In preparation for the release of Sucker Punch in August, I recently completed a reread of the entire Anita Blake series. Every time I do this, I find myself wondering about different questions and I pepper my friends who are also fans with questions AND go on rants about primarily Richard but some of the others as well. There are books i seem to fly through and others where I slog through. Each time those books change, so I am not going to say which ones read slow or fast. So, here for your consumption is a list of things (passages) that spoke to me this read through not necessarily in order so you will have to search to find them: The practicalities of life do not cease needing to be done just because other things are going wrong. Love’s hard to come by, Edward; you should never throw it away just because it’s a bad idea. Either choice was a bad one. Multiple choice should have at least one right answer, but some people only come with wrong answers. Some people are like rigged tests where you can only fail. It can always get worse. The love of a lover, of friends, and of partners, of people that I never wanted to lose, and damn day. It was about home. Home wasn’t a place, or a building, or a tropical night full of flowers and rain. Love made home not out of boards and walls and furniture, but of hands to hold, and smiles to share, and the warmth of that body cuddled around you in the dark. comforting hands, our bodies that had made us all home, and the craziness of having too many people, too much going on, but what would we give up, who would we give up, and the answer, in the end, was not a single thing. Love is never about the object of our love, but always says more about us than them. no one knows you as honestly, warts and all, as the people who love you, truly love you.’ ‘True love means you love the real person, not an ideal that you have in your head and superimpose over them. I’d grown to understand that love, real love, is full of choices that make no sense, that should go horribly wrong, but you make the choice anyway. Why? Because love is different. I opened my mouth, closed it, and then shook my head. There was as sure where “here” was anymore. Because I had had a nasty shock and was all emotionally vulnerable; that usually made me want to either run for the hills or get angry and stay angry. You can experience trauma without getting stuck as the victim forever. You can choose to work the shit and rebuild yourself, or you can sit in the ruins and mourn forever. Sometimes there isn’t enough therapy in the world to fix a person, and that’s when you have to find another cure. There are so few true villains, just other screwed-up people who pass the damage on. The elderly will also begin to decline faster if they don’t have anyone to touch them. Patting someone’s hand, or shoulder, a hug, all of it is necessary to be happy and healthy for most people. It doesn’t have to have anything to do with sex; in fact, most of the touch that keeps us all going is as innocent as a newborn lamb frolicking on the spring grass, the thought of how close I must have come to losing the man in my arms scared me more than anything else. Sex was not a fate worse than death, because with life there was always hope. Hope that the big breakup wasn’t permanent. Hope that the issues that drove you apart might bring you back together again. Hope that you’d see their smile again, even if they were with someone else. Only death was final, and without hope; short of that, there were options. There’s a lot of ways to be smart; the kind that gets you straight A’s in school is only one way. It was like someone who is so used to being made fun of that they say the mean things first, try to make it their joke, so the bullies don’t get a chance to cut them up. It works, in a way, but it means the person saying the words internalizes the message more, because they’re the ones saying stupid, clumsy, fat, ugly —whatever the bullies might say. being in love makes people beautiful, and falling out of love makes you see the truth. It may set you free, but it’s going to fuck you up before it does. It was like someone who is so used to being made fun of that they say the mean things first, try to make it their joke, so the bullies don’t get a chance to cut them up. It works, in a way, but it means the person saying the words internalizes the message more, because they’re the ones saying stupid, clumsy, fat, ugly —whatever the bullies might say. being in love makes people beautiful, and falling out of love makes you see the truth. It may set you free, but it’s going to fuck you up before it does. love could be a cup that you both filled up with love, kindness, joy, sex, all the things that made you a couple, but if you could fill the cup up, you could also drain it dry with cruelty, sorrow, pain, jealousy, and anger. “Sorry, Damian, but it doesn’t make sense to me when I do it either. If something makes you happy you should just enjoy it and embrace it, but I’ve got a whole list of things that make me happy and I fought like hell not to enjoy