No Anita Blake TV Series

scarletpeaches · Nov 26, 2009

I'd papercut everyone who posted in this thread with my Penguin Classics 99p copy of Jane Eyre, but it's bedtime, so BAI!

djf881 · Nov 26, 2009

Based on Wikipedia, every book uses a deus ex machina as the climax, which disgusts me even more than the fact that these books appear to be comprised primarily of werewolf pornography.

But, then again, her entire series seems to be hovering in the top 10k sellers in Amazon, which is fantastic for books that are 20 years old. She outsells pretty much everything I like.

So she probably wins the argument.

Deleted member 42 · Nov 26, 2009

djf881 said:
Based on Wikipedia, every book uses a deus ex machina as the climax, which disgusts me even more than the fact that these books appear to be comprised primarily of werewolf pornography.

OY!

You're engaging in scatosyntheton.

Read the book(s)--wikipedia is not exactly reliable.

If you're curious, you can right now download the first book in the Merry Gentry series for free, legally here. It's called A Kiss Of Shadows, and it actually had some promise in terms of deal with fey as fey.

And clearly, many folk like the books lots.

Gillhoughly · Nov 27, 2009

Hand to my heart, I did NOT go looking for this.

I was clearing out my writing room and buried in a pile of Booklovers was an April 2008 Writer's Digest that had a LKH interview. I never buy WD, but it had articles on genre fiction that required closer study, and there she was on the cover.

Here's something hilariously germane to this thread:

Q: You've said you'd love to see Anita Blake in a movie, but you're worried about the prospect of selling the film rights. Have you sold the film rights?

LKH: No. I've reached that magic point where they can't wave enough money at me to make it worthwhile to hand my baby over. I've been approached over the years, and a lot of times people help me say no by the initial conversation. You go to these movies that were based on a book and you just can't imagine how they got from point A to point B. But having said that, the more I look at the process, it's a very difficult thing to take a book and make it into a movie, because a movie script is the size of a novella. Most modern American novels are five times that. How do you cut it down and have it still make sense? It's an art form in itself.

Apparently she changed her mind about handing over her "baby," because one year later her publicist announces on the LKH Amazon page that there would be a TV series. Fans weep with anticipation and make up ideal cast lists where Jensen Ackles would be awesome.

The anouncement was made on April 1st 2009. :Huh:

Nah. It couldn't have been a jo--nahhhh.

Meh, joke or not, that didn't work out and she's not even a little disappointed. And she shouldn't be! UF pioneers don't give in to that kind of thing.

It must be wonderful to be in that "magic point" of not caring how much money they wave for your TV/movie rights, but I suppose sometime between one April and the next she changed her mind.

I've yet to get to that magic point, but then when it comes to MY work and Hollywood I've always been more than willing to sign a movie or TV deal.

I take it as a given that they'd screw things up, but pay me money, and I won't care. Good or bad, I would have C-A-S-H and my book sales will go through the roof.

In fact, I told my agent out there, "Dude, I've been waiting my whole life to sell out to Hollywood!"

He replied, "Hey, it's not selling out. It's cashing in."

Maybe I should play harder-to-get.

As for turning a big fat book into a film script, Peter Jackson managed to do it rather well with the Lord of the Rings.

And I thought the script for Jaws was miles better than the potboiler Benchley book. But then I got Peter Benchley mixed up with humorist Robert Benchley, so that may be why I didn't like the book.

As for the AB books, for the latter ones just cut the sex scenes and there might be 5 minutes of actual plot a skilled script writer can pad to 40 minutes of TV time--or 90 minutes feature film time.

Explosions. Car chases and explosions. Those always work.

Deleted member 42 · Nov 27, 2009

Gillhoughly said:
Apparently she changed her mind about handing over her "baby," because one year later her publicist announces on the LKH Amazon page that there would be a TV series.

I get that books = babies to writers; heck etymologically "plagiarism" is "kidnapper."

But selling the story to a production company doesn't go back in time and change the book!

geardrops · Nov 27, 2009

In reply to Shadow Ferret and anybody else who thinks that TV/movies ruins books...

Yeah, true. But they're extended commercials for your work. Without fail, they sell books. By the truckloads.

Gillhoughly · Nov 27, 2009

Absolutely yes, dempsey!

When Blatty's The Exorcist hit big as a bestseller, then a film, the bookstores were FLOODED with black cover horror titles. I was pretty young, but it made an impression. A film deal = money, sales, and more money.

When a movie is made based on an Agatha Christie book, however much the purists groaned, the mystery racks displayed shiny fresh editions of her old titles.

This year alone, with the Twi-films out, writers who have YA vamp titles are reaping huge sales. When the readers run out of Meyer's books they look for others.

