Blogflog - A few of my favorite things . . . from Ireland and England

[blogfloggery.livejournal.com]

Link: A few of my favorite things . . . from Ireland and England
Disclaimer: This blog entry is verbatim, as originally posted on LKH's blog. Copyright belongs to Ma Petite Enterprises.

A month long trip to Ireland and England and the most asked question since we returned to family and friends in the states is this: What was your favorite part? I’ve answered it differently, by simply throwing out whatever first comes to mind like a word association.

What was your favorite part of the trip?

The Wicklow Mountains in Ireland.



One of the many waterfalls we saw in Glendalough, in the Wicklow Mountains.

What was your favorite part?

Writing in Dublin. (I wrote better there than anywhere else.)

What was your favorite?

Introducing Spike and Genevieve to pate in Dublin. They have dubbed it smooth, creamy, spreadable meat butter.

Your favorite?

Eating at Gordon Ramsey’s flagship restaurant, Restaurant Gordon Ramsey, in London. It has three Michelin stars and now I know why. An amazing experience and will likely get a blog of its own later.

Favorite?

British Museum. Jonathon summed it up, “Every little emperor’s dream of avarice.” It was beyond amazing. It will also be getting it’s own blog later.

Fav?

Glastonbury Abbey, where the calling of crows led me to my first ever badger sett hidden under a huge oak tree. It turns out I followed the birds in the wrong end of the path. If I’d come in the proper way there was a sign to tell me the badgers were there, but honestly I prefer having found it the way I did. I followed the birds trying to see what they were fussing about, and then suddenly, badgers! I often find the most magical moments are the unplanned ones.

?

That moment when I stood in a town I’d never known about, at a ruin I’d never heard about, and knew that my muse had been right. This was the place to put the monster. My imagination had whispered the name of this place to me when, to my knowledge, I had never known it even existed. I haven’t had that happen since the ninth Anita Blake novel, Obsidian Butterfly, when Edward insisted he lived in New Mexico, even though I’d never visited the state. I remember arguing with him, “I created you, how can you live somewhere I know nothing about?” I lost that argument, because he was absolutely right and I knew it the moment I stepped off the plane in Albuquerque. He still lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Ireland took me longer to get my research feet under me, and I’ll be blogging in more detail about that process later, but once I got into the swing of things it was like that moment in New Mexico – this was it. I know where the monster is, where the bodies are buried, where the crime will happen, and who Anita follows to Ireland.

Are the above really my favorite moments of the trip? Yes and no. They are some of my favorite moments, but not all of them. I’ll be blogging about more highlights and moments of inspiration, craziness, research, and sheer happy accidents over the next few weeks, but this gives you a taste of the trip. Yes, I have been deliberately vague about where the Irish book, as I called it for a long time, is set, because I’m not ready to share exact locations yet. I have a book to finish writing and it feels like if I give too much detail now on the blog that it will derail some of the energy that is driving the book forward. I need to be immersed in the fictional version of the town, countryside, ruins, etc . . . before I discuss the reality too much. In fact, I have pages yet to write today, a scene to complete, a fight to finish, but first, the reality of dogs and breakfast for them and myself and then back to my fictional world where dogs never interrupt and breakfast rarely seems to happen.

Comments

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

My imagination had whispered the name of this place to me when, to my knowledge, I had never known it even existed. I haven’t had that happen since the ninth Anita Blake novel, Obsidian Butterfly, when Edward insisted he lived in New Mexico, even though I’d never visited the state.

She'd never known New Mexico existed? I know that's not what she meant, but it's what she wrote, and it's sort of important for a professional writer to line those two up.

but this gives you a taste of the trip

No it doesn't. It tells us that these places happen to exist and you saw them. That's it. Children writing about what they did on their summer vacations do a much better job of this stuff.

Poor Ireland. Hasn't it suffered enough without LKH setting a book there?

