LKH Lashouts

6. Please tell us about your latest novel…

A Shiver of Light is the first Meredith (Merry) Gentry novel in over four years. In re-reading the other eight novels in the series I discovered something I hadn’t known before, that the first seven books are really an epic political fantasy series a la George R. R. Martin except with more mystery, sex, and less killing off of main characters.

Readers, especially series-loving readers, don’t like too much change. I actually like character growth and change in a series, but I seem to be in the minority; most people like series to be like a brand name product that does the same thing every time, reliable. When the Anita Blake series changed, it made some readers feel betrayed, because their happy place was now an uncomfortable place for them, and uncomfortable isn’t happy for most people. Uncomfortable is the beginning of growth and change in real life and fictional; a lot of readers were thrilled with the new direction, but the ones that weren’t honestly did feel betrayed. Because I don’t feel that way as a reader, I had no way to anticipate it as a writer, so I wandered blissfully off the path and into the woods, only to find that some of the fans had turned into haters. In their minds they felt I had started the “fight,” because I took their beloved world and characters and changed them into people they didn’t enjoy anymore. In my mind I didn’t know there was a problem, until the first hate-filled spewing began. Now, most of my readers, and legions of new fans, have loved, and continue to love how Anita’s personal life and world have opened up, but I understand some of the hatred now. It won’t make it go away, or make me change what I write, or how, but I think I understand some of why it started in the first place.

I’ve lost count of the number of women who tell me that they didn’t know a woman could enjoy sex, until they read my books. Or the number of women who are angry at me, because sex is never that good in real life, and only their friends who were with them at the signings, assuring them that no, really sex really was that. The women who get angry about the sex not being realistic are always wearing wedding rings.