a-sporking-rat (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
a_sporking_rat) wrote2013-02-21 11:59 am
a_sporking_rat) wrote2013-02-21 11:59 am
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FLIRT: AFTERWARD
Normally, I don't spork the words from the author, but I'm making an exception in this case, mainly because it explains so damn much about this book and why it had to exist (which is a crime). I really wish I could just copy and paste all of LKH's words, but as I have a hard copy here with me versus an electronic copy, I'll just be typing out select quotes.
AFTERWARD
LKH starts by quoting some of the questions she usually gets, such as where does she get her ideas and how does she write a whole book and so on from "would-be writers, or just people who think being a writer must be interesting, or hard, or easy, or just weird". Which reads to me like she's saying these people are all wrong, but then she says they're all right. Okay so far. She says she loves her job and it's the only thing she's ever wanted to do besides being a wildlife biologist "but that was just a fling; my heart has and always will belong to the muse." who "hooked me a about age twelve". She decided at fourteen that she wanted "to write horror, dark fantasy, heroic fantasy, to make up worlds that never existed, and write about our world with just a few scary changes" after she read Pigeons From Hell by Robert E. Howard.
Alright, still okay so far.
"Flirt is my twenty-ninth novel in about fifteen years of time and space."
...and space?
She says she "doesn't understand" the question "Where do you get your ideas?" and recalls a woman who asked her how she can get ideas "like that, when you were raised here?" in "small-town middle of farm country" and how LKH asked her back "How do you not come up with ideas like that, when you were raised here."
Ehhh, I'm not sure I believe she was that quick on the draw. That sounds like the sort of thing you just WISH you had said after the fact. But even if she did really respond like that, that doesn't seem witty or deep to me. Just kind of rude. I feel like it would be especially hurtful if that woman was an aspiring writer, which is very possible, who was struggling to come up with ideas in that environment; way to make it seem like there was just something wrong with her instead of actually giving her any helpful advice.
LKH says she's always been telling stories to herself (hey, same here!) and how she would tell them in her head and sometimes tell a true story with a little embellishment. We're back in okay territory again, this is something I did a lot and I think a lot of people, especially writerly types, did. More often, however, she says she had stories about "fairies, vampires, monsters, werewolves--scary but beautiful, or scary but emotionally poignant were things that always attracted me as a child." Again, this is okay, this is what I would expect, and this is something I totally share. "I guess I've never really outgrown the idea that if it can drink my blood, eat my flesh, and be attractive all at the same time, then I am all over it." This is where we start getting into Special Edgy Me territory. Just a tad here, but it gets worse by the end, trust me.
She talks about how she wrote her first complete short story when she was fourteen and "it was a real bloodbath where only the baby survived to crawl away into the woods. The implication was that she would starve or be eaten by wild animals. I was always such a cheerful child!"
The first time I read this, I was in an unfairly critical mood and was all 'oh I bet you're so proud of writing a dark edgy bloodbath like all teenagers would, I bet it sucked anyway!' but this time I realize there's actually nothing of that in her tone at all. She's just telling us about the first story and adding a little humor to it. I think I was projecting because it sounds like exactly the thing I would have written and been sooo proud of at fourteen and then be embarrassed about today when I looked back and read it and seen how Trying Too Hard that I was, hahha. But honestly, it also sounds pretty cool. I like that kind of stuff, and I think it's kind of neat how she's always been really solid in what type of thing she wanted to be writing; I've been trying for ages to get ahold of what I really want to do and am good at.
She then says she doesn't know where that idea came from, and that it wasn't a great one, but "it was the first complete idea and that makes it valuable." I agree completely. I'd say it's even more valuable in that it was the first short story she even completed. Completion of anything more than a short ficlet is a huge challenge for me.
"But how do I come up with ideas that are book length and good enough to be book length? Funny you should ask that. Because that is exactly what I'm about to try to explain."
I didn't ask that. I know it's just the conversational style of writing, but that kind of bugs me. That's not a question I would ask, since that's not really a problem for me, it's more the execution and keeping it going. Not that it couldn't be a problem for loads of other people, but not every reader is going to be like that. This is less a flaw and more a personal niggle for me, though.
She says she's going to tell us where the idea for Flirt came from, and the first scene that came into her head, which she says is how books always start for her. We're back into okay territory, though I think she could have just said this a page and a half okay and saved a lot of words, if that's the point of all this.
But instead of just telling us what that scene was, she talks about how she gets that scene in her head and how it's like a miniature movie or freeze frame and how she feels a catch in her stomach and how book ideas are like falling in love and being on a date and knowing you like this one and how an idea is like a seed and needs fertile soil and so on. Good grief, pick a metaphor and stick with it! And get the point! I don't think any of this is really telling the readers anything we either need to know or don't know already--we know what a scene is, we've probably all had the feel of a good idea if we're aspiring writers, and it's sort of common sense that an idea will need to grow and expand.
"I'm going to tell you the schedule I kept, the pages I wrote per day, the music I listened to, and the books I read for extra research while writing the book."
So instead of telling readers how to write a book or nourish an idea, you're going to tell us how you specifically wrote Flirt. I guess that would be helpful...if the entire point of this afterword was to show readers how to write the exact same book you've already written. Really, though, I don't think this is necessary. I'd love to write like Neil Gaiman, but I don't think listening to the same music he does is going to make that happen, and I have no interest in knowing his playlist if he has one. It'd be interesting as a bit of trivia, I suppose, but it's not conducive to actually learning how to write. The schedule seems like it would have merit, as well as the message to do research, but not the actual books she used for research unless, again, I was trying to write the same book. The page count would be mildly interesting just to see how I measure up, but then, LKH isn't someone I really want to compare myself too...though I guess if I were a fan, which is who this is directed at, I would.
"Will this help you do the same? I'm not sure. Will it answer the question of where I got this idea and how I knew it was a book? Oh yes."
We have now gone through three and a half pages since the first time the "how do I know this idea will be a book" question was raised.
She expands on the metaphor for what she meant by "fertile ground" for the seed of an idea. For her, it means "a set of circumstances or a mind-set that puts me in a headspace to appreciate the idea and to see instantly the possibilities of it" which she says has before allowed her to write short stories on in single rush, which I am envious of no matter how bad they are, I must say. She says that this instance not only gave her an idea for Flirt, but allowed her to get it done in weeks. Okay, so as much as Flirt sucked, I am really wowed she got it done in weeks, especially since what sucked about it aren't really things that I think would have been fixed by her writing it more slowly.
Apparently it started with a party at the house of friends Wendi and Daven and that's states away and she and "Jonathon, my husband" had to fly in and stay at a hotel room and yeah that's not relevant but anyway one of the guests she met there was Jennie Breeden, who does the webcomic called "The Devil's Panties". I've never read The Devil's Panties, but I've heard it's very in-jokey and hard to follow because it's mostly about the author and stuff between her and her pals, which holds true in this case. Jon and LKH are fans of hers, and as it turns out she's a fan of LKH's, so it was awesome for them to meet each other and then they met and went to DragonCon the following year.
She then talks about how she has friends with all kinds of talents, from fellow writers to sculpture to woodworking and so on and how being with other creative types can help "spark ideas and give you a new perspective" and how funny Jenny is and how LKH could never do a daily strip and be funny every day. That's for damn sure. Sorry, catty. I couldn't either.
