[JenStevenson]

Interesting comments about AB, FicusFan. Which are your favorites of the Anita stories and why?

I have all these theories about how successful series work. Now is my chance to prove them--ulp! One theory is that a good series has a set of core relationships, founded on one core rel.between two people, and the relationships have rigid rules. The fun comes when different characters in the core rel.s try to bend or break the rules and how they resolve those conflicts.

Also, the rigid rules involve a core =conflict=. Like, Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe are the core relationship of the Rex Stout books. Archie loves the job--working with Wolfe, being part of the 'make the world look stupid' team (when he's on the team, not 'the world'), the food, and occasionally he gets Wolfe's respect. Wolfe can't do anything without Archie because he's terrified to leave his own house.

Their core conflict is that Nero is a big fat egotist who never does any of his own legwork, but expects to be treated like the king of his castle. Archie likes to think he's almost as smart as Wolfe sometimes, and hates being made to look stupid, whereas making everybody else look stupid is what Wolfe lives for. With these burrs under their saddles, Archie and Wolfe are always picking at each other, needling each other, sometimes taking up positions that they can't hold without pissing off the other in a way that takes a whole bookful of payback.

Oh, and I'm dying to know--I skimmed Obsidian Butterfly and woke up screaming two nights in a row, so I can't possibly read any more--but did Anita ever get involved with that serial killer who decided to be obsessed with her at the end of OB?

Jen

[FicusFan]

I like the 'old' books (pre sex-fest). Books 1 (Guilty Pleasures) through 7 (Burnt Offerings).

LKH first replaced the characters she had spent 7 books developing with pod people in book 8 (Blue Moon). It seems to have the structure of the old books but it is where she went off the rails.

Book 9 (Obsidian Butterfly) is Anita in New Mexico, without most of her supporting cast. It is very similar to book 2 (Laughing Corpse) with chopped children. I found the tone of the writing to be wooden and depressive, and since the story is told only through AB's eyes it never interested me much. I am also not a big Edward fan, who is the only regular who gets a lot of stage time.

Books 10,11,12 are the sex-fest books: Narcissus in Chains, Cerulean Sins, Incubus Dreams. Anita has become a totally different person.

Interesting about your theory of central characters and conflict. The central characters that are still involved in the story have either accepted the change in Anita, and become fawning, toothless syncophants, or if they don't, they have become deranged, full of hate, and no longer behave in recognizable ways. LKH is vilifying her own creations. The rest of the cast has fallen off the face of the earth - as though either or both LKH & Anita are ashamed of their behavior and don't want those whom they were formerly close to as witnesses of how low Anita has sunk.

LKH actually talks about the characters as though they were separate individuals - which is what makes the writing so compelling (not that I am saying she has lost her grasp of reality - its just how she deals with them. I have seen her 2-3 times in person).

The last 3 books have seen a boat load of new, poorly developed supporting characters that are there mostly as studs, and fawners.

My favorite books are 5-7: Bloody Bones, The Killing Dance, Burnt Offerings . I am a huge JC fan, and he is very prominent in those books. He has since been de-fanged and reduced to an occasional walk-on. The books also feature a lot of vampires as opposed to the weres, I am a big vampire fan. But mostly there is a lot of change and growth in Anita - where she has to confront her hypocrisy. Accept that what she feels and what she says don't match. There is also a lot of self-reflection and emotional sharing, a glimpse of what the series could be. The 3 books seem to be very well balanced between the intimate, and the action of a good story.

In the pre-sex fast books Anita had a group of peers, and those who were followers, or in need of her protection/rescure. She had comrades who were her equals. It seems that LKH has removed, destroyed or marginalized the peers, while concentrating on the ranks of followers/rescuees. Anita must be the queen of all she surveys, kind of sad really. The power dynamic is rather nasty when you think about it.

In answer to your question - no the serial killer in OB has never resurfaced. He and books with actual plots, have vanished.

Though I am very unhappy with the books, and I often vow before each new one to ignore it, I haven't been able to so far. Kind of like the sick fascination of a bloody traffic accident.

