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

OTHER first-class authors killing off characters

[cherose228.livejournal.com]

Hi, all:

FINALLY out of the hospital! Wow, what a dip lkh is.

Sherrilyn Kenyon has killed majors, so has Charlaine Harris, Kim Harrison, and now Carrie Vaughn. ALL of this so that the plot will move, the storyline mature, and the characters develope. This has been the biggest problem with lkh and her "writing".
Take out the tensions and you kill the characters.

I SURE didn't want Arielle OR Jeffrey Miles to die - but wow, think of the possibilities here, especially in view of Jeffrey's channeling abilities. I can't WAIT to see where Ms. Vaughn takes this. Mrs. Harris has killed off several of her majors, and that's just made the entire series better. Ditto Kim Harrison; killing off Kisten did NOT make me happy, but oh, MY, where everybody went from there was exhilirating in terms of plot/storyline/character development.

Sure, lkh killed Frost off, sort of, and then brought him the frack BACK. What do you all want to bet that that's what's going to happen here? And that's the biggest problem with lkh. She's so invested in her imaginary friends that they aren't allowed either to grow or die. C'mon, y'all - she buys them CHRISTMAS PRESENTS. This is a LOT too invested in too many interchangeables to make any kind of sense in any way.

Sheesh, my second book, which I HOPE I'll be through with sometime before the heat death of the universe, has already killed off three of the major protagonists. NO, they're NOT coming back, either. Handling grief and rage, not to mention denial of the event with the inevitable acceptance, is a powerful device that makes both you the author and your characters grow. Anything else is infantile. YES, I know that this is just fiction, and lkh can write it any way that she chooses - her world, her rules, her sillines. That's what's driven a lot of us away. That's also what's keeping *ME* away, too.

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

Re: OTHER first-class authors killing off characters

[world-dancer.livejournal.com]

Ummm... spoiling the just released this month book is maybe not such a good idea for those who haven't read it and may be thinking of giving Vaughn a try.

Re: OTHER first-class authors killing off characters

[cherose228.livejournal.com]

Woops. . . sorry about that.