Another Affliction excerpt

[dwg.livejournal.com]

LKH posted another excerpt on Facebook:

For your Monday enjoyment, here's another sneak peek from the next Anita Blake novel, Affliction:

There was a sort of movement, or sigh, in all the police in the hallway. The uniforms, and the two in street clothes, all reacted almost like grass in a meadow when the wind stirs it. I wasn't sure if they were reacting to the growing unpleasantness, or if they didn't like that at least three of us were "unnatural". We were in one of the handful of states where if someone killed Micah, or Dev, or Nicky, all they had to do was say, they feared for their life, and if the blood test came back positive for lycanthropy it was selfdefense without a trial, or anything. If you had witnesses that said, the shooting had been unprovoked you could be up on charges, but if the only other witness besides the shooter was conveniently dead, then it was a clean kill. I hadn't thought what that might mean for my men. My stomach tightened, my shoulders tensing, as I thought about that for everyone I'd brought with me. I was so used to the local police who worked with me seeing my boyfriends as people that I hadn't thought that not all police would be as understanding. Now that, really had been stupid and careless.

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Comments

[dwg.livejournal.com]

My immediate reaction was "hey Anita realised she's done something stupid, yay!" and then I backpedalled because wait -- she's only just figuring this out now? Surely this is something that she, as a law enforcement officer, ought to know before she packs up N amount of dudes to fly into this situation? And if not know off the top of her head, then at least look it up in between booking transport and wondering if she ought to pack toothpaste or buy some when she arrives. I could be applying too much logic here.

Also, holy infodump! I've really grown to hate these little aside monologues full of inane details that we don't need to know and break up what could be a great character-driven scene with dynamic dialogue. This type of thing has been my fucking bane while trying to read Kiss the Dead when I didn't have any internet. *cries*

[guardians-song.livejournal.com]

...Is she high?

No, seriously. Is she high? Or under the weather? This is borderline-incoherent.

The police glared at us. I suddenly realized that, in this state, it was perfectly legal to kill a shapeshifter - just so long as there was no one to gainsay your story of self-defense. As my gaze flicked from Micah to Nicky to Dev, I felt a dull weight in my stomach that told me I had made a major mistake.

Perhaps even a fatal one.

Mediocre? Yes. But at least it's better than THAT.

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

But you left out the important bit about how the cops in St Louis or wherever Anita lives are TOTES OK with her multiple supernatural boyfriends! Who are her boyfriends! FriendZ! PLURAL! She has a ton of them! She is SO EDGY!

It would after all be so easy to miss that aspect.

[darkmanifest.livejournal.com]

Jesus, so much fat easily trimmed and yet no relevant information lost. It's kind of magical. This is why having a kind but ruthless editor is so important.

[terrie01.livejournal.com]

But then she might not have enough pages to justify the cost of the book.

[othellia.livejournal.com]

Oh, gratuitous comma usage... how I've missed thee.

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

LKH has a really phenomenal talent for interrupting action, hasn't she?

A thing is about to happen! Maybe! Or perhaps not. I don't know. I'll fill in a lot of background now. I may come back to the action but you might not notice because I will bury it in further exposition.

[pearkiwi.livejournal.com]

All it's missing is the three paragraphs to describe Anita's wildly inapropriate outfit for the job, and one or two of the cops not taking her seriously.

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

'Paragraphs'? What pray tell are those?

[mocha-latta.livejournal.com]

There's something about, her writing style, that, really bothers me, you know?,
It must be her switching tense in the middle of a line, right after using the correct one

[daphne-gateau.livejournal.com]

Her shabby understanding of municipal law enforcement (at any level) was the biggest early disappointment for me. I loved and miss RPIT. Oh, there were many bigger disappointments to follow (if only I knew at the time) but this was the first.

In a world where shifters and vampires exist it's ridiculous to think the government would actually need to hire out for executioners in the first place. Is there no military in her world? They'd create their own forces and teams, if necessary. Specially armed and most likely informed by and staffed with some 'volunteer'... shifters and vampires.

But y'know, I was willing to overlook all that and just go along for the ride until Anita started making the police just look completely inept. Police do not stand around in a collective "sigh" of passivity when they meet spooky persons. It's really ridiculous to suggest it since it's the opposite of what real and fictional law enforcement types are known to do. And really, are Anita and "her men" all that scary? Are they going to trip on Nicky's hair? What exactly is worrying these cops? Probably just that they are burdened with these four ding-dongs that can't walk down an alley without either a drawn out conversation about their personal dramas or having sex. Maybe both.

