Facebook flog - Oct 22 2013

[blogfloggery.livejournal.com]

Link: Oct 22 2013, 7:18
Disclaimer: This blog entry is verbatim, as originally posted on LKH's Facebook. Copyright belongs to Ma Petite Enterprises.

New press release about my newest e-short story Shutdown. You guys downloaded it over 30,000 in the first day! Thank you, so happy I could share it with you!

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/best-selling-author-laurell-k-hamilton-extends-free-ebook-deadline-following-30000-downloads-in-first-day-of-shutdown-release-with-just-in-time-publishing-228640811.html

Article text:

Best-selling author Laurell K. Hamilton Extends Free eBook Deadline Following 30,000 Downloads in First Day of "Shutdown" Release (with 'just-in-time' publishing)

NEW YORK, Oct. 21, 2013 /PRNewswire-iReach/ -- Laurell K. Hamilton, author of the best-selling Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series, has released "Shutdown," a new short story featuring Anita Blake, which she made free to readers for the duration of the government shutdown. Hamilton worked with the epublishing technology company Vook to deliver free ebooks directly to her audience. Hamilton wrote, edited, designed and released the short story, featuring characters from her Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series, published by Penguin Random House.

With production contributions from Hamilton's husband Jonathon Green, who also designed the cover, and the assistance of her agent Merrilee Heifetz with Writers House Digital Director Julie Trelstad, it took less than 72 hours to take advantage of this unique moment in American politics.

"Shutdown" features the recurring protagonist Anita Blake and series' regular Richard Zeeman, the bad-boy werewolf beloved by fans.

Hamilton used Vook's technology to quickly release a story to her audience and control the process, which made it easy for her fans to access the book, resulting in first day download numbers of more than 30,000 copies of "Shutdown." Hamilton has commented that, "This story is for all my readers who have been affected by the current political snafu--and for anyone else who might need to enjoy a free story in these difficult times." While the original plan was to withdraw the free story at the end of the shutdown, to celebrate the enthusiasm of her readers, and the government coming to its senses, Hamilton has decided to extend the free download until Friday October 25th. Hamilton stated, "I love being able to reward people with one more free week, and having a process that is flexible enough to do it."

"Shutdown," a new Anita Blake story, is available via Vook's free ebook delivery service at http://signup.vook.com/laurell-hamilton/

Comments

[deadsong.livejournal.com]

...Anita shoves Hillary Clinton aside and proclaims herself the only viable candidate for the first female president in 2016, because she's already the werequeen of everything and clearly doing such an amazing job at that. Cue 500 pages detailing every politician and candidate, what they're wearing, and either their automatic and over-the-top (even for some of the more over-the-top Tea Partiers) misogyny toward her...or their blatant desire to fuck her. Or their oh-so-vanilla shock when she uses her poly relationship and were-everything as a campaign platform, and doesn't understand why everyone is baffled and disgusted that she would trot this out and flaunt it everywhere when it has no relevance to U.S. politics.

Oh, and obviously Anita's the better candidate over Hillary because Hillary's blonde and 100% white and therefore evil.

...

Fuck. I overthought this until I could actually see it happening. And now I can't unsee it. Damn it.

[desert-vixen.livejournal.com]

This would be better than what she actually wrote... plus she would get bored describing people because they all have boring short hair.

You could also go with a shock/smear campaign when a candidate is exposed as a were-whatever - maybe not presidential but local-ish?

[deadsong.livejournal.com]

The problem with that is that her tendency toward cookie-cutter "sexy" weres would blatantly highlight the fact that the human population is, in her mind, a bunch of blank-eyed, drooling paper dolls. The candidate would have to be sexy, buff, with long hair and jewel-toned eyes. And let's not forget the ridiculous fashion sense. If his were-status was somehow supposed to be a big plot reveal, it'd be fucking revealed the second the started to describe him--and the collective reader facepalm would be heard 'round the world while people groaned "That's not quite how you do foreshadowing..." Not to mention we'd know by the second paragraph of description that he'll end up in the harem because having someone in local politics will build her power base. But the reason why it makes the general human population look like paper dolls without brains...well, therians are out in the open. And according to LKH, they all follow a certain template for appearance and style. The human brain is pretty much wired for pattern recognition, especially when those forming the pattern stand out from the general population. It's part of what fuels racist stereotyping and racial profiling, not to mention classism, etc. So people would notice that toned body + attractive face + ridiculous hair + weird eyes + overly elaborate and clownish clothing = therian, and anyone with therian prejudices would probably be leery of people who follow this pattern to start with even while being human. So it would stand to reason that the moment the candidate stood up for a stump speech or something, people would start whispering "Omg! Look at his hair and weird clothes! Do you think he's a weredonkey? Maybe a wereelephant?" (Badump-ching, awful political humor.) Or at least, people with some level of sense. But in LKH's mind, not a single one of them would have put together the clues from this pattern she's inadvertently created through painful author self-insertion, so everyone would be COMPLETELY shocked that the candidate is a therian. Wooden damned dummies with no brains, because the only person in the book with a brain and powers of observation must be Anita.