[darkestgrace.livejournal.com]

back to my fictional world where dogs never interrupt and breakfast rarely seems to happen.

I think this encapsulates one of the major problems with her books. They don't feel real. People don't have breakfast. There isn't anyone grabbing toast on the way out the door, or bitching because Nathaniel insists on buying muesli instead of chocolate cereal. No one ever uses the last of the toothpaste, or takes the last hair elastic or forgets to put milk on the shopping list when they use the last of it. There are no pets that interrupt romantic or dramatic moments, no fish that need feeding. No bills to pay, no shoes to buy because all that running has just about worn through the soles of your favourites. None of the little details that make a story feel real. By making the story her escapist fantasy, she's made it feel like some creepy plastic twilight zone.

[snarky-imp.livejournal.com]

The last Anita book I read made it seem like she was so very tired of all the actual plot she had to make up *cough* and that she wanted to just sit around and enjoy Anita and her merry men doing normal stuff.

Which, if it was anything like your examples, would actually have been a fun short story that I'd actually read.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to continue to die at the thought of everyone fighting over the last hair elastic.

[desert-vixen.livejournal.com]

I can only imagine how many hair elastics they go through in that house... not to mention the bill for shampoo and conditioners!

[viridian5.livejournal.com]

I can't help thinking about all the clogged drains.

[openidwouldwork.livejournal.com]

omg YES

[viridian5.livejournal.com]

Because you know these characters are too helpless and thoughtless to think of cleaning their hair out of them.

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

I wouldn't want to know all those tiny details in most books. Maybe on occasion, but otherwise I assume they're happening and want to get on with the story and the interesting stuff. However, LKH describes so many things on an subatomic level, the stuff she leaves out ends up being super glaring.

There's actually a lot of stuff about food in the books, though. And about how other people have to force Anita to eat it, or that she avoids eating until she's so ravenous that only fast food will do. Then she tells us all about that food. In Dead Ice LKH felt it necessary to inform us that Anita's stable of strippers didn't eat carbs at night. There are details that make the world more real, and then there are details that make the world more annoying, and LKH gravitates toward the latter.

[alondra-del-sol.livejournal.com]

I would say it's not about wanting to know the tiny details, but they are more of the mini-est of things to drive the plot forward. You are out of something so you go get it, but the story isn't really about how you forgot the milk it's about how when you stop at the convenience store and grumble about the price that someone is going to take a pot shot at you or whatever, but basically LKH has even eliminated this because AB can't go anywhere without an entourage.

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

Yes, I can totally see that. I guess it's that when I think of that kind of thing in concert with the way LKH writes... uuuggghhh. She would tell us exactly what the clerk looked like, how hot said clerk thought she and her entourage were if the clerk was male, how horrible the clerk was if she were female, what kind of milk they got and why, how they had to keep their backs to the wall in the convenience store because they were badass, and how Nicky couldn't walk down the aisles because he was too wide. To start.

Anita once felt the need to inform us that the Coke didn't drip on her when she got fast food.

[desert-vixen.livejournal.com]

There are details that make the world more real, and then there are details that make the world more annoying, and LKH gravitates toward the latter.

This is exactly one of her problems!

[point-earedpain.livejournal.com]

Just a second, didn't Anita have fish, way back in the day? Back when she collected penguins and actually had something of a personality and hobbies and a life that didn't revolve around her ever-expanding collection of interchangeable penises?

I don't want to know what happened to those poor fish. I'm just going to imagine someone with compassion and a love for animals adopted them and is taking proper care of them and they are the happiest little fish ever.

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

She did!!!

[dwg.livejournal.com]

The fish just vanished when Anita moved out of her apartment and have never been mentioned again. Which is probably just as well because she's not even at the house she moved into anymore.

Unless this is what Damian does in the basement? Adjusting the PH in the aquarium may be the highlight of his weekend.