them, not to want them, not to do them, because they didn’t match who I thought I was, or who I thought I should be.” Just tell me what she’s done, Anita. That should be awful enough to help us appreciate whatever happiness we can find. we must trust each other, for we are built link by link into a chain that is stronger together than as a pile of individual links. Your first lover gets a piece of your heart until you have enough therapy to take it back. But one thing I’d learned in therapy was that just because a feeling made no sense didn’t make you stop feeling it. “As much as I’d prefer the world to be black and white, yes or no, right or wrong, Nicky’s right: Sometimes you can be both,” Fear will bind you closer than love, or hate, and it works a hell of a lot quicker. So many traumatic events and your time sense screws up. Too much happening in too short a space of time. The trick would be to decide whom to be grumpy at, and what to do about it. I had been running on fear, adrenaline, and stubbornness for hours. In the quiet hush of the car I could feel my body. It was not happy. The hour after dawn is the most private of all. You’d think I’d get used to not knowing what the hell is going on, but I never do. It just makes me grumpy, and a little scared. If you keep the gun in your purse, you get killed, because no woman can find anything in her purse in under twelve minutes. It is a rule. Most people choose to think of themselves as white hats, good guys. A few people wear black hats and enjoy it. Grey was Bert’s color. Sometimes I think if you cut him, he’d bleed green, fresh-minted money. There was something a little frightening about a man who knew he was not a nice person and didn’t give a damn. It went against everything America holds dear. We are taught above all else to be nice, to be liked, to be popular. A person who has set aside all that is a maverick and a potentially dangerous human being. It takes real breeding to make a person feel like shit with one word. When in doubt, change your vocabulary. There was something a little frightening about a man who knew he was not a nice person and didn’t give a damn. It went against everything America holds dear. We are taught above all else to be nice, to be liked, to be popular. A person who has set aside all that is a maverick and a potentially dangerous human being. there are days when I think you can’t save anyone. When in doubt, take a deep breath and keep moving. Murphy’s law is the only true dependable in my life most of the time. I was the closest thing Edward had to a real friend. A person who knows who and what you are and likes you anyway. I did like him, despite or because of what he was. He had bet his life on my integrity, and that pissed me off. I hate to be used. My virtue had become its own punishment. Remember, no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. We had saved each other’s lives; it is a bond that sticks with you. Most hatred is based on fear, one way or another. Yeah. I wrapped myself in anger, with a dash of hate, and at the bottom of it all was an icy center of pure terror. A zillion brownie points for me. Women may get to wear lots of pretty colors, but men get the comfortable shoes. You never really filled in the hole. It was like a piece of you gone goes away. You deal with it. You go on, but it’s there. Only inhibitors in the brain prevent us all from destroying ourselves. No one had ever attacked me at home before, not like this. It should have been against the rules. You should be safe in your own bed. She had broken a rule. One I hadn’t even known I had. Thou shalt not attack the good guy in his, or her, own home. Coffee was my comfort drink. But I’ve been stared at by experts, so I was careful not to flinch. Sarcasm is one of my natural talents. Freud is so often at work in our lives. Hope is a lying bitch. It felt wet, like it had soaked through to the skin, but it hadn’t. It was a sensory illusion. People are seldom just one thing. There are fires that last for all eternity. Fires that make napalm look like a temporary inconvenience. I notice all sorts of things that go unnoticed during most of life. I could taste my calm, orderly pulse in my mouth like a piece of candy. For tension release laughter beats the hell out of tears. I had the urge to giggle, but that was the pain medication. I never giggle on my own. some drugs don’t give a shit if you need your body. You belong to the drug until it wears off, period. staying alive was the goal. Everything else was gravy. Best friends, a concept that most women never outgrow. If I ever managed to get married and my husband cheated on me, it wouldn’t be me to go missing. If you’re not ashamed, you don’t need to look away. hysteria gets you nowhere but dead. Worry about the things you can control; the rest will either work themselves out, or they’ll kill you. Either way, no more worries. you can be embarrassed or you can be aggressive. Truth, justice, and the American way certainly didn’t work within the legal system. Money, power, and luck were what