, they shared your mug they might catch it. That...still doesn't excuse why it's still legal in some states to hunt down people just because they have the misfortune of being a shapeshifter. Seriously, way to be supportive of people who survived an animal attack, or had something like what happened to Richard with a bad batch of vaccine.

This comm's come up with some really creative alternatives for how to deal with that and making it beneficial (like using lycanthropy to cure people with cancer/other diseases).

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

Oh my god, I hate Anita and this writing so hard. I can't begin to describe it. The French braiding bit made me wince, and then when it went on about how Micah is pretty, right after going on the same about Nathaniel, I literally went "Shut up!" out loud at the computer screen. And then we get to hear the blonde hate oh my god ISSUES, WOMAN, YOU AHVE THEM. And of course we must be reminded that Anita is not like other eeeew giiiirls, espcially not like icky icky Ilsa with her blonde pretty exploded self!

.....I want to explode this book, honestly. And it's not even out yet.

BTW AGENT FRANKLIN IS NATIVE AMERICAN DID YOU GET THAT NATIVE AMERICAN YEAH I SAID NATIVE AMERICAN

[dwg.livejournal.com]

I'm willing to bet a fic of some kind as to whoever calls why Ilsa was somehow evil, and therefore had to die. Possibly twice, because being exploded just isn't enough.

Oh man, if you think those pages are bad enough...don't even attempt the book. There's this one bit where Anita sticks her hands in the ground to raise the zombie, and describes it as solid, but also full of air, but not. Because "foamy" is so difficult to figure out.

[thelittlebudgie.livejournal.com]

I can see, in a better author's hands, why Tony would be so concerned with his wife not knowing she's dead. It'd be pretty terrifying to a) know you're dead, b) be trapped in a corpse, and c) have your only route out of said corpse be completely dying, especially if you can remember the afterlife (or lack thereof). But it's probably something to do with either he or Ilsa being eeeevil.

I can't believe Anita's still employed.

[slayra.livejournal.com]

Yes, that would make sense. ^__^ But of course... one or both of them are evilll... after all, Tony is a lefty... :o LOL

[slayra.livejournal.com]

Does she really need to waste so many words in a pointless exchange? *sigh* It's so boring! It's like the whole office scene was just a way for some of her harem to show up and take her to lunch.

It seems like every opening chapter of every book (at least since Blood Noir) is similar, actually... Anita in office, Anita starts thinking about her "sweeties" (ugh), someone calls or enters and randomly attacks her because of her sex life because they're "jealous" and all that. Oh and they're always men. Who are actually attracted to Anita because they think she's "pretty". BAH!

[dwg.livejournal.com]

OMG YES. Seriously, the same thing does not need to be said five or six times.

I'm thinking back, and The Harlequin started off the same way with Malcolm talking to Anita and calling her a whore, Danse Macabre had Ronnie and Anita having the pregnancy discussion (*headdesk^infinity*) and...yeah, no, that's probably as far it goes back. ID started with Larry and Tammy getting married and Micah had Anita in bed with the boys. So, at least Danse Macabre. :\

[maladaptive.livejournal.com]

I do like left-handedness details. They come up so rarely, but this, like everything, sounds like LKH going "look at this interesting tidbit I learned that I had to throw in!"

Also, holy cow most boring exchange ever.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

It's always fun to see someone in a movie turn out to be a lefty. But it would have been nice if this was somehow relevant, as I said below, like if Tony were trying to kill Anita, or someone else was trying to kill her and he wasn't a useless bystander and managed some badass.

Be afraid, dialogue is her forte. *nods sagely*

[maiskorn.livejournal.com]

"I want you to raise my wife from the dead, Ms. Blake," Tony Bennington said, in a voice that matched the expensive suit and the flash of Rolex on his right wrist.

It's sad how this is almost a good description of a person. I mean, honestly, it's not genius or anything, but it briefly tells one something about the guy without being too unoriginal and blunt about it.
Of course, as this praise was just popping up in my head, the text continued into who-gives-a-damn-land with this overly long and, at this point, completely irrelevant lefty stuff just to show off how Tough and Manly Anita is because she deals with murderers.
And it was only downhill from there.

