Blogflog - Kiss the Dead tour - San Deigo/Carlsbad

[blogfloggery.livejournal.com]

Link: Kiss the Dead tour - San Diego/Carlsbad
Disclaimer: This blog entry is verbatim, as originally posted on LKH's blog. Copyright belongs to Ma Petite Enterprises.

Kiss the Dead tour – San Diego/Carlsbad

Thanks to everyone at Mysterious Galaxy that helped with the event, and to everyone who came out see the show. We’re still getting people contacting us saying, “Are you on tour?” “Where are you going to be?” “You were in Carlsbad, and I missed you?” Last night helped me realize a couple of things. First, putting the information about tour up on our web page as a sticky doesn’t seem to be helping everyone find the information. I’m not sure what to do about that, since it’s the first thing you come to on the page. Suggestions for how to make it more easy to see are welcome. Second, maybe putting the info up in twitter and Facebook feeds periodically as the event gets closer may help. We’ll try that for the Atlanta event and see how it works, and if that works, great, if not, we’ll keep working on it.

Jon did remember a question we were asked for the first time in Huntington Beach, because it also came up last night in Carlsbad. The question was, does Jean-Claude truly love Anita, or does he love the power he gains from her? He loves her, maybe as much as he’s able, but I think that perhaps part of the holding back on his part is centuries of pain and loss. I know that just in this lifetime losing people I love made me more cautious about jumping wholeheartedly into relationships. But the question seems to imply that power is somehow bad, and I don’t believe that in this context. Power is what lets Jean-Claude keep his people and all that he cares about safe, without power he would have been dead ages ago, and so would Anita, Richard, and we would never have lived long enough to meet Micah, and Nathaniel would have never lived long enough to mean anything to Anita. If Jean-Claude and Anita weren’t the supernatural power couple that they are, they and the series would be dead ages ago. If you aren’t strong enough to protect those you love, then you can lose them. I don’t just mean the strength to punch someone out, or shoot someone, or any violence. I mean strength of character, strength of conviction, strength of will – to be strong enough to stay the course. I believe without strength love will not survive, but you, as a person, do not have the conviction to do the work for love to be long term. People who are weak of will fail you when love gets hard, and real love, true love, will get hard, trust me on that.

Are you strong enough to love someone? Are you strong enough to protect them, and yourself? Remember that protecting them is keeping that job you hate to put a roof over their head, and food on the table. Protecting your love is doing the housework, when you hate it. Protecting love is about doing what it takes to have a real life with the person, or people you love. Does Jean-Claude love Anita? Yes, by any real definition I’m aware of, very yes.

Remember, it’s not like Anita is twiddling her thumbs on a Saturday night waiting for Jean-Claude to call. She’s as busy with her career as he is with his, maybe busier, and she has Micah and Nathaniel as her other main squeezes.

Comments

[ladyniko.livejournal.com]

*snort* She's busy with her career??? Since when these days....

[moonbeamdancer.livejournal.com]

Maybe "career" is code for "finding someone new to boink"....

[shadwing.livejournal.com]

its more like her men are twiddling their thumbs waiting for their turn in the rotation...

[summersdream.livejournal.com]

i am still finding the phrase "main squeezes" to be utterly fucktarded. It's not 1962, let's catch up with the lingo, shall we, LKH?

[knitterleigh.livejournal.com]

It's also a confusion of terms. "Main squeeze" would imply one..... "Main squeezes" doesn't make any goram sense!

[ex-naomi-ja.livejournal.com]

Are you strong enough to love someone? Are you strong enough to protect them, and yourself?

I used to think love was a really nice concept before LKH got hold of it. Now it makes me want to gag. This is why I don't have fifty boyfriends, I suppose.

[summersdream.livejournal.com]

I wonder how many novels about having tons of boyfriends and lots of romance have gone unwritten due to their possible writers reading LKH and going "I WILL NEVER DO THIS." I bet some of them would've been a lot of fun to read.
...

Or they'd all be exactly like the Mona Lisa series, so never mind .>.>

[ex-naomi-ja.livejournal.com]

I started one this year! But I'm afraid of finishing it for exactly those two reasons: LKH and Sunny.