She talks about how she and Jon would hear the same thing at the same event but then when Jenny talked into the mic it would just be so much funnier and how "I began to help her collect funny bits, but all my ideas sparked by similar things were dark. It was as if we walked through a slightly altered version of the same world" and how everything is HILARIOUS with Jenny and everything with LKH is "darker, more overtly sexual, even aberrant, violent, sometimes violently sexy, and an innocent moment turned into potential for murder and horror in my head."
SHE'S JUST SO DARK, YOU GUYS, YOU CANNOT POSSIBLY BELIEVE IT! EVERYTHING IS EDGY AND DARK TO HER! Seriously, I don't believe this. If this were the case, she'd be a seriously disturbed, paranoid woman. Maybe she is. Or maybe she's just incredibly pretentious and trying to create an image that just isn't believable and comes off as more obnoxious than anything else.
Basically, the way Jenny retells anything ends up making it seem funnier than the actual event, either because she embellishes stuff or just her delivery, it's hard to say from how LKH phrases it.
Jenny contacted LKH and Jon and "ran some of the cartoons by us because she didn't want to make us uncomfortable." Okay, at this point the reader has not seen the cartoons in the back of the book, and this afterword has not mentioned them, so we have NO clue what cartoons she's talking about or why they would concern Jon and LKH.
LKH again says that they are "two artists experiencing the same weekend, but taking entirely different things away from it." Yes. We got that. And while it did give her a new perspective on things it also told her that "I would never be truly light and fluffy". You know what, bogus. All I think LKH wants to be anymore, deep down, is light and fluffy. Seriously, all the group hugs and crying and comforting going on in this book, plus no one important to Anita ever dying? She's not interested in bloodbaths anymore at all, and she just needs to learn to accept that instead of screaming about HOW DAMN DARK SHE IS because it's clear the person she's trying to convince most is herself.
Then a few months later she and Jon visit Wendi and Daven again and it's the end of the visit and they "were catching a late lunch or an early supper (aka "lupper")" OH GOD RELEVANCE PLEASE and they all go into a nice comfy restaurant they've been before.
The waiter comes, takes drink orders from LKH and Jon, then gets to Daven, who looks up from the menu and the waiter "went from reasonably intelligent, competent, human being to a stuttering idiot." You don't need this comma there. And that's the exact same phrase Anita used and that bugs me.
LKH then describes to us just how Daven looks. "Six foot three with long, thick hair down to his waist" that is "brown, but it's that kind of brown that has natural gold highlights all through it" and "great big hazel eyes that are truly brown and gray and a little green all at the same time, depending on his mood." Okay. Thank you. That's enough. No, wait, it's not, we have to know that he also has a "Vandyke beard and mustache he grew so he'd look old enough to date his age group and stop getting hit on by so many men when all he wanted was to date women."
....he grew a beard to look older so men wouldn't hit on him? Way to imply that gay men are creepy pedophiles. Also there are a fuck ton of gay men who like facial hair, and an equal fuck ton of straight women who don't.
"All this is to say that Daven is pretty, very pretty."
You could have just said that. I didn't need to know the length of his hair, the exact shade of brown, a novel on his eyes, and what kind of facial hair he has and why. It does not impact the story. The fact he is good-looking does, but none of the specific aspects of his good looks do. Just say he's a looker. The reader is not interested in HOW he is a looker. The reader is interested in the story and how it relates to your 'how do I know this is a good idea' point.
At this point, you'd think the tale would continue. It doesn't. No, now we have to know what WENDI looks like too, and how she is "six foot one, blond with huge, soft, blue eyes, and enough curves to make straight men weep and gay women beg."
...I bet LKH only tolerates being around her for her hot longhaired young-looking husband. Note that Wendi's looks have literally zero to do with any of this, unlike Daven's who I can at least see justification for mentioning, if not the overlong description.
LKH then gets back to the story and says that even though she knew he was pretty and a great flirt, she hadn't realized the impact he could have "simply by looking up" and when Daven realized it he smiled at the waiter who then "just fell to pieces". Waiter sputters a bit, then says he can bring them drinks, then flees. Daven gets all excited and asks if he can "play with" the waiter. She says no, Daven pouts and asks why not, and Wendi says because they'll either get great service or crappy service. Waiter returns with their waters, and takes their food orders while staring at Daven the whole time. They get great service, drinks always refilled, bread basket always full, etc., and the waiter never looks at anyone but Daven.
"Now I have no problem with both my friends being gorgeous"
This is momentarily revealed as a big lie
"I usually just enjoy the world's reaction to them"
But not this time I guess
"But I was sitting within inches of Daven"
So god forbid she not get the spotlight too. Yup, she lifts HER face up to waiter, tilts her head slightly, mentions to us that she's a petite woman, and when the waiter keeps just looking at Daven, she SCOOTS CLOSER TO DAVEN "and made certain that the waiter couldn't ignore the fact that I have curves of my own."
...does that imply that Daven has curves? Also, this is HILARIOUS. The waiter just noticed Anita on his own because she's so hot, but LKH deliberately shoved herself into his line of sight so Daven wouldn't get all the attention. And she's admitting it. I'm cracking up. Does she have any idea what kind of person this makes her look like?
"The only question was, did he only like boys, or did breasts hold some appeal?"
Maybe it's none of your business? Who the fuck CARES about the sexual orientation of the wait staff? You're so creepy right now, LKH.
She then has to tell us about how "my husband has his own share of pretty (shoulder-length waves of strawberry-blond hair), and he grew his own Vandyke beard and mustache that is true orange-red for much the same reason Daven grew his" and I totally care because WHY? Is she just saying it's shocking that the waiter doesn't have the hots for him too? I don't know. I just don't know.
"Cap it with almond-shaped blue eyes like an exotic Viking, and his much cozier size for me (five-eight) and, well, any more description would be oversharing"
...you have already overshared PLENTY. Also, I guess it's great she thinks her husband is hot, but "exotic Viking" is never going to not crack me up. Also, wait, so she's trying to get another man to eyeball her in front of her husband? Okay, weird. I know attention is flattering even when you're happily taken, but actually fishing for it seems out of line. Just me there.
They get the bill and pay and tip and leave and the waiter is "soooo" wanting Daven to stay and give him his number. She typed sooooo. She typed soooo in italics. Are you serious? THIS IS NOT A BLOG POST, WOMAN.
LKH says to them as they leave that "If Jennie were here she'd turn this into a funny, charming comic strip, but if I ever used it as an idea, it would all go horribly wrong. There would be violence, or violent sex, or both, and a high body count." and how "that was the idea, right there."
Except that when you did use it as an idea, none of that happen. It may have been sandwiched between some sex and violence, but there was no sex or violence actually in or relating to this scene. You just shoe-horned this scene in and made it otherwise irrelevant to the story. How do you write an entire novella from a scene and then fail to make that scene actually relative to said novella?
Then a few months later, and she's trying to write the next MG book but is having a blockage. She says that for her this usually means there's another idea trying to get out. This is interesting, and next time I'm blocked I'll have to try and see if that's the case. She decides to write this idea down and then try to go back to the book that's due. But when she wrote it down, it wouldn't stop, and when she tried to go back to writing Divine Misdemeanors, it just "slowed to a crawl". She says the same thing happened with Danse Macabre (that explains a lot) and the result was Micah (which should have been a warning to NEVER TRY THIS AGAIN). So she started working on both of them at once, and used music to divide her muse between the projects. Different music for different books. Okay, that's another tip that might be useful for me in the future, and I appreciate that. She then unnecessarily talks about how she can find a song that is soooo connected with a character or a book that she can't even put it on for awhile sometimes without being thrown back into the book it's associated with.
