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

[dreamstrifer.livejournal.com]

Whut. WHUT?! That's effed up. Seriously. I don't even have words.

[yaoihuntresse.livejournal.com]

It is. And when you look at how another character is crapped on (long story) when his sin is that he hit his then-wife (arguably once) when he use to be a drug addict during an argument. So a man who rapes a teenager gets forgiven, a guy with the geek template slaughters a lot of people due to being careless in a fight and tried to take over the world gets a slap on the wrist, but that previously mentioned guy is a jock gets the nastiest punishment. Yeah, he's just as screwed up as LKH.

[dreamstrifer.livejournal.com]

God. I would have been so pissed if I had continued reading that. People disgust me sometimes.

[yaoihuntresse.livejournal.com]

It gets hard to even snark on it at times. Thankfully he might be ending the series soon. But sadly, a number of webcomics are headdesk worthy.

Chris Invincible super blog going The Annotated Anita Blake: The Laughing Corpse: Executioner #3

[flaveur.livejournal.com]

Yeaaah
We have the next installement !!!!

Yek yek yek

Re: Chris Invincible super blog going The Annotated Anita Blake: The Laughing Corpse: Executioner #3

[yaoihuntresse.livejournal.com]

I just read it. For such a self-proclaimed badass, Antia sure gets hit, captured and thrown in more helpless situations than Penelope Pitstop. But even Penelope came up with her own plans and didn't take four pages to do them.