worked. Anita. No matter what you do or how bad you feel about it, life just goes on. Life doesn’t give a fuck that you’re sorry or upset or deranged or tormented. Life just goes on, and you gotta go on with it, or sit in the middle of the road and feel sorry for yourself. I never doubted God. I doubted me. But maybe God was a more generous God than I allowed him to be. I felt that measure of calm that I sometimes got when I prayed. It doesn’t mean you’ll get what you asked for, but it does mean that someone is listening. If you can’t impress yourself, then no one else really matters. Why is it when you have a sure thing to bet on, there’s never anyone around to take your money? it used to bother me that I could be in such confusion, such pain, and the world just didn’t give a shit. The world, the creation as a whole, is designed to move forward, to keep on keeping on without any one individual person. It feels damned impersonal, and it is. But, then, if the world stopped rotating just because one of us was having a bad day, we’d all be floating out in space. I’d learned long ago that if you’re feeling unloved by the man in your life, the best revenge is to look good “The heart wants what the heart wants, Dolph. You don’t plan on making your life complicated, it just happens, and you don’t do it on purpose, and you don’t do it to hurt the people who love you. It just turns out that way sometimes.” I thought of several smart alec remarks, but you should humor crazy people when you’re at their mercy; it’s a rule. You can’t shovel other people’s shit for them, not unless they’re willing to pick up a shovel and help. There’s only so much emotional super glue in a person’s soul, after that everything just stays broken. It was a little like being in shock. Shock is nature’s insulation, the thing that shuts you down so you can heal, or sometimes so you can die without hurting, or being afraid. I guess you can’t undo all your upbringing, no matter how hard you try. sometimes guilt or habit makes you listen to those other voices—the ones that beat you down. Sometimes you just can’t shake them. “You ate the living darkness, Anita. It has given your own necromancy a power jump of near-legendary proportions. You raised every cemetery and lone body in and around the city of Boulder, Colorado last year, while you chased down the spirit of the Lover of Death, one of the last members of the now-disbanded vampire council who did not bend knee to Jean-Claude’s rebellion.” “You say rebellion. I say killing crazy motherfuckers to save the world from their plans to spread vampirism and contagious zombie plague across the planet.” “It would have been an apocalypse for the human race.” “But not the apocalypse.” “You mean the biblical one?” he asked. “Yeah, as in the apocalypse.” “You say that as if there is only one.” “There is only one.” “You have prevented two on your own. We have prevented more events that would have destroyed the planet, or at least the human population. Some of us lived through the last great extinction and the coming of the great winter.” “You mean the Ice Age, as in the real Ice Age.” He nodded. I took in a deep breath, let it out slow, and said, “Okay, some of you guys are old as fuck. Make your point.” “My point, Anita, is that apocalypse as in the great devastation or second coming of some religious significance has happened before and will likely happen again.” “I’m not sure we’re defining it the same way,” I said. “Perhaps not, but there really does need to be a plural for apocalypse .” A few years back I’d have argued until either we had a fight or the cows came home, but therapy had helped me realize that I could just let some things go. Real love is about consistency over time, battles won, battles lost, the pain, the pleasure, the sharing. Strength shared is strength multiplied. She just looked happy, and nothing makes someone as beautiful as happiness and being in love. No makeup or youth serum can come close to that beauty secret. Who wanted to be around a constant stream of negativity? I knew he would shield me with his own body, and the strength that would have scared me under other circumstances now became the ultimate comfort. I knew that all that energy and strength was now aimed at keeping me safe. The difference between prince and beast is often just a matter of how a man uses his strength and rage. Aimed well, it is a shelter that you can hide behind no matter how great the storm. Turned against you, it makes shelter into a trap.
Sometimes you need to embrace the suck and just go along for the ride, but sometimes you need to tell whoever is making your life suck to stop being a dick and do better. Tyburn was now on my you-almost-killed-me-so-do-better-or-let-me-drive list Part of wisdom is being honest with yourself,
Yeah. I scratched something that had imbedded itself near my hairline, and a couple bits of rubble fell out and hit the white tiled floor, making little clattering sounds. The attendant didn’t say anything, so I didn’t, either. I guessed we were both going to agree that hadn’t happened.
