Blogflog - The Next two Anita Blake novels & questions answered at DragonCon

[blogfloggery.livejournal.com]

Link: The Next two Anita Blake novels & questions answered at DragonCon
Disclaimer: This blog entry is verbatim, as originally posted on LKH's blog. Copyright belongs to Ma Petite Enterprises.



DragonCon is in Atlanta this Labor Day weekend, as usual. Also, as usual, I’m going to be there on panels, doing signings, and enjoying the con.

My first panel is: An Hour With Laurell K. Hamilton
Time: Fri 02:30 pm Location: Augusta Ballroom – Westin (Length: 1)
Description: Audience Q&A with the bestselling author of the Anita Blake and Merry Gentry series

A Laurell and a mic panel, as my husband, Jon, calls it, where I talk to the audience, to you!, and answer questions in person, live, no rehearsal possible, that’s why they call it improv. I will be answering your questions straight from the audience, plus the five most liked questions from my FaceBook page, (Visit the page if you want in on the fun.) but this Friday there is bonus content! I will be doing something in public that I haven’t done in at least five years. I will be reading from the next Anita Blake novel. The picture included with this blog gives you a hint what the new book is about. Okay, maybe more than a hint, because the title is, Jason, and it will be the first original paperback for me since, Micah back in 2006. Just as that book featured the title character, Micah, so this one does the same for Jason. He is a serious fan favorite, and one of mine, too. He’s always fun to write and I’ve loved watching him grow as a character, and a person. I’ll actually be reading from the page proofs of the book, because this one is hot off the press, as they used to say. Then I’ll answer your questions about it, and other things. I will also be announcing something that I really, truly haven’t done before, and yes, that is a longer list than you’d think. *laughs* My publisher has come up with a way that you, the fans, can be more included in part of the process for the next Anita Blake novel. No, not the Jason novel, but the Anita Blake novel after Jason. How cool is that? How can you be more included? Come to the panel on Friday and I’ll tell all.

We know that not all of you can be at DragonCon so we are going to try and video the panel, but we can’t promise that it will happen. We need the right equipment and DragonCon telling us it’s okay for us to film the panel and then post it on line. We’re waiting to hear back now. If we can we’ll post it, so that all of you can see it later, but for those who can be there on Friday, you get to see it all live.

MOD NOTE: Amazon page for "JASON" - the blurb is...special.

Comments

[dagonista.livejournal.com]

I keep reading the blurb for "Jason," and I'm no nearer to understanding how and why this is a story. Why is there a problem? Jason doesn't want monogamy. JJ doesn't want monogamy. Jason wants BDSM. JJ says, "cool, go find someone to have it with! :D" JJ wants to sleep with women. Jason appears to be fine with this. I'm not seeing a relationship drama here. And...so...what? JJ should have sex she doesn't enjoy with Jason because...polyamory?

[dwg.livejournal.com]

Yeah ditto - JJ seems like an awesome girlfriend for being all "cool, go find someone to have BDSM with! :D" so I'm not sure why Anita needs to be brought into this.

Actually, if Anita weren't involved, I'd totally be down with a Jason and JJ have a dirty weekend short story. It could be fun.

[dagonista.livejournal.com]

Basically it looks like the inverse of Shutdown. Ellen gets castigated for not wanting Richard to get his needs met; JJ gets castigated for wanting Jason to get his needs met.

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

It seems like it'll be all "I am totes happy for you to have sex with other women BUT NOT THAT ICKY KIND because it's ICKY. If you can't explain to me why you need that ICKY SEX then I will have to leave you and have an open relationship with someone else who isn't into THAT ICKY THING."

[dagonista.livejournal.com]

I feel like this is just going to be Anita "enlightening" JJ as to why JJ should do everything Jason wants her to in bed, regardless of JJ's preferences. And she'll either fall in the discover the joys of BDSM, or she'll be rudely ejected from the Anitasphere forever and nobody will ever mention her again, and Jason will realise he only needs Anita.

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

I am supposed to find someone's blue stretch lace knickers attractive, am I?

[rebootfromstart.livejournal.com]

I was looking at that going "...is that undies? Is that undies and a flogger? Is she trying to titillate us?"

I am not titillated.

[apep727.livejournal.com]

But you have to remember - despite all her claims to the contrary, LKH is a huge prude. I mean, she can't bring herself to use the words "penis", "vagina", or any common synonyms thereof in her sex scenes. And then there's the fact that both of her MCs have to have an excuse to have multiple sexual partners.

[apep727.livejournal.com]

I love how the first sentence of the description of the panel is so full of redundant statements. Yes, Laurell, we know who your husband is. And who the audience will be. And that this thing will not be scripted in any way (are there panels that are?) It's actually kind of beautiful in an annoying kind of way.

Also - damn it, woman, learn how to use a comma correctly! This is not hard!

[jamoche]

LKH, queen of redundancy. I opened the latest book at random and didn't get more than a paragraph in before I hit this description of sunglasses: "They were silver, metal frames with mirrored lenses that reflected everything like a silver mirror."

You don't say.

[cryptaknight.livejournal.com]

Didn't we already have a book that focused on Jason, the one where they went to his home town and met his twin brother? Am I imagining that?

I know that cover is fake but it does not entice me to read this, at all. It sounds like the novel has little plot and is just an excuse to get up to Laurell's version of 'kink' and sexy times with Jason.

As always, her misuse of commas makes me cringe that she's a published writer.

[magdalen77.livejournal.com]

No, it was worse than that. He had a randy ancestor (grandfather, I think) and there were several identical looking cousins. The only way girls could tell them apart was by comparing penises (or something like that). LaLa took Asheville, NC and made it into a hick town with lots of inbreeding (as I recall these identical cousins weren't first cousins).