Sorry about the ranty rant! but this is one of those 'wasted plotlines' someone was asking about the other day that I didn't remember at the time to post. I have always thought that "What would the government really do?" if zombies, shifters and vampires came to town was SO interesting at first. The 'equal rights' stuff, those government houses, vaccines, voting -- all that stuff appealed to me and I wanted her to take that angle much farther. I also liked the idea of RPIT but as the series went on those characters took a lot of ugly blows at the expense of making Anita look fabulous and awesome.

[magdalen77.livejournal.com]

And how likely would it be that in a world where supernatural creatures were always known to exist the agencies or police divisions would be poorly trained and treated as a dumping ground or a disgrace? It makes sense in Jim Butcher's Dresden Files because supernatural creatures aren't out in the open and are still mostly considered myths.

[daphne-gateau.livejournal.com]

Yes :) Butcher's a great example of how a police story line could have been handled. From what I recall of that series, the main police character (Murphy?) was competent and certainly not the type to stand around swaying in the breeze. What fun are cops like that?

And yeah, any specialized division is a step up, right? So much wasted potential in city and federal politics vs. those crazy vampire politics with the shifters caught in the middle. Makes me sad.

[hjtlwm.livejournal.com]

Thank you for sharing

[world-dancer.livejournal.com]

And all this could have been shown by dialogue rather than this paragraph.

Also, did Anita forget who and what she was and what it was like working with the police for years? Because I have those early books where they didn't like the men Anita was dating, heck where they were afraid of monsters (rightly so).

[collectively.livejournal.com]

*perishes under the weight of unnecessary commas*

[watersheerie.livejournal.com]

Yet another "I Didn't Know!" moment for Anita Blake. Once again our supposed 'expert' on supernatural creature law enforcement and one of the top Federal Marshall is clueless about what it means to bring her were-boytoys into a state where they could be killed on sight.

Will there be angst? Yes.
Will she learn from it? No.

"I hadn't thought about what that might mean for my men."

Seriously? Not only is it your fucking job to know about these sort of things, but you couldn't be bothered to spend a little more thought and a few more brain cells on the notion that your supernatural boyfriends could die? Supposedly these are the ones you love, yet you recklessly bring them into a potentially dangerous situation and then say after the matter 'oops.' It is stupid and careless and shows how much you really care about them. I just recently moved to a new state, and a more city-like situation which is a big change up from the rural area I had left. I spent hours on the computer trying to find the right place in the area to walk my dog. I made sure to check up on the dog laws in the state, I looked up parks and bike trails and made sure that they allowed dogs before bringing him there. I asked locals which parts of the city were safe.

Look at this. I spent more time, effort and forethought into finding a good place to walk my dog, then Anita put into making sure that she wouldn't drag her 'sweeties' into a situation where they could be shot and killed.

[magdalen77.livejournal.com]

That was my first thought. It's obvious that Anita doesn't give a crap about any of her "sweeties". I'm married to a black man. If I was going somewhere where he could be killed on sight I'd be aware of it and I wouldn't bring him with me. Because I'd like to keep him alive and around for the next 50 years or so.

[alondra-del-sol.livejournal.com]

What makes even more stupid and wasted is that we know that no one is going to die. It's wasted manufactured tension. The only thing clumsy is her entire execution of tension when really there is none because all of her sweeties are spared the death penalty.

[terrie01.livejournal.com]

There was a sort of movement, or sigh, in all the police in the hallway. Which was it? A "sort of" movement (whatever THAT is) or a sigh? These are two very different things.

The uniforms, and the two in street clothes, all reacted almost like grass in a meadow when the wind stirs it. Tortured simile is tortured. So they, what, rippled? Bent over? None of these, because it's an almost reaction, not an actual reaction? Two sentences in and we already have two wiggle words that reduce the description to meaninglessness.

I wasn't sure if they were reacting to the growing unpleasantness, or if they didn't like that at least three of us were "unnatural". This, of course, doesn't not stop her from pontificating on the idea that everyone hates her and her entourage, because she is so much better than everyone else and they're just jealous haters.