It was funny how you couldn’t tell now, I thought, staring. Like you couldn’t tell if a lot of the bodies around Vlad’s city of the dead were male or female, after a while. They just turned into corpses, blackened and split open, with ropes of trailing entrails festooned with maggots and dripping with unknown liquids. Mothers, fathers, lovers, friends; they were all the same in death, rotting under a cheerful blue sky . ..
Somebody had told me that war was a lot of serious tedium interspersed with moments of sheer terror, however. Which I thought described my job perfectly.
…liberated my new cat. Who looked in disbelief at my bed, which was round and so oversized that they needed a new designation for it. Orgy-sized maybe, because it could have fit ten, maybe twelve in a pinch.
You got it, I gritted out, after half a freaking hour. I had been awake for going on a day, under less than ideal conditions. My body ached, my brain was fried, and my eyes actually burned. I was going to sleep right now, damn it! Only I didn’t. I tossed and turned and tried every conceivable position. I plumped my pillow, changed it out for a different one, and then pounded that one into submission, too, before giving up and going back to the first one again. I put on a sleep mask. I took off a sleep mask, because I had black out curtains that my vamp bodyguards almost always kept closed even when they weren’t in here. I didn’t need a sleep mask, goddamnit! The problem was, I didn’t know what I needed.
Somebody had told me that warm milk helped insomnia. It sounded nasty, but I was willing to give it a try. Right now, I was willing to try anything. Of course, that required that I play the fun and exciting game of Hunt the Milk, which was no mean feat. The penthouse’s kitchen had been designed to feed a horde, with three fridges—two regular ones and a shorty under the counter—a standalone freezer, two wine coolers, another wine cooler that was used only for beer, and God knew what else. I didn’t, because I couldn’t find half of it! And what I could find, I often didn’t want
Tami, my friend and self-appointed life manager, and I had sat around one night shortly after we moved in playing “guess the item” with a couple drawers full of weird, one-use-only gadgets. We’d managed to correctly identify an avocado slicer, a carrot peeler, a pair of herb scissors, a strawberry stem remover (okay, we cheated with Google on that one) and a vertical egg cooker. Plus some stuff that even the search engine of the gods hadn’t been able to help us out with. Tami’s go-to greeting for visitors to the kitchen these days was to drag them over to the mystery item drawer and try to make them identify something.
I didn’t have an answer for her. It was one of a whole host of things I didn’t know, because this job didn’t get easier as you went along, like I’d expected. It actually seemed to be getting harder, which was a problem since I was already giving a hundred and fifty percent. Literally. I turned around and went back to bed.
Only you can’t. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.” She leaned forward and put a hand on my arm. “Everybody wants a piece of you, all the time, but you can’t give it to them. They’ll take and take, until there’s nothing left. That’s how people are—”
I seriously contemplating just sleeping where I lay. The bed had one of those down-filled mattresses that grabs your ass like it’s trying to get handsy, and then draws you down into enveloping softness.
I groaned and put a hand to my head, where it felt like I had the mother of all hangovers. And the grandmother and great-grandmother as well, I thought, trying to take stock.
Now, if you please.” Damn it, Gertie! I thought. But I stomped over anyway. “What?” “Pear?” She offered me one. I looked at it blankly. It was fat and yellow, with a blushing bottom. It was a nice pear. It also made no sense at all. “What?” “Yes, I have an apple,” Gertie said, and jerked me inside. “What are you doing?” I demanded, because this was bizarre, even for her. But she just shushed me and turned me toward the crack in the door. It was still open maybe a quarter of the way, giving us a sliver of a view, although why we needed one, I didn’t know. I needed to get back—“Watch,” Gertie said, and ate pear. I didn’t know what she was talking about, but I watched anyway. Don’t argue with teacher, I thought. Only I didn’t know what I was supposed to be watching. The little girls were the easiest to see, still facing their wall. Or most of them were. One was playing with a doll she’d smuggled out, hidden in a fold of her dress, and another had squatted down to examine a fat green caterpillar. But most of the rest were dutifully reciting something, I didn’t know what, because it was in some other language. “A test,” Gertie said, her voice low. “For what?” “To see if they can age a flower.” I looked back at her. “How? They don’t have access to the Pythian power yet.” “No, they don’t,” she agreed. “The question is, can any of them get its attention?”