On another board LKH is often recommended to them, but strangely, the fans recommending them are firm about "don't bother reading past book six." Or "The first six are good, don't bother with the rest."

So is it in book seven that Anita's crotch took over the keyboard?

Deleted member 42 · Nov 27, 2009

Gillhoughly said:
So is it in book seven that Anita's crotch took over the keyboard?

I was reviewing them for a site right up to book ten; I was bribed with chocolate after book six.

They turned into a series of vignettes at around book 8. By Book 11 (Incubus Dreams), I wrote this--and I was not writing about an ARC or galley; this was the hardcover:

me from elsewhere said:
This was an extremely difficult book to read. It might be a good book, but it's too annoying to read and enjoy in its raw state; the clumsy editing is enough to violate the tacit trust a reader needs to have in an author. There's an editing error on almost every single page, and that's a problem with the publisher, not the writer.

Now, I've noticed that Hamilton's books are poorly copy edited in general. I expect things like "alright" for "all right," and "midmorning" for "mid morning," but in this book we have, more than once, diety for deity, ardeur spelled in a number of interesting ways, Damian as Domain, and Damain, sauve for suave, put for but (a dyslexic marker, which makes me wonder), libility for liability, particliar for particular, hoptial for hospital, retch and wretch are confused (and, like discreet and discrete, not for the first time in one of Hamilton's books), and a cornucopia of continuity errors, and contradictions of facts presented in previous books.

The grammar is, well . . . let's just say I'm used to reading the work of under prepared freshmen, and even they aren't this bad. Even the grammar and style checker in Microsoft Word will catch its/it's and you're/your, and would of/would have errors. Was there an editor involved? I'm talking about comma splices, and not just in dialogue, commas sprinkled as if they were a seasoning, apostrophes in plurals, and not in possessives, sentence fragments, and Hamilton's long-term problems with irregular verbs, especially lay and lie. We'll skip the creative use of French and German.

Incubus Dreams desperately needs a decent line editor--Hamilton's developed a number of repetitive nervous twitches in her writing, including repeating descriptions verbatim (not only from previous books, but repeating them in this book) like frequently repeating that only new vampires flash fang. Limit this kind of reference to once per book--that way, you clue in new readers, but you don't annoy them. I'd guess that at least 25% of this book could, and should, have been cut. A good editor could have really made something interesting out of Incubus Dreams. Right now, it's a mess.

If I hadn't seen this kind of sloppy editing and writing in previous books, I'd blame overly rapid typesetting and a rush to market, but this is just too awful to find any excuse for it, even that one. And I can't even hope that the errors will be corrected in the paperback, based on previous books.

I won't be reading any more.

kaitie · Nov 27, 2009

And you didn't even touch on the plot and character issues.

It isn't quite right to say they turned porn at book six. She started to introduce some of the elements at that point, but for the most part they weren't that bad and the plot still focused on other issues. Obsidian Butterfly was pretty good in its own right, mostly for the focus on Edward, who was always one of the more interesting characters in the books.

There is a drastic change in book 10 however, that I can't begin to explain. The number of issues that start becoming huge, glaring problems in that book would blow your mind. I seriously couldn't believe the same person had written it. Honest.

I was actually looking forward to a series in a way, because I hoped they'd be able to take the early Anita and basically retell the story such that the later issues never came into play. So in that sense, this is a little disappointing.

Deleted member 42 · Nov 27, 2009

kaitie said:
And you didn't even touch on the plot and character issues. .

Honestly, I felt like I was reading a rough draft; the problems with the text were so huge that I couldn't see the plot--and the story wasn't strong enough to get me to move past the barbarities of the text.

I think she's got talent. I think her publisher has not done well by her, nor has success been kind to her.

kaitie · Nov 28, 2009

I've wondered before if she simply had too much going on at once. I remember reading about the time that her books went way south (haha, pun!) that she had just had a baby after a rough pregnancy and that it was the first thing she'd written without her writer's group. I don't remember where I saw that so it might not have been reliable. The thing is...I'd give her the benefit of the doubt if it wasn't for messages she leaves like this. I want to believe that she's just being stretched too far and has no idea what she's doing anymore, but it's hard sometimes when reading the statements she makes.

Cyia · Nov 28, 2009

Gillhoughly said:
Apparently she changed her mind about handing over her "baby," because one year later her publicist announces on the LKH Amazon page that there would be a TV series.

My guess is that Twilight blew her illusion of market supremacy. If she had really deluded herself into thinking that her books were the end all - be all of vampire fiction, seeing Edward on a Doritos bag must have been a world changer. (April sounds about right for when the merchandise aisle hit Wal-Mart, complete with an endless loop of the DVD extras.)

She may have been wondering why no one was clamoring for team vampire vs. team werewolf with her book, and ignoring that in her universe they, um, play together regularly.