Then she lists what type of music, and I go berserk. For Flirt, it was The Fray, Flaw, and Tori Amos's album Abnormally Attracted To Sin.
Tori. Amos.
For this book.
That is so wrong. Like, really wrong. Really, really, really wrong.
Tori Amos is my FAVORITE musician. She is famous for so many survivors of various abuses and trauma finding healing through her music and who co-founded The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, which is the largest anti-sexual assault organization in the United States. She helped me get through so many things and literally no other musician has ever made me feel like she does; only she has ever made me cry. It just...feels like a violation to me that LKH likes this artist. Not just in a 'ew I hate you how can you like what I like' kind of way, but as in, these books glamorize abuse of the worst kind and here she is saying she WROTE this one to an album by an artist who is completely AGAINST everything in it? It just gives me all kinds of skeevies, and reminds me how it was my OWN abuser who actually gave me a flash drive of all her work from Little Earthquakes to The Beekeeper. The fact it came from him never bothers to me when I listen to it, but I don't like to ever let myself think about why he would give that to me. My best guess is as a manipulation tactic, since it was after he found out that I liked her. But he says he used to listen to her too, and the idea that he would, that the man who hurt me could get anything from the music that had helped me, gives me about the same feeling as the idea of LKH being inspired by it does. Maybe she just emphasizes with the 'victim' part, which is a role she doesn't seem to ever want to crawl out of, and misses the parts about healing and learning to look at the worst parts of yourself and forgiveness and woman-woman bonds of friendship and femininity as powerful and vulnerability as strength and not letting your tragedy define you and sexuality (especially female sexuality) as positive and all that stuff. I dunno. But I don't like that she listens to Tori, I don't like that she wrote this novel to Tori. I take it personal, and I don't give one fuck how illogical of me that is.
Tori Amos is also really good for depression music (honestly, I think she gets a lot darker than a lot of 'edgier' stuff I listen too, and a lot more sincere in it) and she's also done her share of very satisfyingly catty petty angry breakup songs directed at men leaving her and the other woman they're going to, so maybe that's what LKH likes. Not gonna think about it much more because, as I said, someone like her in what I consider my 'safety zone' makes me uncomfortable.
Okay. Done now. I swear.
Anyway, she talks about how the music is like a switch in her head and repeats how even months later a song will make her think of a character or scene in her books and how once she gets a song for it the book tends to go much smoother. I feel like she could have just said "picking out appropriate music that I feel goes with the book and/or characters helps me write swifter and smoother" and left it at that. She just harps on so much unnecessary stuff and repeats it at that.
She then talks about how she managed to write both at the same time and keep things on-schedule and how it's like trying to date two men at the same time (has she ever even done that?) without ever actually giving any advice on how to do this.
She tells us what we already know, that the scene in Flirt is based off the real-life scene with the waiter and how just as she'd predicted, there was sex and violence and high body count...if by high you mean two people Anita killed, and the hooker who died of the drug overdose. I don't feel that's particularly high. Maybe in, say, one of the early Harry Potter books or something similar, that would be high, but in a series that is supposed to be a gore-soaked thriller like AB, it doesn't, especially since no one important died at all. Deaths tend to count for more when it's characters that actually matter versus just mooks getting mowed down like always. And we didn't even get masses of mooks getting mowed down.
So that was the idea and what it became, and "to prove to you that it doesn't matter what the idea is, that it matters who the artist is and what they do with the idea" she got Jennie to do comic strip versions of the encounter.
"They're funny and charming and no one dies."
Just like in your version, where no one died in that scene. Well, except for the funny and charming part, your version isn't like that at all.
"I managed for the same scene to be funnyish and charming and tender and a little sad, but it would set in motion a series of horrible events, because that's the way my mind works"
This scene did not set the events of this novel in motion. Tony's men would have grabbed Anita anywhere. His wanting his wife raised and hiring thugs to get it done had fuck-all to do with this. Also, there was nothing funnyish, charming, tender, or sad about the scene. It was obnoxious and stupid. The only sad thing is how clearly only Anita's needs matter in the harem.
"How I took the charming restaurant and got to a man who wanted his wife raised from the dead at any cost...well I don't know."
What. WHAT. But...this whole thing was about HOW DO YOU GET AN IDEA. HOW DO YOU THEN BUILD ON THAT IDEA. THAT WAS THE POINT OF THIS WHOLE AFTERWORD, WASN'T IT?
She then mentions that people used to think that, because she was a petite woman, she must write romance or children's books "but as my good friend who is a policeman says, "Packaging is not indicative of content."
We had to know she has a good friend who is a policeman, you see. It's really important. She knows cops, man, how cool is that?
And people would say "but you look so nice" when she told them she wrote "science fiction, fantasy and horror" because of the "horror" part and now she tells people she writes "paranormal thrillers" and how she was doing this "long before it was a genre of its own".
And when she still gets asked "Why do you write about sex and monsters?" she says that "You say that like I have a choice. These are the ideas that come to me. These are the ideas that always come to me. And if it can bleed me, eat me, or fuck me, I want to write about it."
That's nice. You also could have made this a one-page afterward if you'd just stuck with that.
Also, I would point out that she doesn't actually write about everything that CAN fuck her. Just pretty supernatural white cisgender men. There's a lot else out there that can fuck you. Just, it wouldn't be hot and I guess we can't have that.
So, to sum up:
- LKH says she's going to tell us how take an idea and make it book length. She takes ten pages to tell us basically that she has no clue how the rest of the book beyond this one scene came into being
- I now know the exact height and eye colors of her husband and friends
- Everything is so much darker to her. EVERYTHING!
- She can insert a scene from real life into a book, but she can't make it relative to that book at all, even when the rest of that book grew from it
- Music is good for writing
- She's dark
- Really dark
- You just can't handle how dark
- And she just writes this way because that's how she writes omg stop asking her you peons
There's good advice in here, it's just...wrapped up in so much nothing, and the extra element of obnoxiousness here and there just makes it hard to not get pissy while reading it. I'm also still reeling from the Tori Amos bit.
Anyway, the comic strips follow as is:
STRIP 1
Panel One: Waiter orders from Jon, who would like a Diet Coke.
Panel Two: LKH orders a Coke. Daven is looking down at menu. Offscreen waiter says "Yes, ma'am,and for you sir?"
Panel Three: Close-up of Daven's face as he looks up and says "Hm?"
Panel Four: All look at the waiter, whose jaw has dropped and is saying "Buh."
STRIP 2
Panel One: Everyone continues to stare at flustered-looking waiter who is going "Buh Buh Buh BUH" as Daven smirks.
Panel Two: An eyebrow-raising Daven asks "Drinks?"
Panel Three: Waiter with stressfully clenched jaw exclaims "YES! Drinks! I can bring you DRINKS!"
Panel Four: Wendi says "Yes dear, why don't you go bring us drinks?" while waiter walks away in zombie-like pose saying "Okay."
STRIP 3
Panel One: Stunned-looking waiter walking away from table saying "Yes, I'll bring your shoulders, ER-DRINKS! Yes."
Panel Two: Daven and Wendi. Daven cutely begs Wendi "Can I play with him, please?"
Panel Three: Close-up of Wendi saying "No."
Panel Four: Daven makes cutesy post asking "Aw, why not?"
STRIP 4
Panel One: Daven begs Wendi again to be allowed to play with the waiter
Panel Two: Wendi, who now has a halo and pointed chin (it was square in the previous strip) tells a pouting Daven, who has little horns and devil wings, that "No. If you do we'll either get great service..."