Or a fight, I thought, catching sight of the rest of the courtyard. “I told you I needed to get out there!” I said to Gertie, as my acolyte faced off with her own mother. I started forward, but Gertie pulled me back, and she was surprisingly strong for an old woman
Why London had what was essentially a petri dish of plague running through the city was beyond me, but it wasn’t my main concern
He’d come back for me, all right, but to capture not to kill. He’d started grafting souls onto his body, like adding apps onto a phone, and I was supposed to be his next upgrade. There to add to his power, but with none of my own, and no say in what mine was used for. Or any way to stop the process or even to die and make the torture end.
Throughout history, the number three has been fundamental to how we understand the world. The space we inhabit is measured in length, width, and height. Time is measured in past, present, and future.” He paused, and I just sat there, expectant. Until I realized that he was smiling slightly. “What?” I asked. “What are you waiting for?” “For the rest—” I stopped, realizing that I had unconsciously been waiting—for another example. I frowned. “The third instance would be body, mind, and spirit,” he continued, “which is how we understand ourselves. But the fact that you knew—instinctively—that there was a third example indicates how our minds classify things…People have always seen the world in threes. Look at religion: Christianity is fundamentally based on the Trinity—the father, son and holy spirit. The magi gave Christ three gifts, the devil tempted him three times, and he rose from the dead after three days. Even the Christian universe is traditionally seen as having three expressions: the upper world of heaven, the middle world of Earth, and the underworld of hell…The Greeks were also particularly fond of the number: there were three Fates, three Graces, three Gorgons and three Furies. There were three brothers who ruled over three realms: Zeus, Hades and Poseidon. Artemis…is often seen as a triple goddess, a unity of the divine huntress, the Moon goddess and the goddess of the underworld… the rest of the world’s religions follow a similar pattern: the Sumerian Goddess Inanna is remembered for having spent three days and nights in the underworld. There are three main gods in Hinduism: Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, and Shiva the Destroyer. Yggdrasil, the sacred tree of life in the Norse religion, has three roots under which are three sacred wells——not to mention how often the number shows up in the world’s imagery. The triskelion, a three-legged spiral, can be found on items dating back more than six thousand years. The Borromean rings are a centuries-old symbol of unity made up of three interlacing circles. The Valknut rune of Odin——consisting of three interlocking triangles, stood for his power. Even the old superstition of not walking underneath a ladder stems from an ancient Egyptian belief that one should not “break a triangle’. The geometry of the number three was seen as being complete and perfect, and therefore not to be disturbed—”
“When shall we three meet again?” he quoted. “In thunder, lightning, or in rain? When the hurly-burly’s done, when the battle’s lost and won.”
Today is supposed to celebrate women around the world… And it’s a tough time to be a woman but hopefully we can make it a better world for our daughters… I have a dream of a world where women don’t have to work twice as hard for equal pay, where paternity leave is as common as maternity leave, and where women are celebrated for the fact that they give life and aren’t told that math and science are too hard to worry their pretty little heads about. A world where people look back in amazement that in 2018 1 in 6 women have survived an attempted or completed rape in their lifetimes… And to honor all that I hope you watch one of my idols and a person who inspires me…
https://youtu.be/ffb_5X59_DA
If you don’t have the time to hear it live maybe the transcript will speak to you
I am a nasty woman.
I’m not as nasty as a man who looks like he bathes in Cheeto dust. A man whose words are a distract to America; Electoral College-sanctioned hate speech contaminating this national anthem.
I am not as nasty as Confederate flags being tattooed across my city. Maybe the South actually is gonna rise again; maybe for some it never really fell. Blacks are still in shackles and graves just for being Black. Slavery has been re-interpreted as the prison system in front of people who see melanin as animal skin.
I am not as nasty as a swastika painted on a pride flag. And I didn’t know devils could be resurrected, but I feel Hitler in these streets—a mustache traded for a toupee; Nazis re-named the cabinet; electro-conversion therapy the new gas chambers, shaming the gay out of America turning rainbows into suicide notes.
I am not as nasty as racism, fraud, conflict of interest, homophobia, sexual assault, transphobia, white supremacy, misogyny, ignorance, white privilege.
