Incubus Dreams--chapter 11--

It is the Fourth of July.

This time last year was ugly. This time last year I was not only considering suicide, I had a fucking plan. When you are researching methods, that is the time to go find help from a solid source, because you need it, my lovelies. This time last year I didn't just have no hope. I was doing the one thing in the universe I had told myself would end my career.

One year ago, TODAY, I committed to self-publishing, with the expectation that I would fail.

I have sold 382 books. I have sold over a book a day every day I have been self publishing.

I get to stand (well...sit) in front of you today, and I get to tell you this:

No matter who you are. What you do. What circumstances you are laboring under. What failures you face. What opposition you must overcome:

It.

Gets.

Better.

I may not be a successful writer. I may never be able to support myself with writing. Fuck, I may never be able to afford a real editor. But you know what? I'm here. I've accomplished this much. And you've helped me, and it is wonderful that you have. But that's beyond the point.

If you ever start feeling like you can't manage it, that the universe hates you, that nothing will ever go right, that God does not exist, I want you to take five minutes and think about this: Last year, I'd given up. This year, I get to make plans for something awesome.

Whatever it is you've decided you can't do, do it. Commit to doing it today. Whatever it is. Do it.

In fact, let's all come back here next year and tell each other how much better this year is than last year. Okay? Okay.

...I have to review this stupid book, don't I?

*goes and gets another beer*

Chapter Eleven opens with several paragraphs about how leopards can see better in your average living room than humans. This is played for erotic overtones.

I need something stronger than beer.

I'm going to take a break from Anita for a sec and look at where all my other books are at chapter Eleven.

Hunger Games; Katniss is IN THE GAMES

Sagittarius Whorl: THE BOOK IS OVER (It's by Julian May. The first book in the series is something like Orion's Arm. Go read it. Now.)

Fight Club: Look, the first rule of Fight Club is that you do not talk about fight club. But it involves cooking Marla's mother.

Bone Crossed (Mercy Thompson): Mercy has been kidnapped by (SPOILER) and now must rescue (SPOILER) from (SPOILER) before (THE SPOILER SPOILER-VERBS THE SPOILER)

John Dies at the End:

Read this book. Seriously. You will never sleep again but it will make you laugh while it traumatizes you.

DO YOU SEE THE POINT I AM TRYING TO MAKE HERE?

This is, I shit you not, the first character development related paragraph in this chapter:

There was a vase in the middle of the table. Jean-Claude had sent me a dozen white roses a week after we started dating. Once we had sex, he’d added one red rose, so it was actually thirteen. One red rose like a spot of blood in a sea of white roses and white baby’s breath. It certainly made a statement.

Because it's like deflowering a virgin. Gag me.

So now Anita has to decide: does she feed off Micah or Nathanial?

It's time for me to admit/repeat something: I fucking hate sex scenes in novels. I can count on ONE HAND the number of sex scenes I've read that I've actively like. Sex takes a very large chunk of book and makes it absolutely worthless. A sex scene in a book is like having a benign tumor. It's not hurting anything directly, but it's taking up space and feeding off things that actually have purpose. There are people who like sex in books. More power to you. I would much rather be reading about the knights storming the castle than find out how many times the prince stormed the princess's gates, if you know what I mean.

This scene would have meaning for me if there were an actual struggle here. Anita struggling for humanity, Nate struggling for a romantic relationship. There is not. Anita has a choice between Nate and Micah, and having to make it would require her indicating a preference, or at least a fondness, or at very bottom minimum, a choice. She can choose Micah of her own free will, which will signal to Nate that their relationship is doomed and he'd better disconnect and find somebody who isn't an abusive waste of skin and sin, or she can choose Nate and decide that, fuck it, she wants this relationship anyway.

Instead, LKH chickens out.

See, a wolf calls. There's an emergency. Oh, yeah, it's something they can handle. But see, there's this other emergency that nobody can handle because of this first emergency and that means that Micah has to go drive down to Random Bar because Random Werewolf drank too much and basically Anita has to fuck Nate because she's got no choice whatsoever now.

I do not find this to be empowering. Irritating yes. Empowering, no. See, empowering looks like this:

I'm using this gif ever second I can. This was the coolest moment of THIS ENTIRE YEAR.

Having your choices of potential sex partner be reduced by chance so that you don't have to make a morally difficult decision? Yeah. NO. In the "Strong Female Character" Olympics, I think we're playing a game of "one of these things just doesn't belong here" and that Anita just lost to the good senator from San Antonio.

