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]

GOD, LKH, go cry moar.

Yes, death is horrible. I've had my fair share of death in my real life. But I can also write about death and NOT FREAK THE FUCK OUT because you know what? As special as the characters are to me, and as much time and energy and emotion I've invested into them...

THEY ARE NOT REAL! THEY ARE NOT REAL! THEY ARE NOT REAL! Repeat that fifty thousand more times. Death in books makes me cry, yes, but at the end of the day, I know that I can always see them again because I can reread the books. If you REALLY didn't want to kill off the character, you wouldn't have killed them off. You know why? Because you are the WRITER.

Christ, I need to go have a drink. This just made me so angry and is offensive to me as a writer.

[kessie.livejournal.com]

I would be more sympathetic if I hadn't killed two secondary characters and a bunch of background ones in my writing in the last two days...

[alondra-del-sol.livejournal.com]

Do we know who died exactly?

I mean... if it's Truth or Wicked or "random were-person X" then whoop-di-doo as far as the entire fandom is concerned. I mean if she killed Richard or JC or Micah or Nathaniel then maybe there is hope for this series after all. I'm not going to hold my breath.

I mean, it's sad she's killing off characters, but I really hope this drama is warranted for a major death and not some minor character she had sex with once to feed the ardeur, or rather "ar-dumb".

[alondra-del-sol.livejournal.com]

OMG I CRIED WHEN ROBINTON DIED TOO!!! Sorry for random fan flailing, I feel like I never run into anyone who reads/has read those anymore. :)

I think JKR killing off Dumbles was one of my most traumatic book reading experiences ever, but it was still amazing.

I take fiendish delight in killing off my characters also, so the wank is just kind of like "*forehead-palm*; however, classic LKH response.

[pandaemonaeum.livejournal.com]

pleaseletitbemicah, pleaseletitbemicah, pleaseletitbemicah.

It's Richard Zeeman isn't it? He's been the whipping boy for about 8 books now, bound to be dead now?

But that aside... they're not real people. Killing them off doesn't leave a mark on this world.

Oh and this:
People dieing, or leaving, when I was very young have left their mark.

1) It's DYING.
2) You lost someone as a child. WE GET IT. There is only so long you can wring sympathy from people over it. Get some therapy for goodness's sake!

Well, it's done something her blogs, tweets and chats haven't done for quite some time. It's made me want to know what happens in one of her books!

[dwg.livejournal.com]

Someone in the B&N forum asked if she would kill anyone, LKH went and turned it around and asked the OP who they'd choose to kill. The forum kind of went NOOOOO!!!! (well, maybe Richard or Asher) while the OP did a massive back pedal over the issue and basically said that she wouldn't presume to tell the author what to do.

So a mere few days after all this, to have LKH rending her Twitter in grief is just making me laugh. I could be a bad person, though.

[avalonnocturne.livejournal.com]

Dear lord, could the woman be more pretentious? Light fading from eyes? The sweet scent of the skin? This prose is so purple it's ultraviolet.

Excuse me while I go gouge my eyes out.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

To be fair, she did ask Twitter first whether or not people wanted to know about the scene she just finished, so she's aware that some people don't want to know about spoilers.

However, the "MOAR PLZ!" obviously won out and we got this. I'll be surprised if there isn't a blog, or mention of a blog that was written but had to be deleted either to Heavy Emotional Stuff or Because It's Spoilery and she can't talk about it without her publisher being >:( at her.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

There's no mention of who died, but there is a twittersplosion of "OMG NOOOOOOOOO PLEASE DON'T LET IT BE [character]!!1!" mixed with "TELL USSSSS!!!"

I think I'm going to have to hang out in the forums until the ARCs go out and we get some proper spoilers.

[alondra-del-sol.livejournal.com]

Haha, I still have them too. They are all in a place of honor on my overstuffed bookshelf.

I guess it wasn't the actual death part that shocked me. I mean it was in there that he was probably not going to make it, but it was like the funeral scene that did it for me. I'm a self admitted sap, however.