[point-earedpain.livejournal.com]

That's part of the problem with these latest ones, I think. The things that made Anita seem like a human being have been forgotten entirely or traded in for high school-eque drama and endless circular descriptions. I don't recall the fish ever being talked about in detail (or the penguin) but the fact that they were there made her more interesting and likable.

I honestly don't recall which one Damian is, but I'm certain I can say with reasonable confidence that those poor fish deserve better.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

I agree! Specially since Anita made a point of saying she didn't have a tv in the beginning of the series, she just had the fish and it was soothing to watch them swim around. Now she still doesn't have a tv but will get condescending about how what she does is REAL not like on tv or in movies (which also begs the question as to how pop culture in this universe has evolved - if vampires and werewolves and magic have always been real, that's...that's going to change what knd of tv shows and books and comics we have. What we call paranormal romance would most likely just be "romance" in the Anitaverse and who knows maybe there's a niche genre for All Human AUs? Or since Anita and Richard are into musicals, how do having opera singers that have been around for hundreds of years or Cirque du Soleil with shapeshifters work???SORRY FOR THE EPIC TANGENT!) nor any other hobbies/interests aside from having sex or going to the gym. Even if Anita had an interaction with one of her partners (or a random person) that wasn't antagonistic, just a "hey I got you coffee," would go a long way imo to making her a wee bit less awful and shallow as a character.

But that would mean LKH would be showing things rather than dumping huge slabs of text to tell us exactly how happy and well-rounded Anita is even though nothing else in the text supports this.

Damian's the redhaired Viking guy in Anita's neglected second triumvirate. He's got a girlfriend now and last I heard, Anita was considering using the ardeur to force him to be more "heteroflexible" with the other dudes because he doesn't seem to be into the whole group sex thing. The rest of the time he kinda gets ignored and was previously living in the basement of Anita's house.

[mystickiwi.livejournal.com]

One of my favorite moments from the books I actually liked involved Anita trying to wash blood out of her plush penguins. It was a small, humanizing detail that felt very "real life" even though no one in real life needs to clean up from a zombie attack. I haven't read past Narcissus in Chains but those details were missing by the time I gave up and based on the sporks I've read they haven't come back...

[leigh stevens (from livejournal.com)]

Or how about getting into a fight because two people can't decide what to watch on Netflix? I can't imagine navigating that endeavor with 8+ people.

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

Leave Ireland ALONE. Oh dear God the thought of Anita in Ireland.... I suppose it will be full of identical incest-leprechaun men who are all extraordinarily short and the width of a bus with floor-length red hair, one or two obnoxious uberCatholic women with Issues around Anita and the Sweeties,moronic homo/polyphobic Gardai who will all be in awe of Anita's l33t not-cop skills, random stuff stolen from Irish mythology (if she puts Cuchulainn in there I swear I will fly to St Louis and CRUSH her) and general diddly-die bollocks.

Introducing Spike and Genevieve to pate in Dublin. They have dubbed it smooth, creamy, spreadable meat butter.

I can't even. You'd think Spike and Dru were their idiot children.

[jessica collett (from livejournal.com)]

That is literally the worst description of pâté I have ever read. It sounds like a disgusting euphemism for something else entirely.

[moonbeamdancer.livejournal.com]

That and you'd think that they would have already had it while still at home...

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

Where are they supposed to be from? Is there some place so backwoods in the USA that they maybe have never had pate? Or conversely were they raised in a vegan cult in the middle of a forest where no shops existed?

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

Pate is actually considered kind of dated over here. Sort of 1970s. So it's not super-common. But it's definitely not hugely rare either; it's simply not very popular.

[leigh stevens (from livejournal.com)]

Spreadable meat butter is the name of my Christian heavy metal cover band**.
Seriously, pate is bad on principle but her descrition makes it so, so, so much worse.



**My town has a Christian heavy metal station. It's the only station that plays something other than oldies or top 40.

[apep727.livejournal.com]

Was that a d20Monkey reference? Because if so, that so sexy.