Panel Three: "or TERRIBLE service and will never get our food."
Panel Four: Daven leans his head on his hand and says "SIGH. Oh, alright!"
STRIP 5
Panel One: The waiter returns to ask "How is everything?"
Panel Two: Waiter widely smiles and asks if he can get them anything else
Panel Three: Waiter continues "Napkins? Water? Batteries?" while Daven smirks
Panel Four: Daven, now wearing waiter's shirt, says, "Hey, HE offered."
STRIP 6
Panel One: Daven, making a feminine flirtacious pose back to back with LKH, who is making the same pose, instructs her, "No no, you gotta bat your eyes, like THIS."
Panel Two: Shot of whole table as he continues "And lift your chest up so your boobs perk out. Now flip your hair." Jon appears to be laughing.
Panel Three: Daven asks "What?" when Wendi looks at him with her arms crossed (omg, she can cross her arms over her chest! Well, her curves might make straight men weep and gay women beg, but she's positively boyish compared to Ani--er, I mean LKH!)
Panel Four: Daven says that "I said *I* wouldn't flirt. I said nothing about helping others."
STRIP 7
Panel One: Shot of entire table and of waiter returning. LKH is leaning forward eagerly saying "Ooh, let me try" and Jon looks at her with what seems to be amused affection.
Panel Two: Shows only LKH, smirking deviously/sexily, with her boobs pushed up by the sides of her arms. A speech balloon from the offscreen waiter asks "Can I get you..." It is worth noting that the way that tail of the speech balloon is drawn makes it look like it is coming from LKH herself, and for the longest time I thought it was.
Panel Three: Blushing waiter stammers "Uh...you...BUH?" while LKH smiles and Jon looks amused.
Panel Four: Shot of whole table. The waiter is now a literal pile of steaming, blushing goo in front of the table, recognizable as the waiter only because the goo is wearing his glasses. Everyone is laughing except Wendi. LKH says that "It's all in the EYES." while touching her breast.
STRIP 8
Panel One: Determined looking waiter thinks to himself "FOCUS! You can do this. FOCUS!"
Panel Two: He continues "Just say "Would you like dessert?" EASY."
Panel Three: Waiter addresses table, "Would you like me?"
Panel Four: Frustrated-looking waiter thinks "DAMMIT!"
STRIP 9
Panel One: The waiter is in the back of the restaurant. He is sitting on something, perhaps a box or crate, with his face in his hands. A waitress stands next to him with her arms crossed and says "I don't know why you're having such a hard time with that table.
Panel Two: Waiter exclaims that "They're just SO DISTRACTING!"
Panel Three: Waitress is exiting door with a smile and says "It can't be THAT bad. Here, let me clear their plates for you..."
Panel Four: Waitress entering through doors, breaking plate in her hands as she yells "HOTNESS!" and Waiter yells "I KNOW!" at the ceiling.
STRIP 10
Panel One: The group exits the restaurant on to the sidewalk. LKH says "If JEN were here she'd make this into a funny comic."
Panel Two: Close up of LKH saying "But if I write it down, everything will go horribly wrong."
Panel Three: They cross an intersection while LKH waves her hands in the air and continues "There will be violent SEX,...or just plain VIOLENCE."
Panel Four: LKH grins cheekily as she finishes "And a HIGH BODY count." Everyone else smiles. Again, there was some speech balloon confusion here--I honestly thought someone else was saying this line until I read in LKH's written afterward that she was the one who said it.
The comic strips in themselves aren't bad. Some lacked a punchline, but others were smile-worthy. I'm just a bit biased because the subject material (how hot LKH is and how dark her mind is) made me gag, but if not for that I think I would have found it pretty decently comedic. No, the problem is that, well, it seems like something that friends would have done for each other middle school. Something exchanged between pals to make the party it was drawn for feel good. It doesn't seem like something you'd want to brag about to strangers professionally, though. I just feel this weird sense of secondhand embarrassment, really, like I'm looking at private notes passed between a pair of good friends versus at something published for the masses. Your mileage may vary, I just kind of find this to be too much of a 'very personal ur-so-hawt asspats for a friend' for my taste.
I'm sure it will come to no surprise that LKH looks just like Anita. Seriously. Just like her. That is exactly how the Marvel comics Anita is drawn, just in Jennie Breeden's style. What's weird is that if you look at the strips with LKH that are on The Devil's Panties website, LKH isn't drawn like that. She's drawn looking way, way more like Anita here. I mean, there's not much difference, but there's enough that I wouldn't have known they were the same character just by looking at the strips in this book and the strips on her site. I actually thought that this was the comic version of Anita & Co. when I flipped to the back of the book on accident (before reading the afterward) until I realized that the men had facial hair and there was another woman besides Anita present. Somehow that just makes it MORE embarrassing.
AFTERWARD
LKH starts by quoting some of the questions she usually gets, such as where does she get her ideas and how does she write a whole book and so on from "would-be writers, or just people who think being a writer must be interesting, or hard, or easy, or just weird". Which reads to me like she's saying these people are all wrong, but then she says they're all right. Okay so far. She says she loves her job and it's the only thing she's ever wanted to do besides being a wildlife biologist "but that was just a fling; my heart has and always will belong to the muse." who "hooked me a about age twelve". She decided at fourteen that she wanted "to write horror, dark fantasy, heroic fantasy, to make up worlds that never existed, and write about our world with just a few scary changes" after she read Pigeons From Hell by Robert E. Howard.
Alright, still okay so far.
"Flirt is my twenty-ninth novel in about fifteen years of time and space."
...and space?
She says she "doesn't understand" the question "Where do you get your ideas?" and recalls a woman who asked her how she can get ideas "like that, when you were raised here?" in "small-town middle of farm country" and how LKH asked her back "How do you not come up with ideas like that, when you were raised here."
Ehhh, I'm not sure I believe she was that quick on the draw. That sounds like the sort of thing you just WISH you had said after the fact. But even if she did really respond like that, that doesn't seem witty or deep to me. Just kind of rude. I feel like it would be especially hurtful if that woman was an aspiring writer, which is very possible, who was struggling to come up with ideas in that environment; way to make it seem like there was just something wrong with her instead of actually giving her any helpful advice.
LKH says she's always been telling stories to herself (hey, same here!) and how she would tell them in her head and sometimes tell a true story with a little embellishment. We're back in okay territory again, this is something I did a lot and I think a lot of people, especially writerly types, did. More often, however, she says she had stories about "fairies, vampires, monsters, werewolves--scary but beautiful, or scary but emotionally poignant were things that always attracted me as a child." Again, this is okay, this is what I would expect, and this is something I totally share. "I guess I've never really outgrown the idea that if it can drink my blood, eat my flesh, and be attractive all at the same time, then I am all over it." This is where we start getting into Special Edgy Me territory. Just a tad here, but it gets worse by the end, trust me.
She talks about how she wrote her first complete short story when she was fourteen and "it was a real bloodbath where only the baby survived to crawl away into the woods. The implication was that she would starve or be eaten by wild animals. I was always such a cheerful child!"
The first time I read this, I was in an unfairly critical mood and was all 'oh I bet you're so proud of writing a dark edgy bloodbath like all teenagers would, I bet it sucked anyway!' but this time I realize there's actually nothing of that in her tone at all. She's just telling us about the first story and adding a little humor to it. I think I was projecting because it sounds like exactly the thing I would have written and been sooo proud of at fourteen and then be embarrassed about today when I looked back and read it and seen how Trying Too Hard that I was, hahha. But honestly, it also sounds pretty cool. I like that kind of stuff, and I think it's kind of neat how she's always been really solid in what type of thing she wanted to be writing; I've been trying for ages to get ahold of what I really want to do and am good at.
