Blogflog - What’s Next for Anita Blake?

[blogfloggery.livejournal.com]

Link: What’s Next for Anita Blake?
Disclaimer: This blog entry is verbatim, as originally posted on LKH's blog. Copyright belongs to Ma Petite Enterprises.

One of my goals for this year was to work happier, so I gave myself permission to write anything I wanted, and that was great for awhile. I’ve made some notes and even chapters, or pieces of chapters in a brand new world. I’ve learned that I need dozens to hundreds of pages that aren’t for publication while I explore and world build. I’ve tried skipping this part of my process and it’s what led me to throw out 70% of the first Meredith Gentry book after the editor had already accepted it and start the novel over. The book was immensely better for it, and the world, my main character, plot, everything vastly improved, but I learned my lesson. Unless the muses give me a book opening and world whole and complete through near magical inspiration, I need to write out my world building before I write the first book in the world.

I finished a brand new Anita Blake short novel that’s even longer than Micah which was my last original paperback surprise. Eventually, I had to look at my deadlines and my goals for the year and realize it was time to get down to brass tacks and begin the next full-size Anita Blake novel. This year, 2014, will see the first new Merry Gentry novel in almost five years, 2015 will be Anita’s turn, but to make that happen I have to write the book. Funny, how they don’t write themselves.

I usually know what I’m writing next with Anita, but I did something I used to do years back, but had stopped in the press of deadlines when I was delivering two big books a year. A decade of doing that put a lot of things on hold. There just wasn’t time to do my usual process and meet those deadlines, but see that goal to “work happier”, so I was trying to recover some of the pieces that had made things more joyous for me and my muse. I used to tidy and sort my office between writing projects, but I’d fallen so far behind on that I had literally boxes of papers on the floor, and sticky notes on the wall so old the ink had faded.

I went through every file folder, every piece of paper in my office. The desktops are cleaned and ready to go for the next book, but which one? Because in going through all the notes and scrapes of paper I’ve got a wealth of possibilities. I thought I’d chosen a follow up on Sampson, the mermaid/man, and his rather dysfunctional family situation: sirens, vampires, and murder, oh, my! But I think that Sampson’s story maybe a short story, or a different book than I thought, so – not yet. I have this great opening that I wrote on the plane back from Paris a few years ago. It has Nicky featured and I thought, cool, we’ll do a book where he takes center stage. Um, no, not ready. That opening may have Nicky in a main part, but I think it’s a book more about Anita’s necromancy and the power boost/side effects from the Mother of All Darkness. (You didn’t really think all that happened without side effects, did you?) But the book isn’t soup yet, not done, not ready, so . . . Valentina, our forever five-year-old vampire, has a story to tell, and a modern spin on her own fate, and I thought that was next, but as I tried to write it . . . it slowed down, and . . . Edward’s wedding finally? No, that story isn’t ready yet, close, but not quite ready. Olaf’s return? Maybe, but not yet. Nicky will be going home to make sure his abusive mother doesn’t get parole and Anita will go with him for moral support, but not this book. (That may actually be a novelette, or short story, and not a book at all.) Bartolome trapped forever in the body of a twelve-year-old boy, has more to tell, but again he’s not ready to tell the rest of his story. I’ve got a short story/novelette with Micah doing his job for the Furry Coalition, but so not soup yet. I’ve got a Jade novelette, or short novel, and that maybe close, but not sure. I’ve got the beginning of a short piece where Jean-Claude and Asher tell an adventure they had when they were a happy threesome with Julianna. I know the whole plot there, I think, it’s more how to tell the story without running into the traps of “telling a story,” where you know the people survived, or they couldn’t be telling you the story now. I’ve got two short pieces where Richard is on stage, and one that revisits his family, his brother Daniel in particular, but that’s not even close to ready to be written. I’ve got several pages of a story about Jean-Claude, and Nathaniel, and we find out something from both their pasts that intertwine in a way that totally surprised me. That seems to be the front runner at the moment, but again it feels more like a novelette than a novel. There’s a piece that features Detective Zerbrowski and his son, and that’s close to being ready, but again I don’t think it’s a complete novel. It may even be a short story. I found notes about a visit to Philadelphia to visit Requiem in his new home. A book set in the Carolinas that was inspired by a horrible hotel room my husband, Jon, and I had in Charlotte, North Carolina once, but though a great beginning, it’s just an idea, a book length idea, but it needs another idea, or two to bump into it before I sit down and begin in earnest. That’s just a few of the ideas I rediscovered, or tidied up into folders for later.

I’d forgotten that I did that, shed ideas like flower petals in a high wind, so that the path is strewn with wonders, and curious notes. My office is clean and neat as a pin, but my imagination is cluttered with fragments of this and that idea, character, plot, so that it’s like I’ve smashed a stained glass window and covered the floor with bright, shining, pieces, but which to pick up first?

