Tweet flog/Bullet update, Barnes & Noble forum Q & A

[dwg.livejournal.com]

I posted this on my journal first, so I'm sorry to the people who get this twice, but! News fresh in from Twitterland! So fresh, rigor hasn't even set in!

LKHamilton: I've finished crying over my imaginary friends, but I'm left empty and sort of numb. Stunned with the turn of events. Jan 18 8:44

LKHamilton: I've spent days trying to save this character. I pulled a major metaphysical event to save the day & in the end not enough. Jan 18 8:46

LKHamilton: Death will come, final and complete, and the light in their eyes dulls until the windows to the soul show nothing but emptiness. Jan 18 8:47

LKHamilton: The body is still warm, the flesh still soft, you can still hold them, cradle them in your arms and smell the sweet scent of their skin. Jan 18 8:49

LKHamilton: Death comes soft at first, lay a last kiss on their mouth while the warmth lasts and before the cold comes. Jan 18 8:52

LKHamilon: I'm out of here. I have not the heart to stay. Time to find someone real and get a hug. Should have known what was coming. Sometimes . . . Jan 18 8:55

LKHamilon: . . . even in fiction you can't save everyone. I fucking hate that. Jan 18 8:56

SOMEONE IS GOING TO DIE IN BULLET! This is doubly amusing because not three days ago, in a Q & A for Barnes and Noble, she said this:

Ok, this is a spoiler if you haven't at least finished Guilty Pleasures then please do not read this message. Ok, I've done the warning bit. Anita and I were both traumatized by Phillip's death in Guilty Pleasures. I promised her after that if she cared for a man I wouldn't kill him off. Her way of getting around that was apparently to care for every man we met in the books from that point on. Talk about unforeseen consequences.
 
I honestly think my subconscious is responsible for the low death count among major and major/minor characters. People dieing, or leaving, when I was very young have left their mark. In real life you can't save everyone, but in fiction, sometimes, you can. We may actually have some deaths at some point, but I think my muse and I would rather not.

Bold emphasis is mine.

I was talking to a couple of people over the weekend and saying that if LKH wanted to keep things as real-to-life as possible, as she claims she does, then she'd have to let some characters die. In my opinion, you can't really have it both ways; either you keep things gritty and real and deal with the tough breaks the story gives you, or you can make it a fancy fictional la-la land where nobody dies and everyone's sparkly and happy. Trying to fudge one just hurts the other, and...well, the books are a really good example to that with the random metaphysics and miraculous saves. So it's nice to see that someone's biting the Bullet.

Umm, on a related note, I went through the B & N forum and copied out the Q & A in more readable format, so that LKH's answers are right after the question and you don't have to scroll around to try and find what she's talking about: Part one and part two. I'm sorting through the Facebook chat in a similar fashion, but I'm going to add more blog links and commentary to it.

Comments

[yaoihuntresse.livejournal.com]

And the death is handled well. Instead of a big whine-fest for Anita.

[alondra-del-sol.livejournal.com]

That would be a definite improvement also.

[yaoihuntresse.livejournal.com]

Maybe. I agree with Linkara that if you're going to kill off a character, it should have some meaning instead of just being shock.

[alondra-del-sol.livejournal.com]

True, but at this point I really want to see a lot of people dead in Anita Blake; shock and meaning aside.