We were in one of the handful of states where if someone killed Micah, or Dev, or Nicky, all they had to do was say, they feared for their life, and if the blood test came back positive for lycanthropy it was selfdefense without a trial, or anything. Comma abuse. You has it. Also a general failure at constructing coherent statements. Finally, it's "self-defense." And what's the "anything"? Is that another wiggle word, thrown in to pad the word count, or do you really not know anything about legal procedures and just covering your ass in case you're missing something?

If you had witnesses that said, the shooting had been unprovoked you could be up on charges, but if the only other witness besides the shooter was conveniently dead, then it was a clean kill. What about the killing of the witness? Or do you mean that there are no witnesses, only a dead victim? If it's the later, just say so, and stop trying to be cute.

I hadn't thought what that might mean for my men. No shock there.

My stomach tightened, my shoulders tensing, as I thought about that for everyone I'd brought with me. We've added mixing tenses to the list of offenses. And what is "that"? at this point, you've babbled on enough that some specificity might be a good thing. The specific law? The general prejudice? The next bit certainly doesn't clarify.

I was so used to the local police who worked with me seeing my boyfriends as people that I hadn't thought that not all police would be as understanding. Now that, really had been stupid and careless. You just said that the legal issue exists in only a "handful of states." Is Missouri one of them? Because if it's not (which was implied by your sudden realization as well as the early books), then there's the whole issue of it being illegal to go around shooting people because their shifters. Also, are these guys so helpless that none of them thought about this issue? I certainly pay attention to things like laws that let people kill me free and clear.

[igenlode.livejournal.com]

My stomach tightened, my shoulders tensing, as I thought about that for everyone I'd brought with me. We've added mixing tenses to the list of offenses.

Eh? The tenses here at least look fine to me... (at least, I'd happily use that construction).

The whole sentence appears to be securely in the past: I would read that as implying 'My shoulders [were] tensing as my stomach tightened', not as trying to make 'tensing' in any way a present continuous usage in this context, which certainly would be jarring.

"I hauled the flag down, its canvas flapping wildly, as the boat's wake began to widen away from us"....

(And if it's not that which is being objected to, my proof-reader's eye is completely stumped!)

Now some of those commas really are misplaced, on the other hand -- even by the old-fashioned standards I'm used to...

[lady-fellshot.livejournal.com]

The commas, they weep.

Why are her boitois anywhere near a police investigation anyway? None of them are criminalists or investigators or have any training that would make them useful for police work.

Also, since when has the possibility of her boitois dying ever been a major concern for Anita such that she did anything about it before, during or after the thought of their demise crossed her mind? Although, if someone shoots one of her triumverate members in the face there is a chance that Anita goes down with them. :D

[watersheerie.livejournal.com]

Also:

"I was so used to the local police who worked with me seeing my boyfriends as people..."

Really? Because LKH makes the local police to be ignorant bigots and jealous prudes. The only police officers that Anita gets along with are ones who are not a direct threat to her super-charged masculinity or competition as potential girlfriends for her boytoys (i.e. old, married overweight cops and gays). Everyone else is painted with the typical 'cops are evil hater bitches and women cops are even worse because they have vaginas.'

[everstar3.livejournal.com]

So how come neither Micah, Dev, nor Nicky pointed out to Anita that she was travelling into an area that had "OMG it's a lycanthrope shoot it" laws? Wouldn't shifters be aware of where such laws were in effect and avoid them? Also, holy shit, is she really translating the Stand Your Ground laws into the Anita Blake 'verse? She's not actually going to have one of Anita's harem get shot, is she? With most other writers I'd assume this little piece of information was foreshadowing, but with LKH it seems just as likely that it'll be forgotten about and possibly even contradicted by the end of the book. But if she does try to make one of Anita's sex bombs into Trayvon Martin, I am going to hit new levels of pissed.

(I see you trying to rip plots from the headlines, Hamilton! I want you to tape that headline back where you found it, nice and easy!)

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

....but grass doesn't react? The wind is blowing it, it's not reacting.

Everyone else has already said everything wrong here.