Comments

[morbane.livejournal.com]

I wish she wrote like this all the time. This is far more interesting than the usual advice and epigrams. Notwithstanding the silly similes at the end.

[dagonista.livejournal.com]

This blog completely needed a selfie to go with it.

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

Holding a big ol' knife to your arm is not cute, Laurell.

Was anyone clamoring for more Valentina, Bartholome, or Zerbrowski?

A book set in the Carolinas that was inspired by a horrible hotel room my husband, Jon, and I had in Charlotte, North Carolina once

Great, just great. She wants to write a story to piss all over Charlotte.

All this boils down to "I have no idea what to do next in the Anita Blake series."

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

I'm interested in Valentina but I don't think LKH will write anything worth reading concerning her

And I was born in Charlotte, incidentally. It makes me wanna pretend to take it all personal :p

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

I have family in Charlotte and it's a town I really like. My aunt's wedding was there, and the hotel my husband and I stayed in was quite nice -- not anything fancy, just clean and quiet.

Another author could talk about how she'd stayed in a bad hotel in a town she then wanted to write about and I wouldn't even blink. But if LKH writes this, she will do it to satisfy a grudge (how dare they give her a bad hotel room!), because that's why she writes nearly anything, and that will be gross.

[desert-vixen.livejournal.com]

The selfie is not good... showcases the creamy goodness, but her face looks weird at that angle.

If she would write a collection of short stories that featured other characters and weren't first person Anita, I'd give it a look.

Wondering what this AB short novel will be about...

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

If she would write a collection of short stories that featured other characters and weren't first person Anita, I'd give it a look.
So would I! That'd be pretty fresh and daring for her at least, even if it ended up not being any good.

[desert-vixen.livejournal.com]

It would be encouraging. Although a whole book like Shutdown might scare people away...

[missingvolume.livejournal.com]

Sounds like most of the novels lately. I have this great idea to start with and then oh noes I'm bogged down so lets throw in all the sex we can and the ending almost magically wraps up somehow.

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

Does this woman not even read anything she writes before she hits "post"? Editing is your friend, really.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

...that selfie. Wow. No, LKH, nooo.

I thought I’d chosen a follow up on Sampson, the mermaid/man
Merman. The males of the species are called mermen. That's, like, not an uncommon term in the fantasy genre, how does she not know it? Or is she trying to be funny/cute? I can't tell. I guess I'd like to know more about her merfolk, though, she just dropped them in and then it was like they didn't exist. Of course, if it's about Sam's family, it'll be 90% shitting on Thea for being a tall thin blonde...

It has Nicky featured and I thought, cool, we’ll do a book where he takes center stage
NO NO NO

but I think it’s a book more about Anita’s necromancy and the power boost/side effects from the Mother of All Darkness. (You didn’t really think all that happened without side effects, did you?)
At this point, yeah, actually I did. And I would be glad that, oh, it's gonna cost Anita something, but I think we all know it won't. And power boost? Like she needed one?

Valentina, our forever five-year-old vampire, has a story to tell, and a modern spin on her own fate
As with the merfolk, I'd like to read this, but then I remember who will be writing it

Olaf’s return? Maybe, but not yet
NO NO NO, FUCKING NO

Nicky will be going home to make sure his abusive mother doesn’t get parole and Anita will go with him for moral support
So like what she did with Jason in Blood Noir and Micah in Affliction except it's probably going to be worse in numerous ways

so that it’s like I’ve smashed a stained glass window and covered the floor with bright, shining, pieces, but which to pick up first?
*facepalm*

[dagonista.livejournal.com]

It has Nicky featured and I thought, cool, we’ll do a book where he takes center stage
NO NO NO

I can't think of any story less appealing than one starring a mind-wiped sex slave. I really hope she doesn't do that. I'm so anti-Nicky I have to restrain myself from screaming at LKH every time she mentions him on Twitter.

Valentina, our forever five-year-old vampire, has a story to tell, and a modern spin on her own fate
As with the merfolk, I'd like to read this, but then I remember who will be writing it

"Valentina can't have sex, therefore her life is devoid of meaning: an Anita Blake story." That's it, that's what it would be.

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

I'd love a story featuring a mind-wiped sex slave who gets free somehow and then takes the whole St. Louis group down from the inside. But since LKH thinks that mind-wiping someone to make him your sex slave is a good thing so long as Anita does it, that will never happen.

[snarky-imp.livejournal.com]

So many of these things sound like they could be good if she hadn't fallen into a pit of suck that she seems unable to acknowledge let alone get out of any time soon.

And then there are the Nicky ideas that I just cannot scream, "NO!" loudly enough.

Woe for the Carolinas. Haven't we suffered enough?

