Interviews with LKH

[dwg]

They're worth the read despite being a lot of the same ol' same ol' from LKH. I've included some of the more...special highlights. This is a great time to start playing LKH bingo. Or drinking.

Ten Terrifying Questions via Booktopia:

6. Please tell us about your latest novel…

A Shiver of Light is the first Meredith (Merry) Gentry novel in over

Comments

[guardians_song]

Legions of new fans? Is THAT why your sales figures have been dropping for the last ten books?

And the woman is uncomfortable writing "penis". She's not one to preach.

Also, Fairy-Porn GRRM? Please. I'm not even a fan and I know the difference.

[ext_1626743]

I can't stand GRRM, and yet LKH manages to make me feel like she's besmirching his honor by comparing her crap to his. For all the many terrible things I could say about him, the man EDITS.

[shadwing]

The man also has a clear plan of where he wants the story to go, he knows what happens to all the main characters and where they will end up by stories end.

[ext_1626743]

Well, people write differently. Some people have a very clear plan, and others just some vague ideas, and it can all work. I don't think planning in great detail is better or worse than not doing so. You have to end up with something coherent, but not necessarily start with it. Imo, the problem with LKH is that she writes pure stream-of-consciousness with no internal editing at all, to a level that's kind of impressive, and then never goes back and turns it into anything.

[ravens_shadow]

My issue is that she equates a change in the series with character growth and change, which I don't think is quite the case. The series changed with the addition of the ardeur and the situational need (excuse?) for more sex. However, the attitudes Anita had in the beginning of being uncomfortable with intimate relationships and sex are still kind of her attitudes now. She still (from the most recent books I've read, somewhere around CS and ID) doesn't eat regularly, so the ardeur is something she has to feed all of a sudden and more often than necessary; she's always uncomfortable adding a new person to the harem, at least initially; she still is highly critical of other women, especially if they are human or blond (heaven forfend if they are both); and she often resorts to big guns to deals with problems, but sex as a final solution (usually because the ardeur has to be fed or someone is influencing her metaphysically

[dwg]

A note than I am drawing a distinction between how I recall Anita behaving versus how we are told she feels, which I think has a huge discrepancy.You're not wrong. There's a massive disparity between what Anita says she feels vs what's going on. This probably is best illustrated with LKH's claim about writing "women owning their sexuality." Anita does not own her sexuality. Merry does not own her sexuality. Anita's forced to have sex with people she doesn't know or care about thanks to a magical roofie, whereas Merry's forced to have sex with multiple people she doesn't know or care about in the name of getting pregnant in order to win the throne

[ravens_shadow]

Whenever I see a post like from LKH, my brain screams "Show, don't tell." It's a pet peeve I have as a reader and as an editor, when the author has spent pages and pages telling me how someone felt when X happened, but I don't actually see any of it in the character's body language, facial expressions, or behaviors. Anita says she's happy and accepting, but she never acts like it.

[dwg]

THIS THIS THIS. And with added bonus that the body language actually happening in the scenes is really skeevy, like when she's struggling to get away or for air or describing her face like she's screaming in pain but then turns around to say BUT I LOVED IT AND THEY DID TOO. There's nothing about how Anita is into what's going on or getting a thrill from her partner(s) being into it.

The other problem LKH runs into is that she infodumps all kinds of interesting things that happen between books or off screen rather than showing those things happening. It would count as character and plot development.

[ext_1626743]

I have a really hard time believing any woman actually told LKH that women cannot enjoy sex. The fact that oh, they were always wearing wedding rings, tee-hee, puts this straight into Snopes territory. How convenient that this anecdote plays precisely to LKH's anti-marriage, anti-wife prejudices.

I'm not sure sex can be as BAD in real life as it is in her books.

[magdalen77]

Yeah, actually I've never known sex to be as tedious and boring in real life as it is in LaLa's books. Some woman lying there like a dead flounder occasionally shrieking and clawing her partner(s) isn't my idea of a hot sex scene.

[ext_1626743]

Yep. Also, I've never been with guys who invariably last maybe two minutes tops, all jackhammering. Plus Anita's blowjobs are terrible. Plus she has no emotions during her sex scenes and doesn't seem to feel anything -- there are just these involuntary screaming orgasms.

Maybe women actually told her, "sex is never that BAD in real life," and she replaced a word.

[wanderingworlds]

The only way it can be bad is without any lube or foreplay, a large penis, and a way-too-small vagina. That's about as painful as her smut is.

[ext_1377938]

I actually like character growth and change in a series, but I seem to be in the minority; most people like series to be like a brand name product that does the same thing every time, reliable.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA. Oh, how wonderful.

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

There's nothing more enjoyable than a woman lying on her back and doing nothing. Mmmhmmm that's amazing sex.

[foxfire74]

She doesn't do nothing. She spills. And also screams.

[wanderingworlds]

Hey! Hey now. Anita tears the shit out of people's backs and arms with her clawing. She does stuff!

[rodentfanatic]

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

[subtle_shades]

Maybe what those (married) women actually said was, "The stuff you're writing? Sex isn't that."

And LKH heard, "The stuff you're writing? Sex isn't that good." (And then went off to pat herself on the back while the original speakers stared after her going...WTF?)

It's the difference of a word more or less but it's important in context.

[rodentfanatic]

Given the way Anita seems to have this problem in her interactions and LKH writing it as if it's perfectly natural/normal, I actually think this sounds completely plausible.