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)]

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!