[schweinsty.livejournal.com]

You know, for a moment there I felt sympathy for LKH, because I'm writing something right now that has mounds of infodumps like this that just crop up all over the place. However:

1. It's nanowrimo. I am hardly taking my time on this.

2. It's a first draft. Every time I write one of these things, I make a note to pay special attention to this bit when during my first rewrite. This sucker's going to go through at least four before I even think of looking for an agent, and I'll be writing other stuff in between so I can get more practice and write better first drafts in the future. There is no way I would let anyone read this without a good warning of 'really rough' beforehand, let alone make anyone pay to read it.

3. This is not actually how I make my living.

And my sympathy shriveled up, kind of like the grass in my front yard when the sun hits it, because Texas sun is better than flipping pesticides. See? That's an awful, awful simile but it's better than the one that's going to actually be published and will probably hit the NYT bestseller list. :(

[world-dancer.livejournal.com]

Another thought: I don't think any of us have considered that the guys didn't prevent this situation. I mean, I've talked to black people about "Driving while Black" and similar issues. They know to be wary. So why would a minority who could be put to death on sight not speak up about this being a bad idea? I mean for reasons other than plot contrivance.

[subtle-shades.livejournal.com]

Maybe they're more afraid of contradicting Anita than they are of being shot...

[magdalen77.livejournal.com]

That's why my husband lets me drive sometimes. A middle aged white woman is less likely to get pulled over.

[darkese.livejournal.com]

I see this 'shoot'em on sight' law as just another cheap way to fabricate tension and danger in this series. Anita and her guys *could* have realized the danger earlier and difused it by not bringing a gaggle of were-whatevers or by taking a minute and talking to the local cops about their views on it. That would be the logical thing for the characters to do.

This goes along with the 'no crosses while questioning vampires' law. It was a silly way to manufacture a 'tense' scene for Anita. It didn't make sense and logical people would have come up with a work around like carrying a concealed cross.

But Anita is so powerful and special now that LKH has to make up these false scenarios to give her stories any sense of danger. It all falls pretty flat though.

[vlredreign.livejournal.com]

LKH's comma abuse hurts my soul...and makes me want to send her to remedial friggin grammar classes.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

Ugggh, I know, it really bites a part of my brain somewhere. Did she ditch her editor again?

[subtle-shades.livejournal.com]

Maybe that was the best that the editor could do, given the source material s/he had to work with.

[magdalen77.livejournal.com]

None of this has gone to an editor yet. In typical Hamilton fashion she's still writing the first draft of this book that's due out early June 2013.

[subtle-shades.livejournal.com]

She's a little over seven months out, though. So she might still get it turned in at least six months before the drop date. Maybe.

[magdalen77.livejournal.com]

She probably will get it in by late December or early January. That's when she got in her one and only draft for Kiss the Dead.

[queenmeow.livejournal.com]

This is utter crap.

[plastraa.livejournal.com]

Ok so let me see...despite that fact that EVERY time Anita goes anywhere at all there is some sort of pissing contest with the local police, she still had so little forethought that she couldn't see that bringing along her were-lovers to another jurisdiction might be a problem? ORLY? Yeah I call bullshit on this.

It's just another logic fail that is annoying at best.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

The only time Anita ever seems to make a mistake, ironically, is when that mistake is something totally inconsistent with her character. It's very weird.

[ex-naomi-ja.livejournal.com]

There was a sort of movement, or sigh in all the police in the hallway. The uniforms, and the two in street clothes, all reacted almost like grass in a meadow when the wind stirs it. I wasn't sure if they were reacting to the growing unpleasantness, or if they didn't like that at least three of us were "unnatural". We were in one of the handful of states where if someone killed Micah, or Dev, or Nicky, all they had to do was say, they feared for their life, and if the blood test came back positive for lycanthropy it was self defense without a trial, or anything. If you had witnesses that said, the shooting had been unprovoked you could be up on charges, but if the only other witness besides the shooter was conveniently dead, then it was a clean kill. I hadn't thought what that might mean for my men. My stomach tightened, my shoulders tensing, as I thought about that for everyone I'd brought with me. I was so used to the local police who worked with me seeing my boyfriends as people that I hadn't thought that not all police would be as understanding. Now that, really had been stupid and careless.

Without actually reaching through the internet and slapping LKH with a red pen, that's the best I can do.

[magdalen77.livejournal.com]

This is going to be the draft that she turns in. LaLa only does one draft because she claims that she edits as she goes and her first and only drafts are 90% gold.*

*These are all LaLa's allegations and beliefs not mine.