[cygnusrex.livejournal.com]

There are nine commas in that first line after the panel description.

I can't help but hear the whole entry in William Shatner's voice.

Editing to add actual content, LaLa's always kind of come off as the BDSM equivalent of a Fluffy Bunny (or a wanna-blessed-be, whichever your preferred term). She thinks she knows everything, but she doesn't even really get the basics. I don't even think she gets the basics of how sex works. (Or anatomy for that matter, but that's another story)

Also:

"especially if the love of your life needs to understand, or she'll leave you." (Even though it sounds like they're happy from the rest of it?)
"J.J. doesn't understand why Jason isn’t content to go elsewhere for a need she can’t fulfil, so Jason asks Anita to help him explain." (But in that same bit, she's written that neither of them are monogamous.)

Those bits make it sound like the whole book is going to be centred around Jason and Anita trying to gently nudge (read: force, probably with the Ardumb at one point) J.J. toward kink. Oh yay.

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

I don't even think she gets the basics of how sex works.

I have such a hard time believing she's ever had sex, seen sex, or read about sex.

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

I just reread that book description and noticed one very special thing: JJ is a professional ballet dancer.

If there's anybody not kinky who "gets" pain, it's going to be a ballet dancer. So the whole notion that she can't for some reason understand his getting pleasure from pain is a bit off right from the start.

Do we know if he is the recipient or the inflicter of said hot sexy pain?

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

The beginning of that blurb....I am so tired of her claims that if you don't enjoy pain then you'll just never ever be able to understand it and it's not something that can ever be explained in words, because that's patently untrue. I'm pretty sure there are a lot of essays about the biology and psychology of how that works, and I'm also fairly sure that plenty of people in the scene could give you a good concise explanation as well that is perfectly understandable even if you aren't into that yourself. Either it's ignorance, need for specialness (noooo one can ever understand who isn't just as awesome and kinky as me!), or a way to deflect criticism from the haterz ("They just don't get it because they can't get it!")

[dwg.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I think it's just an excuse for LKH to get all holier-than-thou and SHOW THEM, SHOW THEM ALLLL!!!! because she's done this already with Jessica Arnet back in ID, who thought that Nathaniel getting flogged was abuse, and later with Ellen in Shutdown when she found out her fiance was still screwing his ex when the lunch was supposed to assure her the opposite of this.

Also she keeps forgetting that Anita had this explained to her what with her ongoing voyage of sexual discovery. So them's some mighty big stones she's hurling around this glass house.

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

Like I said above, if there's anybody in the world non-kinky who is going to have a visceral relationship with pain and how it contributes and relates to pleasure and achievement and release, it's a ballet dancer.

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

"Wank: BDSM" Oh this is going to be painful. In a bad way.

First, the blog entry: I don't think Jess got a crack at this one. The poor, poor commas. What did they ever do to you, LKH?

The blurb is a lie. People have said ignorant things about BDSM in front of me or to me pretty often, and usually the only thing I've needed to say to correct them is along the lines of, "that's not how it actually is." (Except for one person who translated my saying "BDSM is usually not abusive" to "vanilla people are stupid prudes" -- that was fun.) No, people can't completely understand it deep down in their marrow unless they share it, but that's like saying I can't understand anyone finding women attractive because I don't, or that I must think anyone who doesn't think cilantro tastes like soap is nuts. There are different levels of understanding.

J.J. doesn't understand why Jason isn’t content to go elsewhere for a need she can’t fulfil <-- they spelled "fulfill" wrong.

And I don't understand either. If they were monogamous, it would be an issue, though even then I do not believe it would be an issue of "need." Jason would either have to live without it or find someone else, and trying to get JJ to do things she didn't want to do would be despicable. This is going to be LKH trampling all over consent in order to pretend that it is horribly cruel for a woman not to give a man whatever he wants sexually again, isn't it?

[dagonista.livejournal.com]

Either Jason really isn't happy not being monogamous, in which case what they really need is a long conversation about how their relationship works, or he just doesn't want JJ doing fun stuff she enjoys with people other than him. Which, this being Laurell, I can totally believe.

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

"Fulfil" is right in the rest of the world, it's only Americans who spell it your way. So it's not really an error per se.

[guardians-song.livejournal.com]

My publisher has come up with a way that you, the fans, can be more included in part of the process for the next Anita Blake novel. No, not the Jason novel, but the Anita Blake novel after Jason. How cool is that? How can you be more included? Come to the panel on Friday and I’ll tell all.
LKH: I'll actually admit that I read reviews!
Alternatively:
LKH: Suggest what hair color and eye color the next long-haired uberdong should have!

Enjoying pain with your pleasure is something you either get, or you don't. If you get it, then you don't really need it explained, because you know how good it feels, and if you don't get it then no amount of talking is going to convince you it makes sense.
Good gad. I really, really don't need to be a masochist to understand masochism. I've read up on it. And I will admit that I don't completely understand it because there's a wide range in what masochists like (so "understanding masochism" borders on oversimplification) and because I'm not one (so I won't ever have first-hand experience), but I think I understand it reasonably well.

Silly me! That involves RESEARCH! Totally anathema to the Anitaverse! XP

Also, this doesn't sound like a book. This sounds like a several-thousand-word oneshot on AO3, and that's assuming detailed descriptions and some character development - neither of which LKH wishes to provide. So... eh? How did this reach novella status?

[txvoodoo.livejournal.com]

LKH on twitter yesterday:
"'m packing up my "office" for the flight to #DragonCon & I think #Jason is trending. Is that Jason the book, or someone I don't know?"

Oh, dear heart. It was only trending in your mind.

[magdalen77.livejournal.com]

Jason the name, you nitwit. (Not meaning tx, of course).

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

Please let it be Jason Stackhouse. PLEASE.