She then says she doesn't know where that idea came from, and that it wasn't a great one, but "it was the first complete idea and that makes it valuable." I agree completely. I'd say it's even more valuable in that it was the first short story she even completed. Completion of anything more than a short ficlet is a huge challenge for me.
"But how do I come up with ideas that are book length and good enough to be book length? Funny you should ask that. Because that is exactly what I'm about to try to explain."
I didn't ask that. I know it's just the conversational style of writing, but that kind of bugs me. That's not a question I would ask, since that's not really a problem for me, it's more the execution and keeping it going. Not that it couldn't be a problem for loads of other people, but not every reader is going to be like that. This is less a flaw and more a personal niggle for me, though.
She says she's going to tell us where the idea for Flirt came from, and the first scene that came into her head, which she says is how books always start for her. We're back into okay territory, though I think she could have just said this a page and a half okay and saved a lot of words, if that's the point of all this.
But instead of just telling us what that scene was, she talks about how she gets that scene in her head and how it's like a miniature movie or freeze frame and how she feels a catch in her stomach and how book ideas are like falling in love and being on a date and knowing you like this one and how an idea is like a seed and needs fertile soil and so on. Good grief, pick a metaphor and stick with it! And get the point! I don't think any of this is really telling the readers anything we either need to know or don't know already--we know what a scene is, we've probably all had the feel of a good idea if we're aspiring writers, and it's sort of common sense that an idea will need to grow and expand.
"I'm going to tell you the schedule I kept, the pages I wrote per day, the music I listened to, and the books I read for extra research while writing the book."
So instead of telling readers how to write a book or nourish an idea, you're going to tell us how you specifically wrote Flirt. I guess that would be helpful...if the entire point of this afterword was to show readers how to write the exact same book you've already written. Really, though, I don't think this is necessary. I'd love to write like Neil Gaiman, but I don't think listening to the same music he does is going to make that happen, and I have no interest in knowing his playlist if he has one. It'd be interesting as a bit of trivia, I suppose, but it's not conducive to actually learning how to write. The schedule seems like it would have merit, as well as the message to do research, but not the actual books she used for research unless, again, I was trying to write the same book. The page count would be mildly interesting just to see how I measure up, but then, LKH isn't someone I really want to compare myself too...though I guess if I were a fan, which is who this is directed at, I would.
"Will this help you do the same? I'm not sure. Will it answer the question of where I got this idea and how I knew it was a book? Oh yes."
We have now gone through three and a half pages since the first time the "how do I know this idea will be a book" question was raised.
She expands on the metaphor for what she meant by "fertile ground" for the seed of an idea. For her, it means "a set of circumstances or a mind-set that puts me in a headspace to appreciate the idea and to see instantly the possibilities of it" which she says has before allowed her to write short stories on in single rush, which I am envious of no matter how bad they are, I must say. She says that this instance not only gave her an idea for Flirt, but allowed her to get it done in weeks. Okay, so as much as Flirt sucked, I am really wowed she got it done in weeks, especially since what sucked about it aren't really things that I think would have been fixed by her writing it more slowly.
Apparently it started with a party at the house of friends Wendi and Daven and that's states away and she and "Jonathon, my husband" had to fly in and stay at a hotel room and yeah that's not relevant but anyway one of the guests she met there was Jennie Breeden, who does the webcomic called "The Devil's Panties". I've never read The Devil's Panties, but I've heard it's very in-jokey and hard to follow because it's mostly about the author and stuff between her and her pals, which holds true in this case. Jon and LKH are fans of hers, and as it turns out she's a fan of LKH's, so it was awesome for them to meet each other and then they met and went to DragonCon the following year.
She then talks about how she has friends with all kinds of talents, from fellow writers to sculpture to woodworking and so on and how being with other creative types can help "spark ideas and give you a new perspective" and how funny Jenny is and how LKH could never do a daily strip and be funny every day. That's for damn sure. Sorry, catty. I couldn't either.
She talks about how she and Jon would hear the same thing at the same event but then when Jenny talked into the mic it would just be so much funnier and how "I began to help her collect funny bits, but all my ideas sparked by similar things were dark. It was as if we walked through a slightly altered version of the same world" and how everything is HILARIOUS with Jenny and everything with LKH is "darker, more overtly sexual, even aberrant, violent, sometimes violently sexy, and an innocent moment turned into potential for murder and horror in my head."
SHE'S JUST SO DARK, YOU GUYS, YOU CANNOT POSSIBLY BELIEVE IT! EVERYTHING IS EDGY AND DARK TO HER! Seriously, I don't believe this. If this were the case, she'd be a seriously disturbed, paranoid woman. Maybe she is. Or maybe she's just incredibly pretentious and trying to create an image that just isn't believable and comes off as more obnoxious than anything else.
Basically, the way Jenny retells anything ends up making it seem funnier than the actual event, either because she embellishes stuff or just her delivery, it's hard to say from how LKH phrases it.
Jenny contacted LKH and Jon and "ran some of the cartoons by us because she didn't want to make us uncomfortable." Okay, at this point the reader has not seen the cartoons in the back of the book, and this afterword has not mentioned them, so we have NO clue what cartoons she's talking about or why they would concern Jon and LKH.
LKH again says that they are "two artists experiencing the same weekend, but taking entirely different things away from it." Yes. We got that. And while it did give her a new perspective on things it also told her that "I would never be truly light and fluffy". You know what, bogus. All I think LKH wants to be anymore, deep down, is light and fluffy. Seriously, all the group hugs and crying and comforting going on in this book, plus no one important to Anita ever dying? She's not interested in bloodbaths anymore at all, and she just needs to learn to accept that instead of screaming about HOW DAMN DARK SHE IS because it's clear the person she's trying to convince most is herself.
Then a few months later she and Jon visit Wendi and Daven again and it's the end of the visit and they "were catching a late lunch or an early supper (aka "lupper")" OH GOD RELEVANCE PLEASE and they all go into a nice comfy restaurant they've been before.
The waiter comes, takes drink orders from LKH and Jon, then gets to Daven, who looks up from the menu and the waiter "went from reasonably intelligent, competent, human being to a stuttering idiot." You don't need this comma there. And that's the exact same phrase Anita used and that bugs me.
LKH then describes to us just how Daven looks. "Six foot three with long, thick hair down to his waist" that is "brown, but it's that kind of brown that has natural gold highlights all through it" and "great big hazel eyes that are truly brown and gray and a little green all at the same time, depending on his mood." Okay. Thank you. That's enough. No, wait, it's not, we have to know that he also has a "Vandyke beard and mustache he grew so he'd look old enough to date his age group and stop getting hit on by so many men when all he wanted was to date women."
....he grew a beard to look older so men wouldn't hit on him? Way to imply that gay men are creepy pedophiles. Also there are a fuck ton of gay men who like facial hair, and an equal fuck ton of straight women who don't.
"All this is to say that Daven is pretty, very pretty."
You could have just said that. I didn't need to know the length of his hair, the exact shade of brown, a novel on his eyes, and what kind of facial hair he has and why. It does not impact the story. The fact he is good-looking does, but none of the specific aspects of his good looks do. Just say he's a looker. The reader is not interested in HOW he is a looker. The reader is interested in the story and how it relates to your 'how do I know this is a good idea' point.
