Cerulean Sins--24

Somehow we have managed to do in ten days what it took all of last month to do re: sales. Guys, I heart you forever.

Also, for those of you interested in the Self Publishing World, here's a heads up: Barnes and Noble has just changed their self-pub service from Pubit!--which is great, and I almost like them better than KDP--to Nook Press.

And while they did not require me to switch accounts, they used heavily pressured wording. Like "We're not phasing this out YET but you might want to move over there before we do."

Yeah. I'm side-eyeing them pretty hard right now. They have made promises of lots of shiny tools, which I have yet to actually see or explore because apparently doing anything to any of my current books will utterly bork them. It could be good, it could be bad, if it is bad you can bet your ass the Self Pubber/author world will fucking explode, and I will probably participate because those are my books you (bleep).

The other thing I am side-eyeing at the moment is Motion Books. WTF is that you ask? This. This is Motion Books. Some of you may not know that I started art through comic books, and I do still have a very old (and scary bad) webcomic floating around on the interwebs. So I have never been simultaneously excited and terrified quite as much as I am by Motion Books. Excited because HOLY SHIT THAT IS AWESOME AND I COULD DO THAT WITH A BOOK I WANT THAT TOOL LIKE NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW, and terrified because who the fuck is Madefire and why do they not talk about terms and conditions and what rights you're giving to whom? 

As to why there was no chapter flog yesterday? I have a cold. And I had to do taxes. And I could do a cold and taxes, but I could not put Anita Blake on top of that crazy cake.

So yeah. Shitty book time.

Anita is dreaming about Belle Morte.

...Anita has spent the last four (five?) chapters either passing out, passed out, in the process of moving from one faint to another, or waking up from a previous faint.

I will now be investing all of my money in developing a cure for Plot Induced Narcolepsy. Also, we all need to thank our lucky stars that LKH does not employ phonetic accents, because Belle Morte (...I spell that Bella every single time. So instead of the gorgeous goddess LKH obviously wants us to see, I'm visualizing a blinky, constipated Kirstin Stewart. You're welcome.) cues us in immediately that she is French. Via "ma petite" and not, thank god, by saying "zee" instead of "the" and "oh-la-la" every ten minutes.

Hey, we have to take the positives we can get.

So we get the usual new character pissing contest, and because Anita has no gun in her dream world it is about wheither or not she's going to sit next to Belle. And some of the details in this chapter are weird.

“No,” I said. It seemed like I should have been saying more, but I couldn’t think with her sitting there wrapped in candlelight, a bowl of old-fashioned roses on the table by her elbow. The roses were her rose, created and named for her centuries ago.

1. Anita, you go out of your way to make it clear you are not girly. You do not garden. You kill things. How the fuck do you know if a rose is "old fashioned"?

2. Why are we fixated on the roses as a critical detail? How about the embroidery on her dress? Jewelry? How she's got her hair done? These are all things that can indicate something about a character.

3. HOW THE FUCK DO YOU KNOW THESE ROSES WERE CREATED AND MADE JUST FOR THE CENTURIES OLD KILLER VAMPIRE WHEN THOSE ROSES WERE CREATED CENTURIES AGO?!? Why are you dropping into an omnecient POV for fucking stage props? 

 Also, I am now picturing the roses in the bowl as a rose salad. With ranch. You're welcome.

Belle stands. Apparently this gets Anita all sexed up because she immediately starts using words like "tightened" and gets a high pulse rate.

Anita freaks out and runs down a hallway full of people having graphic sex in the shadows. Belle demands that she be fed. Anita says "fuck you" and Belle shifts from Bella Swan to Jane and says "pain". And I'm not kidding:

“I offer you my hand, come, take it, and it will be pleasure beyond your dreams. Refuse me  .  .  .” she motioned, and that one small movement seemed to take in all the eager, leering faces. “It can be a dream, or a nightmare. The choice is yours.”

 I shook my head. “You don’t give choices, Belle, you never did.” 

“Then your choice is  .  .  . pain.”

One of my pet theories about vampire fiction is that Stephenie Meyer is an LKH fan. It'd make SO. MANY. THINGS. make sense again.

Anyway, Anita wakes up in bed with Nathanial, alone, and Belle Morte raises the Ardeur so that Anita now has to feed on Nathanial when he is already too weak to support her munchies. Belle is also half posessing Anita, and she REALLY likes how young Nathanial is.

Folks, if "young" is part of your sexy criteria, there is something wrong. Especially if you are under the age of thirty.

And then right before she jumps Nathanial's bones, Jason shows up.

It can only be what it is, folks. Anita Blake has to be rescued from her own sexual urges by a man. A man who, after ushering Nathanial out of the room, asks what he can do for Anita. And of course she says "sex". His reply?

His so-serious face split into a sudden grin. “I’ll take one for the team.”

You know, I managed to fall into a hellpit of bad fan-fiction the other day (it was all being mocked. It was great) and I just realized...there is not much difference between the self-fulfillment sex slave fantasies involving *sigh* Sonic and Naruto and *double sigh* My Little Pony, and the way Anita is now crawling across the bedcovers to get to Jason's Penis. And I don't mean that this is wish-fulfillment for a girl. I've had a couple incidents (thankfully years ago, when I was dealing with my SI issues and usually had a complicating factor like cold medicine in the equation) where I became so upset or overstimulated I did things I regret. And that's over and above the cutting issues. I cannot see this whole "lose control and have sex" thing being romantic to anybody. It's fucking terrifying. I do not understand why anybody would write this over and over and over and over and fucking over again and not have the heroine do SOMETHING to take control of her own damn body again.

And that doesn't even cover half the wrongness in this sex scene. Here's this gem:

He was smooth, the head wide and rounded, graceful, straight and fine, running slightly to the side, so that he nestled in the hollow of his own hip.

It took two read-throughs for me to realize she's writing about Jason's penis. And I have to say this: Laurel K. Hamilton writes sex scenes as if the man is a butcher carving a brand new T-bone out of the female's pelvis. And it is exactly that sexy.

And then they discuss how good Anita is in bed.

The boat bunny scene in Ghost is more respectful towards women. By the way, if you read that book and you just visualized that scene, I will send you brain bleach to make it go away.

This immediately segues to how small Jason's penis is compared to Jean Claude and Micah. I'd say that this is insecurity on his part, but Anita is the one who will soon have to install high traffic carpeting in her vagina.

THEN we move on to how orgasmic Asher's teeth are.

PLOT. THERE WAS PLOT A FEW PAGES AGO. It barely existed but it was THERE. CAN WE GO BACK TO PLOT NOW?

...I am literally skimming this chapter because it is now about who Anita loves the most and I really really, REALLY do not care. Because I know she loves Asher and Jean Claude and Damian and Micah and Nathanial and the other upteen million lovers in her future unconditionally. And because this is starting to sound like highschool. BUT YOU MUST LOVE MEEEEEEEEE NOW MEEEEEEEE!

 And of course it goes back to Richard. Because all roads lead back to Richard.

Laurel, I understand the need of having to work your issues out through your writing. JUST DON'T PUBLISH THAT SHIT, OKAY?

Oh, but it's not just Richard, and it's not just her long-gone fiancee that cause Anita to fear commitment. It's her mother. Yes. We have mommy issues now, too!

FINALLY, ANita goes off to take a shower.

The plot. It has not moved in four chapters.