And as far as fans making dream casts, from hard core vamp people I know, The Black Dagger Brotherhood is higher on their list of "want to see" than Anita.

Saskatoonistan · Nov 28, 2009

Cyia said:
My guess is that Twilight blew her illusion of market supremacy. If she had really deluded herself into thinking that her books were the end all - be all of vampire fiction, seeing Edward on a Doritos bag must have been a world changer.

Who has more money anyway-LKH or Meyer? (I'm not throwing J.K. Rowling into the equation because I suspect she has more money than the Vatican.)

Also... I would just kill to read a darned scary vampire novel, you know? No orgies or anything - something creepy like Salem's Lot.

Kathleen42 · Nov 28, 2009

Saskatoonistan said:
Who has more money anyway-LKH or Meyer? (I'm not throwing J.K. Rowling into the equation because I suspect she has more money than the Vatican.)

I think it's safe to say that both have more money than I'll ever make

Cyia · Nov 28, 2009

Even if they're on par, it took LKH 18 books to do what Smeyer did in 4.

Saskatoonistan · Nov 28, 2009

Cyia said:
Even if they're on par, it took LKH 18 books to do what Smeyer did in 4.

True. Who knows? Maybe LKH will start writing YA stuff.

Cyia · Nov 28, 2009

Saskatoonistan said:
True. Who knows? Maybe LKH will start writing YA stuff.

Now you've got images of bad Edward/Bella/Jake fanfic burned into the back of my retinas.

kaitie · Nov 28, 2009

Do her books still actually sell well? I mean obviously she's still a bestseller, but is this the kind of best seller where she used to sell a million and now she sells 500k? I guess it's probably impossible to know that sort of thing, but I've wondered often. I read the reviews on Amazon, and the consensus seems to lean so heavily in the category of, "I'm never reading another one" that it's almost hard to believe that they're selling better now than they once were. Particularly with things like Twilight and True Blood on the market.

Cyia · Nov 28, 2009

Google-fu yields:

There are now more than 6 million copies of Anita in print worldwide ...

So, if that's all the books together, it's nothing compared to Twilight.

Saskatoonistan · Nov 28, 2009

kaitie said:
I read the reviews on Amazon, and the consensus seems to lean so heavily in the category of, "I'm never reading another one" that it's almost hard to believe that they're selling better now than they once were.

Well there's always the "it's like watching a train wreck - I have to read the next one to see if Anita peddles her ass on third avenue or opens a swingers club or something" market.

kaitie · Nov 28, 2009

There are probably also people who want to read just in case they finally got better again, but really, how many times would you need to get burned to figure out it's time to quit?

scarletpeaches · Nov 28, 2009

Any time I get the urge to buy an AB book to feel superior I just read LKH's blog, count the typos and that gives me my 'smug fix'.

Cyia · Nov 28, 2009

Saskatoonistan said:
Well there's always the "it's like watching a train wreck - I have to read the next one to see if Anita peddles her ass on third avenue or opens a swingers club or something" market.

I think once the pedophilia storyline was publicized after Skin Trade hit the shelves, the train was officially wrecked.

I haven't read it, but apparently, Anita has an encounter with an underaged (teenage, but still not legal) boy... but it's "not her fault" because she's "forced" to do it or die.

This was one of those "If you don't like it, you're a prude" moments on her blog.

scarletpeaches · Nov 28, 2009

What age are we talking, though?

I've noticed Americans seem to be all "

" about supposedly-underage sex but here, for instance, the age of consent is 16, so 'sex with a teen' is not, not, not paedophilia.

It amazes me that crossing the Atlantic and doing the same thing over there would make one a criminal for something that doesn't raise an eyebrow back home.

Saskatoonistan · Nov 28, 2009

Cyia said:
I think once the pedophilia storyline was publicized after Skin Trade hit the shelves, the train was officially wrecked.

I haven't read it, but apparently, Anita has an encounter with an underaged (teenage, but still not legal) boy... but it's "not her fault" because she's "forced" to do it or die.

This was one of those "If you don't like it, you're a prude" moments on her blog.

So does Anita actually kill vampires anymore or just screw pretty much everything that moves?

No Anita Blake TV Series

AW Addict

Deleted member 42

Grumpy writer and editor

Deleted member 42

Good thing I like my day job

Grumpy writer and editor

Deleted member 42

With great power comes

Deleted member 42

With great power comes

Rewriting My Destiny

Still the wrong side of Saskatoon

crushing on fictional characters

Rewriting My Destiny

Still the wrong side of Saskatoon

Rewriting My Destiny

With great power comes

Rewriting My Destiny

Still the wrong side of Saskatoon

With great power comes

Rewriting My Destiny

Still the wrong side of Saskatoon