Sometimes I'm just too shell shocked to cry, but another one that did it for me when I was younger was The Chronicles of Narnia.

I love Data too. He's an amazing character, and I like caught that part when it was on TV. I think I seriously had it on just a few minutes before that happened, and at first I was like, "That did not just happen." Then they were talking about it afterward, and that crushed a bit of my soul. I also liked Seven of Nine a lot in Voyager, because she reminded me of Data.

I'm pretty sure that if I were to blog/tweet about killing off a character then a) I would do it privately, and b) I really wouldn't want to even hint at it in the first place. Sometimes I feel like the internet gives way too much away, and I want to be surprised.

[dreamstrifer.livejournal.com]

God, I wouldn't dick around... I'd say something to the effect of "If I were the author of this series I'd shoot myself kill off all the superfluous men... ones who just seem to be there to fawn over Anita [MICAH!]."

I also don't like the idea of telling an author what to do, since it's their book, but for the love of God, if you're going to ask me point blank who I'd choose to kill I'd be honest.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

I had a horrible thought that it might be Edward, but I'll be content if it's any number of the other dudes. Odds are that it's one of the more recent additions. Or possibly Jason, I don't know. From the Twittersphere, she was writing something about Haven, so...it could be him too. The great thing about AB:VH is that the possibilities are endless.

But man, now I'm going to have to finish on my catch-up reading, because something's actually happening in this book. Goddamn.

[dreamstrifer.livejournal.com]

I agree with this. In the back story of my current novel, I killed off half the population of a continent, and am gleefully plotting the deaths of other important characters.

[yaoihuntresse.livejournal.com]

Ok, that is just plain creepy. You're not a rescue worker, LKH, nor are the characters real. This woman needs help.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

The whole forum was kind of a delicate balance between spazzy "Are you ever going to write a book about JC? When's the next MG book out? where do you get your ideas from?" that makes me want to punch people, but I seized the opportunity to ask a couple of questions that have been bugging me for years and surprisingly got answers. Not satisfactory ones, but answers nonetheless.

There was at least one question asking if Anita was a rapist for using the ardeur, but that was either glossed over or summarily ignored.

I'm really sad that I missed that part of the second half of the chat, because I would have put up my hopes for Nathaniel to die.

[alondra-del-sol.livejournal.com]

I guess I'll just have to sit back and twiddle my thumbs until then, but I'm not particularly scared (or intrigued might be better?).

If she were to kill off JC, Asher, Richard, Micah, Nathaniel, or anybody else she claims to care about as much as them then I think I might keel over in complete shock. That happening is about the only thing that could spur me to start reading the series again.

[yaoihuntresse.livejournal.com]

I feel like she might cock-block this like she does with stuff in her comic books. It might be Richard, but she needs a punching bag and it would mean having to get a new member of the trinity or whatever it's called. Wait, that would mean Anita would have to do a massive sex tryout to find a replacement.

[yaoihuntresse.livejournal.com]

Something's actually happening and it's not bad sex? Are you sure you're reading the right book?

[yaoihuntresse.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean. And then the fact that she goes around and brags how edgy and badass her writing is. God! Her work is like Dominic Deegan except without the porn and the hate is focused on jocks and not blond women.

[dreamstrifer.livejournal.com]

I used to read Dominic Deegan, but haven't in several years (I can't even remember when I stopped... around the time when Dominic went to that one town with all the hedonists)....

[yaoihuntresse.livejournal.com]

I think we all have moments were we laugh at stuff like that so don't worry.

[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.

[yaoihuntresse.livejournal.com]

Now that I think about it. It will probably be a minor, non-bishie character we hardly see like Dolph or some female character.

[ellenel13.livejournal.com]

So Richard is dead.

And LKH, death is painful and generally devastating IN REAL LIFE. IN FICTION, it is boring at worst, interesting if average, and kind of sad if the author does it right.

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

You'd think if you're writing about people who deal with crime all the time, there'd be deaths all over the place, wouldn't you.

One of the great adages of writing is "murder your darlings". LKH needs to learn that one.