Interview with LKH @ Fantasy Book Review

[dwg.livejournal.com]

Interview with LKH @ Fantasy Book Review - this is for the paperback release of Hit List, so a lot of this information we got the first time round back in June.

However, the lack of self-awareness in this part is making my mind slowly retreat to the back of my skull:

Do you think that Anita is tempted to cross over to the dark side?

‘I think dark and light aren’t as far apart as most people think, and that the day you stop wondering about your choices, and if it makes you a good person, or a bad one, is the day you cross the line. Most people don’t become evil in large spectacular events, but little by little, day by day, one small decision at a time, until one day they aren’t the good guy anymore, and most of them don’t even realize it. That Anita worries about it is a good sign that it’s not happened, and probably won’t. Power is like a gun, it’s neutral; it’s the hand that wields it that makes it good, or evil.’

And yet, I'd hold up Flirt as a masterpiece of how Anita's gone to the Dark Side and has become the thing she says she's always hated. What with the whole enslavement and violation thing. But no! Because she angsts about it and has flocks of supporting cast ready to tell her that she's a good person, it's all totally okay! EUGH, I can feel my skin starting to crawl all over again.

She talks more about how she doesn't read much genre fiction, how Merry/Anita are "strong, sexually liberated" women, and how she's always loved the supernatural but isn't sure why.

Comments

[polymexina.livejournal.com]

I guess when you don't write new stories you never have to think of new answers to interview questions.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

Now I'm going to be thinking of LKH as a phone prompt. "To hear about characters as imaginary friends, press 1 and then #. Your call may be recorded for training purposes. If you wish to speak to the author in person, please hold on the line."

[shadwing.livejournal.com]

The problem for LKH is that she has no 'balance' to Anita's actions in her books there is nobody to even whisper that she might have done something horrible and call her on it.

Yes Anita 'questions' her actions but it's after she did the action and then she shrugs it off, there is no panic there is no extending Oh God What Have I Done, there is no attempt to make things right there is "Oh well i did it now I will have sex and feel better about myself"

The fact that Anita IS ACTING EXACTLY LIKE BELLE should be a red flag but it's not...

[baeraad.livejournal.com]

Yes Anita 'questions' her actions but it's after she did the action and then she shrugs it off, there is no panic there is no extending Oh God What Have I Done, there is no attempt to make things right there is "Oh well i did it now I will have sex and feel better about myself"

This. Insofar as it's true that it's worrying whether we're good or evil that makes us good, it requires actual worrying, not just spending a token thought on it from time to time. Oh, and actually hesitating before doing something and wondering if it's the right thing to do would help, too - not constantly pretending that you have no choice but to be a selfish, paranoid asshole.

[ex-naomi-ja.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I'm not sure how much worrying about whether you're good or bad is a sign you're still good. It's like saying it's okay that you're an alcoholic because you admit you drink too much. If you're not actually going to AA, big fucking deal.

[mariadeangeles.livejournal.com]

lmao true

[world-dancer.livejournal.com]

ROTFLMAO

Anita is a carbon copy of the villainess in her first book. But with more sex and the body of an adult.

[ellenel13.livejournal.com]

In a way, I understand the whole "not-reading your own genre thing" if only to avoid having your ideas be jumbled with another authors. Or to avoid accusations of plagiarism. It's just LKH is always "well, I *know* that no one else is a edgy or talented as I, so why would I ~bother~ to read ~subpar~ versions of my work". It's beyond arrogant.

Plus, she just write vampire/werewolves bullshit. The Merry stuff is supposed to be political intrigue but lulz. She could easily read fantasy/horror/even romance without reading stuff that's in her "genre"

[queenmeow.livejournal.com]

She talks about her writing, for example law enforcement, in a way that is not
reflected in what she puts in her books.
"Once I realized the cost that our men and women in uniform, of all kinds, pay to protect and serve, I had to have Anita show that process. If I hadn’t, if I’d let her stay static, then it would have felt like a betrayal of all the people that were so generous and shared some of their most painful moments with me. Thank you, all. I hope I have come even a little close to reflecting what you taught me.’"
So in the novels to show this,she has Anita theorize female cops want to be dudes, cops that question her want to do her or are gay, and Anita has to lift more weights that a swat team.

[the-mome-wrath.livejournal.com]

Anita’s character was developed in part because I read hard-boiled detective fiction after college, and found that the male detectives got to curse, have sex, and kill people without feeling badly about it, but the female detectives rarely cursed, had no sex, or it was sanitized and off stage, and if they killed someone, they had to feel really bad about it. I thought this was all unfair, so wanted a female character that could hold her own with the big boys. I may have overcompensated...

I was hoping that she might finally be starting to realize she'd piled too many powers on Anita until I saw the rest of that sentence.

...but I thought that a straight mystery series would bore me after a few books, so I gave myself all the monsters of the movies and most of the ones from folklore and myth, to help me stay interested. It worked, I’m still having a great time.

Still surrounded by yes-men I see.

[ladyniko.livejournal.com]

I'd like to see how well her books are selling now, since she's totally ruined Anita from being a character that is now everything she said she wouldn't be in the beginning of the series and is, as others have pointed out, becoming exactly like the villaness from the first book.

I think it was the hard back for Flirt that I saw in the Bargain Books section at the West County Plaza's B&N the other day. (I was on a desperate search for Tanya Huff's The Wild, Wild Ways.)

Are her book sales down with the total degradation of Anita?

As for being surrounded by Yes-Men - do we expect anything different? She whines and moans about how hard her life is more than she spends time actually writing. :-p