I'm gonna need that Asher/Julianna/JC story written by someone else, ASAP.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

So many of these things sound like they could be good if she hadn't fallen into a pit of suck that she seems unable to acknowledge let alone get out of any time soon.

My thoughts exactly.

[lady-fellshot.livejournal.com]

Somehow the stained glass window thing makes sense. LKH takes things that could be interesting, breaks them into a million pieces and makes a horrid lump of solder and shards that she expects to be praised for.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

HAHAHAHAHA so true!

[guardians-song.livejournal.com]

Holy shit, she's actually thinking of following up on old stuff?!

Ordinarily I'd be mocking her, but I'm obligated to give credit where credit is due. Maybe, by the time she's seventy, she'll be grown-up and acting like a mature author?

[plastraa.livejournal.com]

I just don't understand selfies. meh.

OK so of all her 'ideas' about one of them has any sort of indication that she's ever going to have Anita be an animator and do anything other than deal with the relationship issues of her one million (and counting) honeys.

I would love if she opened her world of 'extra' cast of thousands characters and allowed other people to write in her world. People that she doesn't want to write but we want to see. I would like to see more about Jade, but not written by LKH.

I don't want her anywhere near Bartolome for a variety of reasons. Nor do I want her writing the Julianna, Asher, Jean-Claude story I worry it would turn into Julianna being an Anita insert, or worse.

Anyway. Hm.

[world-dancer.livejournal.com]

I will give her credit for writing something that feels "real" about her process.

That said, none of these ideas appeal to me. None of them are enough for a book. They're subplots of a larger book at best.

And the fact that she says she threw out 70% of her first Merry book. . . I read the first book. It was "better" than Anita in that all the sex made sense for the character. HOWEVER, it was also formulaic as hell. It's almost exactly an erotic scene every 50 pages. You can count it out. Makes rather dull, actually.

[shadwing.livejournal.com]

So Shiver of Light, her LONG overdue book for Merry Gentry gets no mention at all, even though it drops in less than a month and rather than promoting the HELL out of the book she gives it a one sentence mention about the first MG, then blabs on for her Anita Blake plans...

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

Poor neglected Merry, she's the Un-favorite Sue...is that even possible?

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

Imo, having amazing powers and being loved by most and being a self-insert do not a Sue make. A Sue must warp reality around themselves completely. The personality and actions of every other character must serve the Sue's ego in some fashion. Sues must be black holes. I haven't read the Merry books, but from what I've seen about them, I wonder if Merry is a Sue at all. She doesn't even seem to be nearly as much of a self-insert as Anita is.

(Actually, I think Jean-Claude is the true Sue of the Anita Blake series, hiding behind Anita Blake. Her personality has been warped to please him and everything she does adds to his power. Though lately even he's been getting grouchy about some of the things she does or does not do, so perhaps she is fighting back.)

[shadwing.livejournal.com]

Yes Merry has lots of sueish traits but she's not as bad as Anita. Which might be WHY LKH has such trouble with her. Merry doesn't have any of the huge hang ups that Anita's got and therefore lest to whine about in her life.

[guardians-song.livejournal.com]

In fairness, Merry does have two huge hang-ups: not being "properly Sidhe" and her father's murder.

The difference is that her father's murder got RESOLVED in Swallowing Darkness, and that people tried to KILL HER for years over not being properly Sidhe. So it's not this random WTFery that Anita has where the wrong hair color is a sign of absolute and overwhelming evil.

[shadwing.livejournal.com]

I was thinking of hang ups like "Oh WOE I am a monster..." or "Oh how horrible I have to have sex with these men who worship me!" and the ever favorite "I am so AWESOME at (fill in the blank here) that everybody hates me on sight WOE"

Or if she does it's not as uber obvious in the Merry Books

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

Oh, I agree, what I meant is that she doesn't seem to be the fave of her creator. Of course, I haven't read the Merry books either, so I likewise don't know if there's comparable levels of Suedeom between her and Anita either.

[guardians-song.livejournal.com]

She's the avatar of the Sidhe Goddess, with no downsides whatsoever. You tell ME about the level of Suedom there. -_-;;

(And with Anita slurping the MOAD... yeah, Anita's a comparable level of Sueness now.)

The only redeeming thing is that Merry is so totally chill about being a walking plot device that it takes the edge off. They don't go on for pages resisting the inevitable sex scene so much as they go 'What's that, Goddess? Power-up-via-sex time? OKEY-DOKE! :D' and jump on each other. (Not much exaggerating. The Merry books kind of read like a fever dream* at points because the characters are so blase about stumbling from plot point to plot point for no reason other than 'magic and the Goddess command it'. It would be much better than Anita for that reason alone... if only the sex was at all interesting...)
*Take a look at one FAN's summary of the book... (helen-keeble.livejournal.com/28618.html)

These books are total, tooth-rotting, not-even-pretending-to-be-good-for-you candy, and I love 'em all, if only to snark at how many more powers Merry can acquire in this book through sex with even more improbably endowed men.