Good sporking, though. =D

(Reposted for spelling error.)

[dwg.livejournal.com]

Yeah. As far as snappy beginnings go, at least it gets to the point. You know who this guy is, and what he wants. A little bit of tweaking would clear up the WTF of how his voice matches his suit (it's a skill, I guess, one that I can't seem to master). It's just...the rest lets it down horribly.

But like I said, it might have been even better if he were trying to kill her (or not be killed! That would be refreshing!) and then back up the whole "people try to murder me on a semiregular basis," part.

I hate it when I can see a reasonable story trapped inside bad word use.

But thankyou!

[dwg.livejournal.com]

The worst part of this is that the PDF looks like it's part of the actual book proof. So, this is what's going to print. IMO, authors that have attained her level of success should be held to a higher standard than the rest of us Plebeians, so it's not doing her any favours to have a book that's riddled with run-ons, and things that may not even qualify as English.

[ellenel13.livejournal.com]

Hold the fuck up, it's the cover of this book a bloody fucking razor?!?!

. . . . . What the hell is that meant to signified? Women shaving her legs to look good on her miniskirt that she will use to aid in flirting? Someone committing suicide because a flirt is stalking them? Seriously, what the fuck? This is almost as baffling as "Swallowing Darkness" as a title. Almost.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

It's not exactly bloody, per se. There's a trail of dark blue swirl off to one side that could be blood.

But yeah. What. When the book is called Flirt, my mind does not automatically think of razorblades unless this is a quirky story about cutters, or Valentine's revenge.

Oh man, I have to find it, but there was a blog not too long ago when LKH finally realised that Swallowing Darkness is a double entendre.

[yaoihuntresse.livejournal.com]

God, does the dialogue go anywhere? Also the apperance of Anita's "sweeties" reminds me of one of those bad fanfiction writers who overload their fics with all their or their friends' original characters that they have to appear when it's not necessary and clutter the story and make it awkward by just being there and taking up time.

I agree that this could've been a very sweet story of a man that just wants to have one more day and good-bye or a dark humored one with wanting to kill her himself. But it is ruined by Anita being Anita.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

Au contraire, at least My Immortal was full of lulz. Granted, it's a trollfic, but it did bring the lulz. This does not have that factor going for it. More's the pity, because this could be a marvellous comedy of errors.

[phyrra.livejournal.com]

This is why I'm glad to have a Kindle2, so at least I'm not wasting the poor trees for this crap :(

[dwg.livejournal.com]

I've embraced the ebooks, mostly because the actual physical books I have are at another location, but...well, the internet provides with less expense and waiting. I don't know if I can go back to buying the physical books in this series anymore.

[found-then-lost.livejournal.com]

Because he knows, Micah does not Horatio his glasses! Somewhere, the Who is sad. :(

LOL! I can just imagine them playing as he lifts the glasses up.

Tony: I know who you are

Cut the music!

Also, was I the only one expecting someone to follow Micah in as Tony went to leave AGAIN. It's just so ridiculous how they all act. They all seem so detached from reality. This could be interesting though. In the hands of another writer with people looking in at them living in their own world (with changes to it of course!) then it could be seen as some perverse mind game coming from badass Jean Claude but noooo. It's all just real love. *gags*

[gwynethfar.livejournal.com]

The woman was blond, and beautiful in that Hollywood way, so that she was truly beautiful bu tthere was nothing to make her stand out from a dozen other blond beauties. It was a type of attractiveness that always seemed artificial, as if they were all made at the same factory and sent out into the world to seduce and marry well.

This pathological hatred of blonds has gone from amusing to just gross. Seriously, Anita, do we have to get all jealous and critical of this guy's dead wife? I'm sure he'll fall into your vagina eventually, so she's no competition for you.

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

*sees excerpt of "Micah"*

My GOD. It's like the Redundancy Department of Redundant Redundancy.