Laurell Hamilton is Spider Robinson

[dsrtao]

http://blog.laurellkhamilton.org/2006/12/dear-negative-reader.html

(gakked from Jonquil)

Synopsis: LKH has jumped the shark personally and is now one with Mercedes Lackey, Spider Robinson, and probably The Attack of the R*ck*ids guy. And she's definitely picking up audience-management advice from Anne Rice.

Comments

[n5red.livejournal.com]

Yeah, her earlier books were entertaining. Now they have chapter after chapter of explicit sex. I thought the idea was to write porn (under another name) to develop one's writing skills and then go to writing real books.

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

Dear Laurell Hamilton,

The problem with your books is not the text, it is not the sex, it is not that your readers are all so shocked and horrified.

At least in this reader's case, it is simply that I am bored. You have mis-plotted your stories until they are too complicated for you to manage, and your characters simply fuck. Sure, they fuck in interesting ways, and they emote like a lonely 17 year old boy.

Gone is the wish-fulfillment, gone is the novelty. Gone are the characterizations that advance an interesting story.

You bore me. When people who still read your stories tell me they have become interesting, I'll read them again.

[liamstliam.livejournal.com]

I think an author oughta pay a little more attention.

Maybe she's convinced herself the naysayers are a really small minority. I disagree.

I just feel sorta betrayed by where she went with the series.

I also thought it was tacky to combine that response with a plug for the new book.

[jenwrites.livejournal.com]

Oh, that was too entertaining to read.

For the record, I hated the first book in the series with such a firey passion that I haven't read another thing of hers since. It was so rife with craft errors that it left me actively angry.

Say, are their links to the other authors' meltdowns that you mention above? And dare I ask what name lurks under those asterisks?

[dsrtao]

http://rockoids.com is not a hoax, and the author is entirely serious.

Spider Robinson's disease is an inability to let anything bad happen to a character he likes, which includes bringing them back from the dead, retconning a character's entire tragic motivation, and overusing end-of-the-world scenarios stopped
at the last instant by the power of love.

Anne Rice <A href="http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA458094.html>melted down on Amazon in 2004</a>. Mercedes Lackey... um. A good thread starts here: http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.written/browse_frm/thread/c50f33b204ce6a9e/ec9c036ea894c858?tvc=1&q=1141317632.412526.118670%40j33g2000cwa.googlegroups.com&hl=en#ec9c036ea894c858

[jenwrites.livejournal.com]

Right, I remember the Anne Rice thing. Too funny! As for the rest, I'll squirrel them away for when I need a little schadenfreude.

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

I'm ignorant of the R*ck*ids guy -- what are the missing vowels?

More to your point, I sympathize. I used to LOVE Spider Robinson. There are other series which have likewise jumped the shark, which I loved. *melancholy sigh*

[dsrtao]

See my reply to Jen.

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks. That does look ... scarily bad.