Also, I should let you know that Merry is really friggin' stupid. Stupider than Anita. It must be to compensate for her lack of bile and spite.

Goddess: How clear can I make this? Look - blood bad! Sex good!
Merry: What?
Goddess: *facepalm*

But at least she's cheerfully brainless.

Merry: Hooray! More sex! Even after I've been bitten, stabbed, and drowned, I'm still up for it!

...And LKH doesn't even try to pretend she's taking this shit wholly seriously. A refreshing change.

Sholto's Uncles: Why the fuck is the King of the Sluagh wearing a crown of flowers? And where did all this grass come from?

Shockingly enough, there is even a genuinely funny moment at the end!

Sholto: Actually, as Lord of That Which Passes Between, I can call cabs. Because they pass between things, you see. Behold!
Taxi cabs: *appear*
All: Now THAT'S what I call magic!

(That actually is how the book ends. So, as you can see - while LKH is obviously smoking crack with this book, at least it's not wangst!crack.)

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

Incredible cosmic power!= Sueness.

The original "Mary Sue" story was about a woman with whom Kirk and Spock both fell in love, and who died in the end so she could be even more beloved. The reason she was a(n intentionally) bad character was that she changed the personalities of people around her solely to worship at her feet. (Killing off your main character is actually the traditional path for Sue authors, especially common in the Victorian era.)

A character can have amazing powers and be drop-dead gorgeous and have no "Sue" traits at all. In fact, I believe this idea that being powerful, smart, etc. is what a Mary Sue is has led to some of the worst writing in existence. It means there are now a ton of characters who are mean and stupid and powerless, and yet whom everyone adores. It's obvious the writers are trying to prove their characters aren't "Sues" by making them incredibly clumsy or ignorant or incapable or nasty. I would argue that Anita Blake actually fits this description.

Worse, it means that women are now particularly afraid of writing powerful and awesome female characters, since the "Sue" label gets thrown at every female character with even one talent or one man who wants to have sex with her.

[guardians-song.livejournal.com]

I agree, but lemme explain. This is LKH.

So Merry doesn't really DO anything due to her Goddess Avatar Powers. She just prays and random Dea Ex Machina contrivances drop out of the sky. It's about as exciting as someone constantly typing cheat codes into the console. 'Teleport here! God(dess) Mode On Here! Heal HP To Max here!' So it gives Merry LESS agency, because Merry's actually capable of doing something from time to time (unlike Anita) and the Goddess Avatar Powers are just LKH's excuse to get out of devising a way for Merry to get out of this mess via the resources already at her disposal.

I'm not going to call her Sueish for the Hands of Flesh and Blood, certainly, even though those are VERY high-powered magical abilities when she uses them to their fullest. She uses them. They're extremely important. They actually make sense given all the rules of the universe. Those don't make her a Sue, they make her a very high-powered mage.

The Goddess Avatar powers are essentially LKH's way to say 'Aaaaaah, screw actually resolving this scenario using the set-up I devised, I'm BOOOOORED! Next plot point!'

In all fairness, that's slightly more honorable than just forgetting about the plot points that bore her in the manner that she does in the Anitaverse. But not by much.

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, despite being Not Properly Sidhe Merry is completely unfazed by the idea that anybody could find her sexually attractive. Because a) she's a fairy and humans just do and b) faery types are all merrily bonking away at the drop of a hat so, yeah, no big.

Whereas Anita has to have people reassure her that she is so beautiful and sexy. Beautifuller and more sexyer than any other woman in the room. Right now or ever at any time. At every opportunity. It gets so wearying.

I wonder if it's the fictionalised version of Jon going "yes Laurell your thigh high boots and pirate shirt really IS more alluring than that lady's bandage dress. Honestly. Your style is timeless."

[guardians-song.livejournal.com]

Well, there IS the mandatory once-a-book 'But I'm curvy and short, far too human-looking for all you great Sidhe'/'Well, we've been stealing human women away for centuries for a reason, y'know' interlude. But it doesn't eat the book like Anita's hang-ups do.

I wonder if it's the fictionalised version of Jon going "yes Laurell your thigh high boots and pirate shirt really IS more alluring than that lady's bandage dress. Honestly. Your style is timeless."
I think it's a variant on Ellen going "I’m sorry that I [...] made you feel like you had to share that story." in Shutdown and Anita taking that as 'I'm sorry I made you feel unhappy, forgive me, O Goddess of Darkity-Dark Beauty' rather than 'I'd say she was fucking Helen of Troy if it made her stop wangsting'. :P