What Anita Blake spin off would you read?

[staringiscaring.livejournal.com]

I'm no longer interested in the character that Anita Blake has become. Disgusted is more like it. However, I still think that LKH created a really fascinating world with interesting characters despite her disservices to her series. I would like to see more from certain characters and plots. These are the three that I would be most interested in:

The Bounty Hunter: I'd love to see a series about Edward as he tracks down paranormal murders as a Federal Marshall and deals with his double life as a family man. It'd be Dexter meets Trueblood and I would fangirl the hell out of it. I know I can't be the only one. 

Manny Rodriguez's Origin Story: I always thought that Anita's mentor, Manny, must have had an awesome origin story that should have been told. I imagine it to be a 1970s working class noir in east Los Angeles. 

Have Gun, Will Travel - The Ronnie Sims Story: Ronnie leaves St. Louis and travels the globe to take on paranormal cases. 

What kind of spin off, prequel, or sequel would you be interested in seeing from the AB-verse?

Comments

[polymexina.livejournal.com]

Dude, Prohibition with Vampires. That's all I'm asking for.

[staringiscaring.livejournal.com]

That would be awesome actually. I'd love to read about a vampire-run speakeasy on a steamboat or vampire rum runners from Havana.

[elialshadowpine.livejournal.com]

Slightly OT but, while it is not Anita Blake, Moonshine by Alaya Dawn Johnson has exactly this premise, vampires (and other supernaturals) during the Prohibition. (For some asinine reason the book was marketed as contemporary urban fantasy, but it is AMAZING.)

[world-dancer.livejournal.com]

PN Elrod Vampire Files. It is awesome. or at least the first 6 books are.

[polymexina.livejournal.com]

Because the thing that gets me is that the Anita-verse isn't just unfleshed out re: character, it's unfleshed out re: history. Like, seriously, wtf was going in MS during Prohibition with vampires?

[killiara.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking of something almost like a travel series. Each book would have a different Exterminator, set in a different City and State, about a unique case. My favorite Anita books have always been those that take her out of her 'territory', not because of the fish out of water scenario, but because those dive into the LOCAL critters, Rawhide and Bloody Bones, Aztec Vampires...

So, a series of books where each one is in a different location, having to deal with a different local creature rather than just Vamps/Weres/BLAH. There's MORE to the world than those two species. Show us.

Edited to add that by changing protagonist each book, LKH would have less time to Sue-ify him/her/it.

[staringiscaring.livejournal.com]

I agree about the Vamp/Weres fatigue. I love the vampire/werewolf mythos but there is a wide world outside of it that few authors are exploring.

[christwriter.livejournal.com]

Ronnie. :D Oh god, you could have so much fun with that.

Book one: She attempts an intervention on her good friend Anita by researching the history of weres and vampires, looking for information she can use to leverage Anita out of her awful life choices. She manages to hook up with a were (insert animal here. My vote goes for hippos. You do not screw with hippos.) pack that has an emphasis on HEALTHY inter-herd relationships and uses them as backup. There is also a sub-plot involving the were-hippos smuggling some high-powered vamp's inapproprete pomme-de-sang (Child, abuse victim. Nathanial) into a kind of halfway house/supernatural wittness protection, and a Steve Irwin-esque reality star investigating reports of hippopotami in the Mississippi river. He comes to a messy end involving dung. After a climax that does NOT, for once, involve sex, Ronnie accepts that people who cling to stupid life choice must be allowed to come to their own senses. Saddened, but completed by a new collection of friends, she regretfully severs her connection to Anita, though she leaves contact info behind, in case Anita should ever want to change her mind...and dumps a massive amount of info on Dolph's desk, because actions have concequences...

Book Two: Weresnake is kidnapped by exotic snake smugglers. Ronnie has to rescue before were-status is revealed, or highly poisonous shape-shifter takes matters into own fangs. Also conflicts between were-cats and the hippos, moving a family that saw unfortunate things, and how to rehab a Renfeild.

Book three: Vampire drug addiction being funneled through hosptial system and snow-cone factory. Also evil clown-assassin that possibly traces back to Jean Claude. More fun with the hippos. Book would end with hang-up call from Anita.

I need to stop now. I could go on all night.

[mocha-latta.livejournal.com]

Book 2 sounds like an AMAZING original novel.