[telaryn.livejournal.com]

we would never have lived long enough to meet Micah,

Wait...she means this would have been a bad thing, right?

[summersdream.livejournal.com]

To me that sounds like a much improved reality. Can we have that one?

[morilove.livejournal.com]

I think she does! Go figure.

[sune-kitty.livejournal.com]

"If Jean-Claude and Anita weren’t the supernatural power couple that they are, they and the series would be dead ages ago."

No... you would just have to learn how to actually write plot. Not paint yourself into a storyteller corner and level up your heroine to over 9000 every damn book!

[mocha-latta.livejournal.com]

I've always cringed at her definitions of "love". I remember in (probably several, because she looks to repeat herself) books, she said something akin to "If you love a person really love them you agree with everything that they do" and "If you love a person, you never hurt them."
That sort of business makes me back away slowly.

[ravens-shadow.livejournal.com]

I have to agree.

It seems like she's conflating the definition of power with strength, or mangling the definitions. I feel like that original questions was asking about love as compared to a selfish desire for power (the 'loving what they can do for you' as you put it), but she's answering it as love versus a selfless motivation to be strong (for those you love). They are two very different things.

And on a more general note, does anybody else feel like that last paragraph came out of nowhere? How do her multi-squeezes even come into the discussion about whether Jean Claude loves her or just wants the power she provides? (Although, if it was the latter, I can't imagine he'd still put up with her lack of control and lack of motivation to control.)

[rekallthegreat.livejournal.com]

If Jean-Claude and Anita weren’t the supernatural power couple that they are, they and the series would be dead ages ago.

I don't know why LKH considers the series being over a bad thing. The way she dicks around when it comes to writing, only getting her draft in a few months before publication and her lackluster plots, LKH certainly comes across as having no interest in the series anymore. It would be better to end things so she can focus on something which she wants to write, not forced too. Or, if she's worried about the money, have someone ghostwrite the series for her. I doubt her publishers care who writes the Anita books as long as they can stick the name 'Laurell K. Hamilton' on the cover.

[lady-fellshot.livejournal.com]

The question was, does Jean-Claude truly love Anita, or does he love the power he gains from her? He loves her, maybe as much as he’s able, but I think that perhaps part of the holding back on his part is centuries of pain and loss. I know that just in this lifetime losing people I love made me more cautious about jumping wholeheartedly into relationships. But the question seems to imply that power is somehow bad, and I don’t believe that in this context.

o_O So, all that heavy handed manipulation in the beginning was a just a test of twoo wuv. Not a means of having a feared necromancer on the staff and beholden to him. Why is it such a bad thing to have things like motives and *gasp* villains in the story?

It sounds to me that someone was hoping that JC had a hope of being a better character than he currently is.

[graesea.livejournal.com]

"Protecting your love is doing the housework, when you hate it."

From what - killer dust bunnies?

[the-mome-wrath.livejournal.com]

Don't underestimate the dust bunnies! They'll choke the vacuum given half a chance.

[ex-naomi-ja.livejournal.com]

This was a fairly triggery post for me, and it's stupid comments like that ("Protecting your love is doing the housework, when you hate it") that make it so. LKH can come and talk to me about protecting the person she loves after she's come home to find him drunk, unconscious, and bleeding so badly from self-harm he needs 28 stitches in his arm. Then she can complain about cleaning the blood out of the carpet.

[morilove.livejournal.com]

"Are you strong enough to love someone? Are you strong enough to protect them, and yourself? Remember that protecting them is keeping that job you hate to put a roof over their head, and food on the table."

Is this actually quite revealing, or am I just reading too much into this? Might the "job you hate" equate to continuing to write about Anita and Merry? Might the one for whom you need to put food on the table equate to her parasitical husband (Jon, her husband, Jon) and her other dependents? Is it possible that LKH is getting a little stressed about being the sole bread-winner?

[diaage.livejournal.com]

her parasitical husband (Jon, her husband, Jon)


Loool I see what you did there. XD

You know I think you're exactly right. She should wrap this dead horse up...

[kessie.livejournal.com]

I think it was a lot more revealing than she meant it to be...