At this point, you'd think the tale would continue. It doesn't. No, now we have to know what WENDI looks like too, and how she is "six foot one, blond with huge, soft, blue eyes, and enough curves to make straight men weep and gay women beg."
...I bet LKH only tolerates being around her for her hot longhaired young-looking husband. Note that Wendi's looks have literally zero to do with any of this, unlike Daven's who I can at least see justification for mentioning, if not the overlong description.
LKH then gets back to the story and says that even though she knew he was pretty and a great flirt, she hadn't realized the impact he could have "simply by looking up" and when Daven realized it he smiled at the waiter who then "just fell to pieces". Waiter sputters a bit, then says he can bring them drinks, then flees. Daven gets all excited and asks if he can "play with" the waiter. She says no, Daven pouts and asks why not, and Wendi says because they'll either get great service or crappy service. Waiter returns with their waters, and takes their food orders while staring at Daven the whole time. They get great service, drinks always refilled, bread basket always full, etc., and the waiter never looks at anyone but Daven.
"Now I have no problem with both my friends being gorgeous"
This is momentarily revealed as a big lie
"I usually just enjoy the world's reaction to them"
But not this time I guess
"But I was sitting within inches of Daven"
So god forbid she not get the spotlight too. Yup, she lifts HER face up to waiter, tilts her head slightly, mentions to us that she's a petite woman, and when the waiter keeps just looking at Daven, she SCOOTS CLOSER TO DAVEN "and made certain that the waiter couldn't ignore the fact that I have curves of my own."
...does that imply that Daven has curves? Also, this is HILARIOUS. The waiter just noticed Anita on his own because she's so hot, but LKH deliberately shoved herself into his line of sight so Daven wouldn't get all the attention. And she's admitting it. I'm cracking up. Does she have any idea what kind of person this makes her look like?
"The only question was, did he only like boys, or did breasts hold some appeal?"
Maybe it's none of your business? Who the fuck CARES about the sexual orientation of the wait staff? You're so creepy right now, LKH.
She then has to tell us about how "my husband has his own share of pretty (shoulder-length waves of strawberry-blond hair), and he grew his own Vandyke beard and mustache that is true orange-red for much the same reason Daven grew his" and I totally care because WHY? Is she just saying it's shocking that the waiter doesn't have the hots for him too? I don't know. I just don't know.
"Cap it with almond-shaped blue eyes like an exotic Viking, and his much cozier size for me (five-eight) and, well, any more description would be oversharing"
...you have already overshared PLENTY. Also, I guess it's great she thinks her husband is hot, but "exotic Viking" is never going to not crack me up. Also, wait, so she's trying to get another man to eyeball her in front of her husband? Okay, weird. I know attention is flattering even when you're happily taken, but actually fishing for it seems out of line. Just me there.
They get the bill and pay and tip and leave and the waiter is "soooo" wanting Daven to stay and give him his number. She typed sooooo. She typed soooo in italics. Are you serious? THIS IS NOT A BLOG POST, WOMAN.
LKH says to them as they leave that "If Jennie were here she'd turn this into a funny, charming comic strip, but if I ever used it as an idea, it would all go horribly wrong. There would be violence, or violent sex, or both, and a high body count." and how "that was the idea, right there."
Except that when you did use it as an idea, none of that happen. It may have been sandwiched between some sex and violence, but there was no sex or violence actually in or relating to this scene. You just shoe-horned this scene in and made it otherwise irrelevant to the story. How do you write an entire novella from a scene and then fail to make that scene actually relative to said novella?
Then a few months later, and she's trying to write the next MG book but is having a blockage. She says that for her this usually means there's another idea trying to get out. This is interesting, and next time I'm blocked I'll have to try and see if that's the case. She decides to write this idea down and then try to go back to the book that's due. But when she wrote it down, it wouldn't stop, and when she tried to go back to writing Divine Misdemeanors, it just "slowed to a crawl". She says the same thing happened with Danse Macabre (that explains a lot) and the result was Micah (which should have been a warning to NEVER TRY THIS AGAIN). So she started working on both of them at once, and used music to divide her muse between the projects. Different music for different books. Okay, that's another tip that might be useful for me in the future, and I appreciate that. She then unnecessarily talks about how she can find a song that is soooo connected with a character or a book that she can't even put it on for awhile sometimes without being thrown back into the book it's associated with.
Then she lists what type of music, and I go berserk. For Flirt, it was The Fray, Flaw, and Tori Amos's album Abnormally Attracted To Sin.
Tori. Amos.
For this book.
That is so wrong. Like, really wrong. Really, really, really wrong.
Tori Amos is my FAVORITE musician. She is famous for so many survivors of various abuses and trauma finding healing through her music and who co-founded The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, which is the largest anti-sexual assault organization in the United States. She helped me get through so many things and literally no other musician has ever made me feel like she does; only she has ever made me cry. It just...feels like a violation to me that LKH likes this artist. Not just in a 'ew I hate you how can you like what I like' kind of way, but as in, these books glamorize abuse of the worst kind and here she is saying she WROTE this one to an album by an artist who is completely AGAINST everything in it? It just gives me all kinds of skeevies, and reminds me how it was my OWN abuser who actually gave me a flash drive of all her work from Little Earthquakes to The Beekeeper. The fact it came from him never bothers to me when I listen to it, but I don't like to ever let myself think about why he would give that to me. My best guess is as a manipulation tactic, since it was after he found out that I liked her. But he says he used to listen to her too, and the idea that he would, that the man who hurt me could get anything from the music that had helped me, gives me about the same feeling as the idea of LKH being inspired by it does. Maybe she just emphasizes with the 'victim' part, which is a role she doesn't seem to ever want to crawl out of, and misses the parts about healing and learning to look at the worst parts of yourself and forgiveness and woman-woman bonds of friendship and femininity as powerful and vulnerability as strength and not letting your tragedy define you and sexuality (especially female sexuality) as positive and all that stuff. I dunno. But I don't like that she listens to Tori, I don't like that she wrote this novel to Tori. I take it personal, and I don't give one fuck how illogical of me that is.
Tori Amos is also really good for depression music (honestly, I think she gets a lot darker than a lot of 'edgier' stuff I listen too, and a lot more sincere in it) and she's also done her share of very satisfyingly catty petty angry breakup songs directed at men leaving her and the other woman they're going to, so maybe that's what LKH likes. Not gonna think about it much more because, as I said, someone like her in what I consider my 'safety zone' makes me uncomfortable.
Okay. Done now. I swear.
Anyway, she talks about how the music is like a switch in her head and repeats how even months later a song will make her think of a character or scene in her books and how once she gets a song for it the book tends to go much smoother. I feel like she could have just said "picking out appropriate music that I feel goes with the book and/or characters helps me write swifter and smoother" and left it at that. She just harps on so much unnecessary stuff and repeats it at that.
She then talks about how she managed to write both at the same time and keep things on-schedule and how it's like trying to date two men at the same time (has she ever even done that?) without ever actually giving any advice on how to do this.
She tells us what we already know, that the scene in Flirt is based off the real-life scene with the waiter and how just as she'd predicted, there was sex and violence and high body count...if by high you mean two people Anita killed, and the hooker who died of the drug overdose. I don't feel that's particularly high. Maybe in, say, one of the early Harry Potter books or something similar, that would be high, but in a series that is supposed to be a gore-soaked thriller like AB, it doesn't, especially since no one important died at all. Deaths tend to count for more when it's characters that actually matter versus just mooks getting mowed down like always. And we didn't even get masses of mooks getting mowed down.