I’m not as nasty as using little girls like Pokémon before their bodies have even developed.
I am not as nasty as your own daughter being your favorite sex symbol—like your wet dreams infused with your own genes.
But yah, I am a nasty woman?!
A loud vulgar, proud woman.
I’m not nasty like the combo of Trump and Pence being served up to me in my voting booth.
I’m nasty like the battles my grandmothers fought to get me into that voting booth.
I’m nasty like the fight for wage equality. Scarlett Johansson: Why were the famous actors paid less than half of what the male actors earned last year?
See, even when we do go into higher paying jobs our wages are still cut with blades, sharpened by testosterone. Why is the work of a Black woman and a Hispanic woman worth only 63 and 54 cents of a white man’s privileged daughter?
This is not a feminist myth. This is inequality.
So we are not here to be debunked. We are here to be respected. We are here to be nasty.
I am nasty like the blood stains on my bed sheets. We don’t actually choose if and when to have our periods. Believe me, if we could, some of us would. We don’t like throwing away our favorite pairs of underpants. Tell me, why are tampons and pads still taxed when Viagra and Rogaine are not? Is your erection really more than protecting the sacred messy part of my womanhood? Is the blood stain on my jeans more embarrassing than the thinning of your hair?
I know it is hard to look at your own entitlement and privilege. You may be afraid of the truth. I am unafraid to be honest. It may sound petty bringing up a few extra cents. It adds up to the pile of change I have yet to see in my country.
I can’t see. My eyes are too busy praying to my feet hoping you don’t mistake eye contact for wanting physical contact. Half my life I have been zipping up my smile hoping you don’t think I wanna unzip your jeans.
I am unafraid to be nasty because I am nasty like Susan, Elizabeth, Eleanor, Amelia, Rosa, Gloria, Condoleezza, Sonia, Malala, Michelle, Hillary.
And our pussies ain’t for grabbin’. Therefore, reminding you that are balls are stronger than America’s ever will be. Our pussies are for our pleasure. They are for birthing new generations of filthy, vulgar, nasty, proud, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Sheikh—you name it—for new generations of nasty women. So if you [are] a nasty woman or love one who is, let me hear you say, “HELL YEAH!”
I am a survivor in many ways. I’m a survivor of rape and the fact that just typing those words made me pause and wonder how my friends will take that admission and feel even the slightest bit of shame, tells me how far we have yet to go…
Please help me make a world where women are celebrated… And one(ok it’s really two) last thing to inspire you… Have you heard Patrick Stewart speak on violence against women? I was a trekkie (always gonna love me some star trek the next generation) but I fell in love with the person behind my favorite captain when I heard his response at comicon take the time to watch these speeches… It is time well spent
– Hugo Vleck is a nasty creep and definitely deserved getting loved to pieces by dory
– why is it that the vamps working for mircea insist on being shitty to dory? Are they stupid? If they hurt her, mircea will fuck them up. If dory hasn’t torn them apart first. Idiots.
– “I’m tired, I’m hungry and I have a head in a bag. Do not fuck with me.” Probs the most iconic line in the series
– marlowe hate-crushing on dory is
– watching him try to puzzle out what dory’s secret is (how she’s able to escape after killing a master) is pretty great. Not being in on a secret is absolute torture for him.
– mircea: “radu mentioned that the two of you had grown…close.” Mircea: *aggressively avoids thinking about his daughter and a member of his vamp family doing the do*
– okay but I am wondering now how radu brought this up to mircea. Did he straight up tell him he walked in on LC teasing a naked and tied up dory? Probably not, right? He’d want to protect LC I assume. In any case, I’m sure the conversation was hysterical and I wish I could read it.
– I know LC had good reason to bail on dory but it’s still sad to see her feeling all rejected. Especially considering she’s not exactly one to get emotional about a love interest. ESPECIALLY a vampire.
– ah, Claire is back and she’s a motherfuckin dragon. Other than that, chapter two doesn’t do much. You find out dory has pretty officially adopted stinky as her own, and that she’s got a house full of trolls, but other than that…we’re basically just going to spend the next chapter or so catching up with Claire.
