Who is Laurell K Hamilton?
I keep seeing this name pop up all over the blogosphere, and not in a nice way too LOL. And, yes, I can Google her and find out, but it will be so much more fun if you guys give me the dirt on her LOL.
I hear she’s mental, crazy as a fifty cents watch, can’t write to save her life** and has the fan base from hell. How much of this is true and how much of it is based on urban tales?
Should I read her, or should I run from her books like a whore runs from holy water?
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I hear she’s mental, crazy as a fifty cents watch, can’t write to save her life** and has the fan base from hell. How much of this is true and how much of it is based on urban tales?
There are some authors who are pretty much confirmed Batcrap Crazy. Laurell K Hamilton is one of them. She married her fanclub president, created Micah and Jonathan after him, used Richard the werewolf as her therapy couch to indulge in her love-hate feelings for her ex-husband, and inserts so much of her own neuroses into Anita Blake while having a psychotically rude PA that spends her free time planting spies on other message boards to get “loyal fans” to flame non-fans of the authors.
Should I read her, or should I run from her books like a whore runs from holy water?
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Labels: paranormal oh joy
Oh yikes, I didn't know about this. Thanks Trollop LOL
I used to love her Anita Blake series, but stopped reading them after book 7. It just got weirder and longer. Anyway, I can't believe she's done all that! Mrs. Giggles is right, LKH is batcrap crazy.
7/15/2006 07:51:00 PM
Oh my god that lady sounds craaazyy =P but her books seem interesting so I might give her a try and let you know if I like her style or not.
I'm starting to think authors should stay away from posting ANYTHING in the internet; some of them say way too much!
7/15/2006 08:13:00 PM
I've read her books and they're ok, nothing to write home about.
I like paranormals but hers are a little weird. I haven't read them in order and have skipped from one to another so that might be the reason I haven't gotten into the series that much.
Never visited her site before, and I'm thinking that was for the best.
Henrietta
7/15/2006 08:15:00 PM
Hmmm... I feel so out of the loop here, not knowing people were speculating about LKH being batty. So, no informed opinion, one way or the other there... I do own most of her books. The early ones seem to be written more carefully than the more recent ones, and the Anita Blake ones are now relegated to "when I can check it out from the library, without having to request it." I will point out that I always found Anita's blend of smugness and constant I'm-a-good-girl-so-I-don't-wanna-need-sex complex annoying. I do still like the Merry Gentry ones, though.
i would say, borrow one if you can, and like mental images of skinny pretty men with ridiculously long hair, bonus if you like the fantasy of sex with mulitple male partners. (I'm a no on the scrawny effeminates and a yes on the lots of kinky men.)
7/15/2006 08:21:00 PM
Oh, I agree with Renee. I too like the Merry Gentry books. The men are kinky LOL and they all have sex with Merry. :P I've yet to read her Anita series though.
7/15/2006 08:35:00 PM
LOL, she is crazy! I've never read Laurell Hamilton, but if she writes good books with kinky men, I don't care if she's a bit nutty. LOL. Which book should I start with?
7/15/2006 08:43:00 PM
Honestly? read the anita black series ONLY up until Narsissus in chains... then... if you feel like saying "this woman is crazier then a shit house rat" then read the other after it. It was a stunning series until she went all "how many people can anita get nasty with in each chapter."
Personally i like her marry gentry series, its dirty and nasty, and it was from the beginning....
But you gotta watch out. the woman thinks shes such a literary goddess she dosent use an editor...
Stella
7/15/2006 09:48:00 PM
Oh yes. Read only up until Narcissus. She used to write mysteries with good plots, interesting characters, great sexual tension and non-stop action. Now it's just soft porn. Ack.
7/15/2006 10:04:00 PM
I was a fan of Anita Blake through the first 4 books and then...these started out as romantic novels with interesting value twists, lots of action and great sex - now we have a character who whose whole purpose in life is to sleep with anything (and I do mean plant, animal or mineral) that comes along. What happened to hunting down the bad guys. The only bad guys in the last few novels are those Anita doesn't want to sleep with or who won't sleep with her. Even that might be OK, but the writing is boring and getting worse. Great series gone bad and getting even worse - shame on your Laurel.
7/15/2006 10:33:00 PM
I don't know anything about the state of her mental health, but I did read maybe half of the first book of the Anita Blake series and it was okay. But yeah, I did hear about the later books where the plot is just Anita having sex with everyone...can't say that's my type of story.
7/15/2006 10:40:00 PM
I've only read two Anita books and i thought they were sexy and edgy. I liked them really. And she never had sex with anything but people there LOL.
Sex with plants? Animals? OMG And how could you have sex with a mineral? Very curious... :P
7/15/2006 11:01:00 PM
Trollop,
You, babe, are a shameless hussy!!!
7/15/2006 11:15:00 PM
I was obsessed with Hamilton's Anita Blake series in high school, but gave up on the series after Obsidian Butterfly. I'd recommend The Laughing Corpse to you. It's the second book in the series and one of my favorites. There's blood, guts, zombies, and a great suspense plot going on. And no worries about Anita boinking every guy in St. Louis. Anita doesn't even have sex until the Killing Dance which is the... 6th book in the series? And from what I hear, things don't start getting porn like until Narcissus in Chains or Cerulean Sins.
