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

[pandaemonaeum.livejournal.com]

Well, if she kills Richard, she has to change cannon, as part of the triumvirate, killing him should kill them all. It's happened in other books, where killing one member of a triumvirate kills them all.

Micah is 'Nimir Ra' which isn't really a supernatural bond as strong as the bond with JC/ Richard. Nathaniel is just her boytoy. Jason is her fuckbuddy. So any one of those three would not have a major impact, although there is the minor triumvirate of Nathaniel/ whatshisfacetheredhead/ Anita. She's pulled 'major metaphysical' on that triumvirate several times already.

I really hope it's not Edward - I still maintain Edward would kill Anita. If it was the serial killer she wouldn't be angsting.

Maybe it's Ronnie, her favourite whipping girl.

I pretty much stopped reading after 'Cerulean Sins', so no doubt other people have cropped up.

[magdalen77.livejournal.com]

Nathaniel is also in a triumvirate with Anita and Damian. Though neither of them seem strong enough for a triumvirate. Damian's primary purpose in the series seems to be "Damian's dying!!! I need to have sex!!!"

[pandaemonaeum.livejournal.com]

Damian, that's the one. But she calls that a 'minor triumvirate', so I can still hope :).

[kindofstrange.livejournal.com]

Yeah, at this point I don't really think it'd stop her. It'd just give her a way to show this amazing new OMGSPECIAL power that Anita somehow acquires that allows her and all her precious men to survive.

She might even mourn Richard for a page or two before finding yet another reason to start a metaphysical gang-bang.