[JenStevenson]

So, FicusFan, to boil down:

The books you like best feature the vampires, particularly Jean-Claude; the main character is confronted with her own hypocrisy and has to change or grow; there is emotional sharing between main characters (I'm assuming you mean Anita and JC); the main character is merely human, not a Superhero (paraphrasing you, accurately I hope); and the action doesn't bog down even though there's time taken for character growth.

Here's another question for you. About the changes that took place in books 5-7, particularly changes in Anita and JC based on events in books 5-7. Did those events change things between those two characters to the point where Things Could Not Go On As Before?

This question leads to a phenomenon talked about among writers as "jumping the shark." When characters in a series violate the basic series premise, such as killing Mulder in X Files, this is called "jumping the shark." Something irrevocable has happened that means the core dynamics, the core assumptions of the series, cannot continue.

(The phrase refers to a Welcome Back Kotter episode involving Fonzie and a motorcycle. Don't ask me. I never saw it.)

I guess I'm asking, do you feel LH had jumped the shark by book 7? If so, how?

Jen, who never runs out of weird questions

[Erfael]

Jen, we've actually talked a great deal about jumping sharks here at SFFWorld, so it's not an unfamiliar concept to any of us....in fact, it may have been Ficus who first brought the idea up. But as I've never read any Hamilton, I can't participate in that particular discussion.

Getting back to YOUR book......
One of my favorite things about TSM was how easily you were able to draw convincing characters in a very short time frame and small number of words. Is this something you've spent time working on or that has come naturally to you?

Also, are you at all conscious of genre when you sit down to write a book or is it just something that develops and falls wherever it will as it happens? Also, do you have any idea how well your book is doing among mainstream vs. genre readers?

[FicusFan]

So, FicusFan, to boil down:

The books you like best feature the vampires, particularly Jean-Claude; the main character is confronted with her own hypocrisy and has to change or grow; there is emotional sharing between main characters (I'm assuming you mean Anita and JC);

No the main characters were/are Anita, JC and Richard (werewolf). As much as I thought I hated Richard (pre-Micah) I accepted that he wasn't going to go anywhere, and that there were 3 of them. The sharing was among the 3, and it was good. At least until the end of TKD when AB made a choice RZ couldn't deal with and ran-off/went mental. Though he didn't leave the story he just became a nut-case, and with every book since he has become a different nut case.



the main character is merely human, not a Superhero (paraphrasing you, accurately I hope); and the action doesn't bog down even though there's time taken for character growth.

Well LKH's action never bogs down, because Anita shoots whatever is causing the problem. What I prefer is a mixture of smash-mouth action with calmer and more intimate moments where the characters interact. So not all personal stuff, and not all action.

I do like the character growth part, because Anita takes time for self-reflection, she often fights doing the right thing, and botches her first attempts at it. She is (was) very human in many ways.

I also don't like the constant upgrade of superpowers, and how every man in the series worships/lusts after Anita, and the other women are invisible, evil or stupid. I also miss the real life touches that used to ground Anita to reality: her apartment, her fish, her stuffed penguin, her scars, her coffee jones & the mugs, when she actually had to work, and of course books that actually had a plot.



Here's another question for you. About the changes that took place in books 5-7, particularly changes in Anita and JC based on events in books 5-7. Did those events change things between those two characters to the point where Things Could Not Go On As Before?

Yes things could not go on as before. But they changed for AB & JC, and they started a new relationship - which was the whole book of Burnt Offerings . Things were fine, though there was still conflict between them, but LKH didn't keep it that way because the Richard fans were outraged. Looking at what followed LKH also probably didn't want Anita to share, so much as be the only big fish in the pond.

So Blue Moon was her attempt to give Richard equal treatment - though LKH violated her own rules. She said she never plotted that she wrote and the characters did what they wanted on the page. Blue Moon was plotted so that Richard won. But she made the characters do things that was not in their nature, and they had no more internal honesty and nothing to say to each other. So the big 3 never had a wrap up scene, or worked out what happened, and how it changed their relationshp -- they still haven't really ever talked. Richard is still nuts, and JC has been reduced to a walk on, so Anita has become the only big fish with lots of stage time.