See, Anita can't leave right now because she HAS to feed the Ardeur. Which means Micah has to go. Which means Anita now HAS to sleep with Nate, the guy who is head over heels in love with her. Which means that Anita now gets to avoid having to make a decision RE: Nate, but she still gets to have sex with him.

And then Damian shows up.

Damian is Anita's vampire servant. What, exactly, that means is never fully explained. She got him by rolling his mind with her necromancer skills, and now he's tied to her forever. Basically, she gets to override his free will whenever she wants.

You know, not even GOD gets to do that. LKH has officially made her main character bigger than God.

We find out a little bit about a new club of JC's called "Danse Macabre". Apparently you get to dance with vampires there. And then go home again. Big whoop. Can we move on?

...apparently not for two whole Kindle pages. Great.

We have a debate, because apparently Anita allowed him to find not-Anita lovers, but he has nowhere to bring them, so he's asking Anita for his own room.

...Anita needs to invest in a trailer park. Not kidding. Every guy could have his own place, and she wouldn't have to juggle this kind of shit.

OH RIGHT. DO SOMETHING ANITA. DOOOOOOO SOMETHING.

And then apparently Anita steals Damian's calm, so we have to have a confrontation about that.

It accomplishes nothing. Anita tells Damian to leave and Nate comes in. The arduer rises.

End chapter.

Next chapter.

...Why does LKH have to compare everything in sex to food? I'd let it go if it were just this one scene, but EVERYTHING is "Flavor" this and "Candy/chocolate/cupcake" that. I'm almost ready to say the woman has a serious vore fetish.

I knew that one hunger could be turned into another, but until that moment, where I could almost taste his lips on mine, I hadn’t realized that there would come a point where something must be fed.

BULL. FUCKING. SHIT.

This was covered in Narcissus in Chains. It was covered in Cerulean Sins. YOU FEED ON FOOD OR YOU FEED ON SEX. YOU KNOW FUCKING GODDAMNED WELL HOW THIS WORKS BY NOW.

And then we start eating a deer? Blog-Readers, I can copy-paste this shit, but in reality, you need to be reading along with me to know how seriously WTF this transition was. We go from sexing up Nate to hunting, killing and eating a deer.

What the fuck am I reading.

Anita comes back to herself, screaming. I have to assume that she and Nate are making out, and all of a sudden she just starts randomly screaming for no discernable reason.

And then we find out that it's a shared hunt-vision with Richard.

STOP. BRINGING. UP. RICHARD.

And then Anita reaches out to Jean Claude for...um...reasons? And he's drinking from Jason's throat and that's about as much of THAT paragraph as I feel comfortable repeating.

Anita comes back to herself, and she's flat on her face, on the floor, with Nate holding her wrist and peering into her face like "OH MY GOD ARE YOU STILL ALIVE SHOULD I CALL NINE-ONE-ONE OR THE MORGUE?"

Romantic.

Anita licks her way up to a serious artery and bites kind of sort of hard, so that if she bit any harder she'd puncture the skin and Nate would bleed to death in her mouth.

 Seriously Romantic.

Richard ignores her. Jean Claude tells her to Feed or GTFO because:



Damian shows up. He gets a paragraph about how EMPTY he is inside. It contributes nothing to what we've just read.

And we get a flashback to Anita's mother?

And then it turns into Nate's fucked up childhood?

And it turns into a medival battle? And then a ship? Possibly of the same era?

...Did I just drop acid?

No, no, that's what the book says happened. Apparently that has something to do with the marks, as in Anita having them means that she's getting memories from everybody. And that doesn't make sense, but I just read something that makes me long for a David Lynch movie so that something can start making sense again.

...and then Peter Pan comes to the rescue. I am dead serious: 

 “Please, Anita, please, happy thoughts, fly for me, Anita, please, God, fly for me.”

That's Nate speaking, but we are literally going "Think happy thoughts" so that Anita doesn't re-traumatize them with their worst moments ever.

And of course Anita's happy moment is of her and Micah and Nate all sitting together and reading to each other. Because this confirms that they were just made for each other forever. It's not like Anita just lost control of her magic and...oh wait. YES IT IS.

DOES THIS POSSIBLY SERIOUS FLAW EVER GET ADDRESSED? FUCK NO.

She drags Damian down for a kiss and then FUCKING FINALLY, the chapter ends.

I feel safe saying that EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS BOOK IS GOING TO SUCK.