I SOOOO Love Dory! I love her kick ass no apologies style! I find the mind stuff to be a pretty big foreshadowing, but that’s just me! I love Radu…I love the way he blithely blunders along and somehow makes it all ok. It would suck to have this series without Radu’s kinda quirky super intelligent “director’s cut” explanations. I know that Mircea needs Louis Cesare and has taken advantage of the fact he’s family although that has also led to the isolation. I think that the reason Mircea put Louis Cesare and Dory together was to connect the two “red-headed stepchildren” and give them the support they wouldn’t take otherwise. I know how hard it must be for Mircea-to whom EVERYTHING revolves around family to stay out of Louis Cesare’s life so it follows the way it would have before Rasputin came along…
One of my favorite things about Dory is that we keep getting to see Marlowe ride the crazy train! And all the other underworld of vampires. It allows us to see the not so powerful and the fae…And it makes it so that we can really appreciate how far into the deep end Cassie plays! I mean shes surrounded by the Super old masters and the elite of the war mages and the Damn demon council.
I hate the fact that Claire isn’t recognizable at first…and I hate that we get to see Louis Cesare and Dory at odds. I hate that Louis Cesare has disappeared on Dory, but I love the fact that Dory puts the head on the letter opener…
So, here’s the thing. I am a reader. And with the advent of new technology, I can have my phone read to me while I do a gazillion other things…So, due to the fact that I had a speed reading class in high school and …well I consume books. And quickly. It makes Tuesdays my favorite day. And I have a lot of series I follow. So Karen Chance is one among the many for me. And at first I was Seriously mad at the delays and changing publication dates.
But in the last year, I have come to realize that my book’s are a coping mechanism. They give me something to hold on to. Something to talk about. Something to occupy the 60% of my brain that keeps screaming this can’t be my life. And to let me be somewhat calm, and positive. At least I’m not being chased by monsters, only creditors! And yes, I am a widow with two beautiful teenage daughters. Which means that I am scared to bring any man home because I am very careful about my blue eyed, blonde haired beautiful brilliant children are exposed to. And I had a great husband which means I am not willing to settle for anything else. So I read a lot of very explicit series cause that’s my only sexual release.
So I read Laurell K Hamilton and lots of others. But here’s the thing. We have to support our authors. The publishing business is hard. And they create these amazing worlds and characters we all.love. And for them the creation process is amazingly complex with first drafts and then edit after edit. Some people get really nasty about these amazing works of creation. And I understand that, too. I love the main characters in my books. They are like friends who I visit with every time I read the book. And I hate some of the things that happen. In a way even the violently negative feedback is a compliment to the author. But why should they keep spending 6-8 hours a day writing for us if we just bitch about it. Why do the work of edit after edit?
I am making a stand. Laurell K Hamilton won’t publish when her next book will be out or which series it will be. Why should she? Her fans will wail and whimper. If she just publishes it and tells us after the last draft is finalized, she gets to bypass all the people mad when she misses a date! And poor Karen Chance, who keeps trying to put out book 8-but the book is too long for paperback. And then there’s the other stuff she writes. Freebie’s that are hard work for her but taken as though they are due to the readers. Ever since Karen published Book 7, with delays, she has been working hard to give us a good book 8. And what do the readers do? Some of us go back and reread. Look for all the nuances we keep missing in the race to find out what happened. And then another group gets vocal-and trashes Karen Chance for missing publicized release dates. Rather than doing that, I’m doing the opposite.
I am going to support my favorite authors. I don’t care how long I have to wait for the next installment. I’m going to send them messages, asking questions about the books I have. I’m going to reread, and laugh and cry and scream and yell. I’m going to write new reviews, new FAQs, new posts. I’m going to do whatever the hell I can to make sure I get to know how the stories end. I will write petitions. I will beg, plead and cajole. I will help the next Kit Colbana book be made by sending money on Patreon. And I will appreciate the freebies, the alternate POV, the deleted scenes. I am doubly supportive of the authors I love who have prepublished schedules and put out surprise books too! I love Jenna Black and Lauren Dane and Seanan Mcguire and Kelley Armstrong and Christine Feehan. But I will keep on supporting everyone…