This question leads to a phenomenon talked about among writers as "jumping the shark." I guess I'm asking, do you feel LH had jumped the shark by book 7? If so, how?

Well yes, but she didn't have to. She had started down another path and rather than continue on it - she made the major characters into pod people, and took a radical turn off the path. The results of Blue Moon would have happened anyway, but in would have taken several books for Anita to accept it and act on it in her own way.

Unfortunately at the time of this book LKH also dumped her old agent, and picked up the new flashy one that she has now. She was just starting to explode and the new agent got her bigger money, and told her to position herself to court the romance crowd - which meant placate the Richard faction immediately.

Once LKH changed Anita so radically overnight, and pretty much got away with it, she felt free to do it again. So we are into our second pod person replacement. Now she seems to think she can do anything she wants and people will still buy it. If you look at amazon, people are more unhappy than not. Eventually it will catch up with her if she keeps it up, because Anita has no ending -- it will keep going as long as she writes it and sells it. At some point those of us who are unhappy will stop spending.

She has a novella coming out this summer where she is trying to pump up Micah (who is probably the most hated character in the books). He walked into Anita's life after working with the bad guy in NIC, to become her life-mate in one book. Her other guys were built up for from 3 to 6 books. He just waltzed in with no development, was a bad guy (whimpy), lied to her, then pretty much raped her, and is now her life-mate. I will not be buying or reading it. The only thing I will read about him is if he dies horribly at the end.


Jen, who never runs out of weird questions

No they aren't weird at all.

[FicusFan]

I also agree with Erf, that you did a wonderful job on your characters. And that you did it with an economy of words, but it wasn't just the characters, your whole story was like that. Is it that you worked mostly in the short form before the book or just lots of practice ?

In terms of the characters, as I have said before you did an amazing job with those who aren't standard middle class people and yet you never made them objects of ridicule or pity. I was interested in them, and cared what happened to them, even though I was a bit revolted when I thought about who they were and how they lived. I also thought of them as people who made unconventional choices, not as discards or victims.

I am looking forward to your new series, but would also be interested in reading more about the people and place of Trash Sex Magic.

[JenStevenson]

FicusFan, you write,

<<with an economy of words, but it wasn't just the characters, your whole story was like that. Is it that you worked mostly in the short form before the book or just lots of practice ?>>

<laughing> It wasn't so economical when I first wrote it, 20 years ago! The book came in at about 130,000 words in its first MS form, which is 520 pages. That's 120 pages longer than the average 'thick' paperback! Between my own hard work and the help of many readers, not least of them my brilliant editor Kelly Link, we pared it down to just under 400 pages. But I'm grateful that you think it's economical now.

<<aren't standard middle class people and yet you never made them objects of ridicule or pity. I was interested in them, and cared what happened to them, even though I was a bit revolted when I thought about who they were and how they lived. I also thought of them as people who made unconventional choices, not as discards or victims.>>

Funny, I didn't think of them as discards or victims or 'nonstandard' myself. I didn't grow up in a trailer park but I also didn't grow up with any sense of class, as in socioeconomic class. I was never aware of someone as having 'better breeding' than mine; more money, yes. But until I married and went to New Haven to put my hubby through Yale Drama School, I didn't realize that we had class distinctions in this country. There I met kids who were fourth- or fifth-generation college educated, kids with four generations of good prenatal nutrition and good dentistry behind them. They seemed not just rich but like another species. Difference between mutts and pedigree poodles, anyway.

I've read books by and about people like that. Amanda Cross comes immediately to mind. I get pretty annoyed with the upper class assumptions in those books, and I close the book feeling as if my head were floating on a string, like a balloon, several sanitary feet above my body.

Anyway there are a lot of things about the way my trailer people live that I meant to seem revolting. But those were more interpersonal than physical. Someone just reviewed Trash for the New York Review of Science Fiction--Jenny Blackstone? From Australia. Jenny wrote that she thought she was intended to admire Gelia, but that she 'never forgave her for that slap' in the first chapter, the slap that puts the silence on Rae.