7/15/2006 11:20:00 PM
I'm really upset that Anita, a heroine I love, turned into a horny moron. I loved the first few books in the series, but then the writing became sloppy and lazy. Also the phrase "sleeping/cuddling/laying around like a pile of puppies" appears now in all her books. It drives me nuts!
7/15/2006 11:32:00 PM
I haven't enjoyed reading the Anita Blake books since before Obsidian Butterfly. Each book used to have a plot and had more to it than sex and whining, and Anita Blake came across as strong and capable rather than as petulant and irritable. Erotic writing is one thing, but the recent ones sounds as though LKH was being paid for each page on which her characters discuss or have sex. And it isn't particularly interesting sex. I used to look forward to different characters being introduced, but recently so many of them have been one-dimensional and seem to serve only as prospective partners for AB. If people want to read poorly-written porn, there's plenty for free on the internet.
7/16/2006 12:06:00 AM
Never heard of her Trollop. I like Erotica and tons of sex in my romance books, but no over the top absurdities like sex with puppies. That's plain sick and twisted. Are romance authors even allowed to publish things like that?
7/16/2006 11:37:00 AM
"sleeping/cuddling/laying around like a pile of puppies"
Ladybug, LOL that would drive me nuts too! Funny though. :P
I've yet to read LKH. But after all of this, I'm not sure I want to read her books anymore.
7/16/2006 12:49:00 PM
Aw, guys. LOLLOL. I have only begun to read one of her books and it didn't grab me. The first in the line of that whole Guilty Pleasures thing. However, I'm not much for intricate worlds and stuff. I just want to relax when I read and complex worlds are too much for my pea brain.LOL
Also, I met her at a convention two years ago. Didn't know she was who she was, but we chatted on the elevator. Me and her and her bodyguard who was really CUTE. LMAO. She was a super nice woman, and not at all CRAZY.
I don't know a whole lot of big names in the biz, so that it was her came as a surprise to me. Course, I also smoked next to Nora Roberts and didn't know it either. Tee hee.
Anyway, point is, she was sweet and chatty and not at all nuts--even if some are angry that her books have gone down a path they don't like. She does have some crazy rabid fans who get upset when she doesn't do what they want with her characters. Hence, the bodyguard. I keep hearing she's a nut, but I sure didn't see it when we met. She was gracious and very friendly and had a line longer than a country mile at the book signing.
So, if you're into a more complex, meaty read--she's the girl for you :)
Dakota :)
7/16/2006 01:09:00 PM
I hate when a good romance series turns into a slut fest. While some of the earlier books are good, the later ones are so boring, repetitive and sleazy I start to really dislike the characters! Run like the wind from these books.
7/16/2006 01:09:00 PM
OMG LOL. I didn't know that.
Anyway, I like the AB series. I can see why some people don't agree with the way the series is heading, but I've enjoyed it all along. :) I also like her Merry Gentry books, as well. The style of her writing excites me and I want to know what will happen next to the characters and the events that complicate their lives.
7/16/2006 03:01:00 PM
I like the AB series; the whole series. I think anita has grown with each book and hasn't stayed a la "cardboard dummy" like Stephanie Plum has. Yes, she is having more sex, but it's hotter and spicier than ever.
People that don't like her, can simply stop reading her and shut their mouths about their personal tastes in books.
7/16/2006 04:01:00 PM
Yeah, VT, this is what I hear. I don't know that I will ever get being so angry with an author that a bodyguard needs to come into play, but she's a super NICE lady. it's a book, for crap's sake! not RL.
I agree with anon too--if you don't like the direction she's taking (which is why I hear some of her fans get nuts), then don't buy the books anymore. But to stalk her and sling angry arrows over it? You need to put your life back into persepctive if you're doing that. Again I say, it's a book. A BOOK. Not the lives of real people she's decided to toy with because she wants to see if she can mess with yer head. There's no reason to behave otherwise. However, I hear some of her fans do.
Sure, express your disappointment if that's how you feel, but don't get all crazy on her. If you're that lost in a made up world run! you're in too deep.
I don't know that I'll ever understand getting that deep into a book. A cause for good, sure, but again, a BOOK? I must be missing something much deeper in books these days. LOLLOL
7/16/2006 04:12:00 PM
LOLLOL--well, sure, babe, you can be angry over the turn out of a book. The question is, do you lose sleep over it? Are you so freaked by it that you're going to stalk JKR?
Now of course you aren't. Cuz yer semi-sane like me. LOLLOL
To inspire that kind of a fan base has to be both a blessing and a curse.
DC :)
7/16/2006 04:23:00 PM
er... does any one else find cyber romance land a little scary sometimes? The writers are all cross when readers don't get their muse (NB if I was going to have a muse he would be a strapping 6ft 4 lad with dark eyes and a body that was inspiring in itself :-P) and when readers do get their muse, they seem to go psyco about it. I mean body guards... for a WRITER! My God what is that?