So that was the idea and what it became, and "to prove to you that it doesn't matter what the idea is, that it matters who the artist is and what they do with the idea" she got Jennie to do comic strip versions of the encounter.
"They're funny and charming and no one dies."
Just like in your version, where no one died in that scene. Well, except for the funny and charming part, your version isn't like that at all.
"I managed for the same scene to be funnyish and charming and tender and a little sad, but it would set in motion a series of horrible events, because that's the way my mind works"
This scene did not set the events of this novel in motion. Tony's men would have grabbed Anita anywhere. His wanting his wife raised and hiring thugs to get it done had fuck-all to do with this. Also, there was nothing funnyish, charming, tender, or sad about the scene. It was obnoxious and stupid. The only sad thing is how clearly only Anita's needs matter in the harem.
"How I took the charming restaurant and got to a man who wanted his wife raised from the dead at any cost...well I don't know."
What. WHAT. But...this whole thing was about HOW DO YOU GET AN IDEA. HOW DO YOU THEN BUILD ON THAT IDEA. THAT WAS THE POINT OF THIS WHOLE AFTERWORD, WASN'T IT?
She then mentions that people used to think that, because she was a petite woman, she must write romance or children's books "but as my good friend who is a policeman says, "Packaging is not indicative of content."
We had to know she has a good friend who is a policeman, you see. It's really important. She knows cops, man, how cool is that?
And people would say "but you look so nice" when she told them she wrote "science fiction, fantasy and horror" because of the "horror" part and now she tells people she writes "paranormal thrillers" and how she was doing this "long before it was a genre of its own".
And when she still gets asked "Why do you write about sex and monsters?" she says that "You say that like I have a choice. These are the ideas that come to me. These are the ideas that always come to me. And if it can bleed me, eat me, or fuck me, I want to write about it."
That's nice. You also could have made this a one-page afterward if you'd just stuck with that.
Also, I would point out that she doesn't actually write about everything that CAN fuck her. Just pretty supernatural white cisgender men. There's a lot else out there that can fuck you. Just, it wouldn't be hot and I guess we can't have that.
So, to sum up:
- LKH says she's going to tell us how take an idea and make it book length. She takes ten pages to tell us basically that she has no clue how the rest of the book beyond this one scene came into being
- I now know the exact height and eye colors of her husband and friends
- Everything is so much darker to her. EVERYTHING!
- She can insert a scene from real life into a book, but she can't make it relative to that book at all, even when the rest of that book grew from it
- Music is good for writing
- She's dark
- Really dark
- You just can't handle how dark
- And she just writes this way because that's how she writes omg stop asking her you peons
There's good advice in here, it's just...wrapped up in so much nothing, and the extra element of obnoxiousness here and there just makes it hard to not get pissy while reading it. I'm also still reeling from the Tori Amos bit.
Anyway, the comic strips follow as is:
STRIP 1
Panel One: Waiter orders from Jon, who would like a Diet Coke.
Panel Two: LKH orders a Coke. Daven is looking down at menu. Offscreen waiter says "Yes, ma'am,and for you sir?"
Panel Three: Close-up of Daven's face as he looks up and says "Hm?"
Panel Four: All look at the waiter, whose jaw has dropped and is saying "Buh."
STRIP 2
Panel One: Everyone continues to stare at flustered-looking waiter who is going "Buh Buh Buh BUH" as Daven smirks.
Panel Two: An eyebrow-raising Daven asks "Drinks?"
Panel Three: Waiter with stressfully clenched jaw exclaims "YES! Drinks! I can bring you DRINKS!"
Panel Four: Wendi says "Yes dear, why don't you go bring us drinks?" while waiter walks away in zombie-like pose saying "Okay."
STRIP 3
Panel One: Stunned-looking waiter walking away from table saying "Yes, I'll bring your shoulders, ER-DRINKS! Yes."
Panel Two: Daven and Wendi. Daven cutely begs Wendi "Can I play with him, please?"
Panel Three: Close-up of Wendi saying "No."
Panel Four: Daven makes cutesy post asking "Aw, why not?"
STRIP 4
Panel One: Daven begs Wendi again to be allowed to play with the waiter
Panel Two: Wendi, who now has a halo and pointed chin (it was square in the previous strip) tells a pouting Daven, who has little horns and devil wings, that "No. If you do we'll either get great service..."
Panel Three: "or TERRIBLE service and will never get our food."
Panel Four: Daven leans his head on his hand and says "SIGH. Oh, alright!"
STRIP 5
Panel One: The waiter returns to ask "How is everything?"
Panel Two: Waiter widely smiles and asks if he can get them anything else
Panel Three: Waiter continues "Napkins? Water? Batteries?" while Daven smirks
Panel Four: Daven, now wearing waiter's shirt, says, "Hey, HE offered."
STRIP 6
Panel One: Daven, making a feminine flirtacious pose back to back with LKH, who is making the same pose, instructs her, "No no, you gotta bat your eyes, like THIS."
Panel Two: Shot of whole table as he continues "And lift your chest up so your boobs perk out. Now flip your hair." Jon appears to be laughing.
Panel Three: Daven asks "What?" when Wendi looks at him with her arms crossed (omg, she can cross her arms over her chest! Well, her curves might make straight men weep and gay women beg, but she's positively boyish compared to Ani--er, I mean LKH!)
Panel Four: Daven says that "I said *I* wouldn't flirt. I said nothing about helping others."
STRIP 7
Panel One: Shot of entire table and of waiter returning. LKH is leaning forward eagerly saying "Ooh, let me try" and Jon looks at her with what seems to be amused affection.
Panel Two: Shows only LKH, smirking deviously/sexily, with her boobs pushed up by the sides of her arms. A speech balloon from the offscreen waiter asks "Can I get you..." It is worth noting that the way that tail of the speech balloon is drawn makes it look like it is coming from LKH herself, and for the longest time I thought it was.
Panel Three: Blushing waiter stammers "Uh...you...BUH?" while LKH smiles and Jon looks amused.
Panel Four: Shot of whole table. The waiter is now a literal pile of steaming, blushing goo in front of the table, recognizable as the waiter only because the goo is wearing his glasses. Everyone is laughing except Wendi. LKH says that "It's all in the EYES." while touching her breast.
STRIP 8
Panel One: Determined looking waiter thinks to himself "FOCUS! You can do this. FOCUS!"
Panel Two: He continues "Just say "Would you like dessert?" EASY."
Panel Three: Waiter addresses table, "Would you like me?"
Panel Four: Frustrated-looking waiter thinks "DAMMIT!"
STRIP 9
Panel One: The waiter is in the back of the restaurant. He is sitting on something, perhaps a box or crate, with his face in his hands. A waitress stands next to him with her arms crossed and says "I don't know why you're having such a hard time with that table.
Panel Two: Waiter exclaims that "They're just SO DISTRACTING!"
Panel Three: Waitress is exiting door with a smile and says "It can't be THAT bad. Here, let me clear their plates for you..."
Panel Four: Waitress entering through doors, breaking plate in her hands as she yells "HOTNESS!" and Waiter yells "I KNOW!" at the ceiling.
STRIP 10
Panel One: The group exits the restaurant on to the sidewalk. LKH says "If JEN were here she'd make this into a funny comic."
Panel Two: Close up of LKH saying "But if I write it down, everything will go horribly wrong."