For me that was a moment of triumph. I never forgave Gelia for that slap either! But I couldn't tell the story if I didn't give her as much airtime as it took to show who she was from the inside out, or through the eyes of strangers, or her lover.

One of my personal pitfalls is taking people on their own terms, and yet listening =through= the lies they tell to the truths underneath. I never know whether to 'play to the pose' as my husband calls it, or to speak directly to the truth that's hiding underneath. Gets me in a lot of trouble.

But it's paying off in fiction.

The place of Trash is a place very near where I grew up. We lived at the top of a river escarpment over the Fox River. At the bottom of the escarpment, about a mile downriver, was a big park called Wheeler Park; my mom would take me and my brother and the dog to this park and we'd run wild for an hour or two, or pick black raspberries and wild grapes and chokecherries and feral crabapples to make jam. It was a magical place.

Lots of the details about that park are described in Trash, although I've taken liberties where convenient to my story. There really are houses on the water's edge, but they're very nice houses! Recently I learned that the Mafia dons of the Chicago area used to own houses all up and down the Fox in these towns, and use them as summer cottages.

My first inspiration for the book came while I was on jury duty in 1986 in Chicago. Jury duty involves a lot of waiting around, so I roughed out notes for a story. I wanted a setting that would fit the characters I had in mind--the mother and daughter came first, of all of them--and I had just seen Coal Miner's Daughter on TV again. I saw it in '76 when it first came out. Butcher Holler enchanted me. It seemed so homey, and yet (to my adult eyes) so squalid. I thought, if I could move Butcher Holler to a place I know better, I could put my mother-and-daughter into that setting, and just let 'em rip! So I thought of that riverbank of the Fox. And off it went.

[intensityxx]

Jen, I'm concerned about the flood of mediocre new series trying to catch the wave of chick/fantasy/romance, and really hope that in your efforts you will not try too hard to figure out and repeat the recipe or formula that might have worked previously by other authors. Please continue to tell rich, substantive stories and grow beyond the imitators. Let lesser authors imitate you.

[JenStevenson]

Intensityxx writes,
<<Jen, I'm concerned about the flood of mediocre new series trying to catch the wave of chick/fantasy/romance, and really hope that in your efforts you will not try too hard to figure out and repeat the recipe or formula that might have worked previously by other authors.>>

I haven't read much of this flood. Been trying to catch up on chick lit and struggling. I hear that Harlequin has a new line called Luna, and Silhouette has Bombshell, both of which have fantasy or SF elements. Plus Tor is now buying romantic fantasy.

What's the formula that works for previous authors? I'm dying to know! <g> Writers are always looking for a shortcut to the agonizing business of birthing a book. So far, no soap, but it would be lovely.

<<Please continue to tell rich, substantive stories and grow beyond the imitators. Let lesser authors imitate you.>>

<LARGE SMILE> I'll do my best.

[JenStevenson]

Erfael, you write,
>>Also, are you at all conscious of genre when you sit down to write a book or is it just something that develops and falls wherever it will as it happens? Also, do you have any idea how well your book is doing among mainstream vs. genre readers?>>

I don't think I answered this... I TRY to color inside genre lines. I really do. I bring stuff to my RWA chapter and read it, and my chaptermates laugh their butts off and then say, "But of course you'll never sell it." And I tried for decades to sell in SF.

As for how well Trash is doing in mainstream vs. genre, no clue. Except I know it was picked in the top five LOCUS Best First Novels or Best First Fantasy Novels or something, and ten people nominated it for a Nebula Award. The mainstream folks haven't honored me ... yet <g> I just want to sell out the edition so my publisher makes some money on it. Maybe my agent will be able to figure out what the hey genre I'm writing in. So far he says, "You're writing character-based fiction. It doesn't matter what genre it's sold in." Bless his heart, I guess he knows better than I do.

You want to make a writer crazy, ask them what their 'brand' is. Or their 'high concept.' It's all we can do to grind out 100,000 words... now they want us to know what it means! <VBG>