[alorarose.livejournal.com]

Can we have weregiraffes? I'd pay good money for weregiraffes.

[christwriter.livejournal.com]

...that would be nine flavors of awesome. Espeically because giraffes have the same amount of neck vertibrae as humans.

[alorarose.livejournal.com]

My friend told me that if I put any weregiraffes in my NaNo that she'd disown me. So I put selkies instead, LOL.

[astronauta.livejournal.com]

1. Forgot her name but that mermaid/siren chick in Danse Macabre? She was the one pushing Anita to sleep with her sons. She just sounded so psychotic and ambitious, and I want to know more about her kind. So I'd like to read about her. I also like to know how she and a vampire got together and bred.

2. Jean-Claude. He isn't the same manipulative bastard these days, but he was in the first few books. I'd love to read how he was before Book 1. I want to see how he played the game, climbed up the ladder from some sex toy to Master of the City.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

Seconding your #1! Her name was Thea (short for Leukothea, after a Greek sea goddess) and my theory is that she and her husband are enslaving the merfolk. Think about it--he can call merfolk, and she's a siren, a type of merperson that can control other merpeople through an ardeur-like power (which is why she's the last of her kind; merpeople sensibly hunt down and kill any sirens). He controls them at night, she controls them during the day, and that's why they want Anita to screw their sons to bring them into their siren powers: because more sirens means more control over the merpeople!

That's what I think, anyway.

[astronauta.livejournal.com]

ahhh! Your theory makes me want this spin off even more!

[cousinmary.livejournal.com]

A new protagonist would be the most important part. Start over without the need for MOAR! power, sex, ect. What I'd love to see would be a relaunch with a back-to-basics heroine with little to no power, who manages to solve cases without joining in the vamp/were power struggles. That’s were Anita truly lost it, I think, with the need to be in the center of everything, be it politics, love triangle, or anything really. And if she could limit herself to one love triangle at a time, and lose the one previous when she gets a new one, all the better.
Christmas wishes, this relaunch would be vaguely film noir-ish and Narcissus would be a reluctant, but secretly supportive, informant. I see the new heroine slinking up all uneasy to the bar and trying to find out what she needs to know, Narci vaguely amused, but making her jump through hoops before he tells her the scoop.

[shadwing.livejournal.com]

I'd like to see whats really going on in other cities in reaction to the insanity of St Louis.

Logically the Masters who haven't been aligned or forced to align with JC are looking at St Louis with heavy side eyes. He's got a Necromancer as a Human Servant, a Human Servant that appears to have HIM the FREAKING Master of the City cow-towed. Said Servant has connections/ruling ranks to pretty much every were critter in the city.

I'd love to see some political chess start to crop up...the exile of Asher would be a dream come true for any of the other Masters who want to insure that JC would never have any sort of power in an American Vampire Council. Asher has had a front row seat to how St Louis is really run, and a heaping helping of vengence against Anita at least...and possibly JC for picking her over him and the memory of Julianna.

[ex-naomi-ja.livejournal.com]

I always thought, way back when I first started reading the series, that a Ronnie spin-off would be awesome.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

More about the mermaids and fey! They were just brought up, then left by the wayside, and it's like, hello, entire sentient other races that not only aren't human but never were?. And anything with the wererats!

[world-dancer.livejournal.com]

Jean Claude, Asher, and Asher's human servant vs. Belle Morte in the Renaissance.

[kyoko-minamino.livejournal.com]

Edward, Jason, and Asher have always been my favorite characters. While Asher's confidence issues push him to third for me, holy shit, would I read an Edward Forrester or Jason Schulyer series. I love both of those boys so much and they have oodles of potential for their own stories. One's a deadly assassin who pretends to be a Good Ole Boy, the other is a sarcastic handsome lech who's a stripper, a werewolf, and yet is actually a pretty good guy. If I weren't already writing two novel series, I'd write an AU for both of them.

[firesongvx.livejournal.com]

I would also love to see some reactions in other cities to the BS going on in St. Louis! Especially if it follows Exiled!Asher.

And I would love a spinoff series just about RPIT. Dolph, Zerbrowski, and the rest of the gang getting into all sorts of cases...urban fantasy police procedural awesomeness!

The characters would have to be the pre-lobotomized versions, of course.