Panel Three: They cross an intersection while LKH waves her hands in the air and continues "There will be violent SEX,...or just plain VIOLENCE."
Panel Four: LKH grins cheekily as she finishes "And a HIGH BODY count." Everyone else smiles. Again, there was some speech balloon confusion here--I honestly thought someone else was saying this line until I read in LKH's written afterward that she was the one who said it.
The comic strips in themselves aren't bad. Some lacked a punchline, but others were smile-worthy. I'm just a bit biased because the subject material (how hot LKH is and how dark her mind is) made me gag, but if not for that I think I would have found it pretty decently comedic. No, the problem is that, well, it seems like something that friends would have done for each other middle school. Something exchanged between pals to make the party it was drawn for feel good. It doesn't seem like something you'd want to brag about to strangers professionally, though. I just feel this weird sense of secondhand embarrassment, really, like I'm looking at private notes passed between a pair of good friends versus at something published for the masses. Your mileage may vary, I just kind of find this to be too much of a 'very personal ur-so-hawt asspats for a friend' for my taste.
I'm sure it will come to no surprise that LKH looks just like Anita. Seriously. Just like her. That is exactly how the Marvel comics Anita is drawn, just in Jennie Breeden's style. What's weird is that if you look at the strips with LKH that are on The Devil's Panties website, LKH isn't drawn like that. She's drawn looking way, way more like Anita here. I mean, there's not much difference, but there's enough that I wouldn't have known they were the same character just by looking at the strips in this book and the strips on her site. I actually thought that this was the comic version of Anita & Co. when I flipped to the back of the book on accident (before reading the afterward) until I realized that the men had facial hair and there was another woman besides Anita present. Somehow that just makes it MORE embarrassing.
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I don't know, this is right off the top of my head, but, you know...this is right off the top of my head with the prompt of "LKH's restaurant story which then goes dark" and I still think it's better than what she ended up with (or has the potential to be better, anyway). And at least it actually builds from the story instead of just making the word "flirt" be repeated way too many times for no reason.
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fails todescribes here. Mostly for kinkmeme prompts, which - yeah, the inspiration is kind of obvious there, isn't it.The music thing - I go through phases where I'm thinking about a fanfic idea so much that the songs on the radio get automatically sorted into, 'That's what X would think', 'That's the emotional situation Y is in', 'That describes X and Y so perfectly', and 'I can't relate that to my characterisations of X, Y, or Z at all. I don't want to listen to it'. Seriously. My memory is terrible unless I have notes, but there are songs from a decade ago that bring back half-memories of, 'Oh, that's connected to the AU where A is a vampire and his brothers think he's dead' (which I never got around to writing). On one hand, this means that listening to those songs helps me keep those characterisations in mind. On the other, it means that when I'm tired of thinking about that characterisation I can't stand listening to the song any more.
I bet everyone here could use the scene with the waiter to come up with a story-plot that a) fitted it better instead of having the scene shoehorned in, and b) was intentionally darker than LKH's story. (I say intentionally because if you look at the rape and mind-rape Anita does Flirt is pretty dark - just not the way LKH meant it to be or thinks it is.)
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Of this I have no doubt.
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With this, she could even keep the title!
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Ditto. It's almost like she's either trying to get us to be jealous like everyone is of Anita for having hot men, trying to convince herself he's actually as hot as she keeps claiming, or both.
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LKH never looked at my room mate once; LKH always looked at me. Guess what? Room mate was a blonde female whereas I was a petite, female bodied brunette.
Ahahahah oh WOW.
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In other words, it makes too much sense for LKH to come up with it.
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Howard was amazing. He was the first of his breed. Yes, he carried a lot of issues from his turn of the century rural Texas upbringing (with a Southern family who were impoverished former slave-owners - it's amazing he turned out as well as he did, all considered) but he was a hell of a writer. "Pigeons From Hell" is scary as shit. LKH has never, ever managed that kind of fear in dozens of books. Solomon Kane would lop Anita's head off for being a demon.
I would really like to be reasonable about this but all I can think is "You can't enjoy my beloved things! You aren't nice enough to enjoy my beloved things!"
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I would really like to be reasonable about this but all I can think is "You can't enjoy my beloved things! You aren't nice enough to enjoy my beloved things!"
It's okay, I go off my rocker in the music section for similar reasons.
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You may have heard of REH in regards to Conan the Barbarian, who he is the author of, along with a bunch of somewhat lesser-known low fantasy heroes like Solomon Kane, Kull of Atlantis, and Bran Mak Morn. He bascially invented sword-and-sorcery. He also wrote historical fiction set in many lands, boxing stories (some serious, and some like the saga of the well-meaning but generally dimwitted Steve Costigan, which are played for laughs) He was a friend and frequent correspondent with H.P. Lovecraft, and wrote a lot of horror fiction, some directly related to the Cthulhu universe (which Lovecraft invented but shared with his friends) and some in its own little worlds. He wrote poetry. He also gets a lot of shit in the modern era (along with Lovecraft) for being racist, as people do enjoy judging others by 21st century standards and not, say, looking at the era the person lived in and considering the prevailing attitudes and education. :/
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Also, part of waitstaff's job is to smile and be cheerful, patient, and attentive to customers no matter what's going on. I had guys hitting on me, usually in inappropriate ways, because they believed my "for customers" face and voice were genuine for them.
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Also, part of waitstaff's job is to smile and be cheerful, patient, and attentive to customers no matter what's going on. I had guys hitting on me, usually in inappropriate ways, because they believed my "for customers" face and voice were genuine for them.
Yeah, and given what I can glean about her personality from her writing and posts, I can fully believe that LKH thinks a waiter acting like...a waiter...means he's into her or whoever he's being polite and friendly to. Honestly, I'm willing to bet he got flustered not being 'HOTNESS!' but because this table full of weird people is hitting on him. And even if the dude genuinely was into Daven, the entire thing still isn't cool.
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Imagine having to serve that table. If the Anita Blake series weren't all from her first-person POV and had some honesty, the waiter in that scene in Flirt might have had quite a different view of matters.
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And this sounds pretty bitchy (but it wont keep me from saying it), but it drives me batty when LKH has to break down simple concepts like the readers are her kindergarten class. It makes me think that she's not all the bright when she feels like "fertile soil" is a metaphor that is so beyond us plebs.
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I'm glad you think so! I'm definitely a nit-picky person, and I think I could easily fall into the error of just lambasting everything she says for no other reason than that it's her saying it, so I'm glad that this doesn't seem to be the case.
it drives me batty when LKH has to break down simple concepts like the readers are her kindergarten class
Me too. She breaks them down in the Anita narratives to, and I just can't stand it. Firstly, it's insulting to the reader. Secondly, it ruins the metaphor/analogy/etc even if it was a good/clever/effective/etc one. Especially since a good, clever, effective one should be able to stand on its own just fine.
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(I hadn't picked up an Anita Blake novel in many years, and, wondering what Hamilton's protagonist was up to, chose Flirt on a whim from the library shelf because it was the shortest available. When I'd finished the book, I immediately googled to see if someone had taken it down well, which brought me to your blog.)
It is amazing that so much of Laurell K. Hamilton's personal wishes and fantasies seem to be on display - and yet this self-evidence appears inversely proportionate to her own self-awareness.
One thing I liked about your series of sporks was that even when the material was most nonsensical, you were looking out for possible good ideas and things done well. Although I don't plan to read any more Anita Blake, so will not enjoy your other sporks as much, I really admire that style of criticism. Thanks for a good read!