I keep reading these author's behaving badly blogs and there endless replys and I'm just left a little bewildered.
oh and amused. There is nothing like watching a scrag fight with full on hair pulling :D!
7/16/2006 07:40:00 PM
Vicious Trollop,
I only say the truth, shut up if you don't know what you're talking about! LKH has no comparison. She is the best of the best when it comes to paranormal romances. You are the one who is insulting! None of you are fit to lick the floor she walks on.
Anita Blake RULES!
7/16/2006 11:24:00 PM
>>>I really hope you're not following LKH and her bodyguard and licking stuff they touch/walk/pee on.
Ohhh, didn't Dakota mention LKH's bodyguard is freakin dickin cute? LOL Hmm, he might be lick-worthy.. :P But ack, not his pee though nor the grounds he walks on. :/
7/16/2006 11:59:00 PM
OMG LMAO You Book Bitches are too funny!!!!!
Trollop, you really hit the mark on this one. Bull's eye. LOL
7/17/2006 01:22:00 AM
Yeah, I did, Harlot and he is and sheesh, why the heck are we now licking stuff? LOLLOL.
And yes, Anita Blake is a CHARACTER. She's not real.
DC :)
7/17/2006 01:52:00 AM
see what I mean, Cyber romance land verrrrry scarry.
7/17/2006 01:53:00 AM
LOLLOL--yeah, Tisty. I TOTALLY see what you mean.
I'm right there with ya and I write books. LOLLOL
Dakota :)
7/17/2006 02:10:00 AM
Hey Dakota,
Just ordered your book Whose Bride is she anyway?
GWB,
Well said, sometimes it's the fans who turn me off reading a new writer.
It's great to love a writers work but no real reason to be rude.
Angela
7/17/2006 09:48:00 AM
Hey, thanks, Angela! And ditto, ditto, ditto :)
Dakota :)
7/17/2006 11:58:00 AM
What a coincidence! I was thinking of asking around on the lists and boards I know for the dish on LKH. Particularly this Micah incarnation thing. But nobody here seems to know. Bummer...
As for the series, haven't read the books at all but I did stumble on a novella somewhere and as far as I can tell is was a ménage à trois then I think she had sex with one of the characters alone. Since I'd heard the rumors, I kept wondering if the entirety of her later books were like that. Not really a plot that I could tell...
And it's not just romance fans saying that (besides the rabid people, of course) but I stumbled across a paranormal review site and they pretty much said that her latest had no discernible plot, just lots of sex btw AB and the various males that gravitate around her.
I still want to know about the bf/dh she immortalized in her books, though.
7/17/2006 12:28:00 PM
LKH writes so much sex in her books because the publishers were uncomfortable with a woman writing in the first person about a woman having sex.
In the, what, 100 or so pages of Incubus Dreams I managed to get through, that's the distinct impression I got. That she was trying to piss somebody off.
When you write books to piss somebody off, they tend to be, well, bad books. Anyone who thinks the series is "erotica" doesn't really have a clue about what erotica is. I haven't read much of that genre, but what little I did read showed me that it ISN'T the same several paragraphs of sexual description, copied and pasted, with only the names and locations edited. Because really, that's all ID was.
The Anita Blake series is dead. The author killed it the second she introduced the whole "ardeur" device and proceeded to center everything around it. What could possibly be interesting about a heroine who literally has sex with everything with a penis?
I'm thinking in either the next book, or the book after, Anita will finally discover the "wonders" of lesbian sex. And finally, the series will finish circling the bowl and make it's final trip down the hopper.
LKH has decided to be an erotica author, for whatever reason. The problem is, she isn't any good at it. She's good at what the Anita Blake series used to be. Oh well, I guess being an imaginative, inventive writer of excellent fiction just got to be too hard.
7/17/2006 02:24:00 PM
LKH very well might have used her Anita series as therapy for her broken marriage and I say more power to her. And maybe she is crazy as a box of rocks! IMO, I love her and the characters she created. I didn't like Anita at first it took me 3 books to give a shit about the character, and I am a huge character reader. Was/Is there a lot of sex in her books. Hell yes, does there have to be, no. Do I enjoy it, hell yeah because it's fun to watch Anita wrestle with her own moral code. My opinion leave her craziness alone because right now it rocks MY world.
7/17/2006 09:34:00 PM
Violeteyeddreamz,
Hullo and welcome! LOL so sleepy. Anyway I read the first two AB books. I got them because I thought LKH writes like Anne Rice (I used to love her in high school). But of course, LKH is not AR, nor she's like Kenyon (whose DH books I love! verra sexy men LOL :P), and that's not bad.
Actually I liked those two AB books; they're different from the usual paranormal ones I read. Er, not sure which genre LKH's books actually fall into. Doesn't matter really. I don't read based from the genre. No matter what book it is, the only thing that matter is that, it's a well written book. Okay, I'm off the topic LOL. Anyway, that's good that you love the series. I think there's nothing better than books you truly enjoy. :)
7/18/2006 12:17:00 AM
Harlot, read JR Ward. I think you will like the BDB series.
7/18/2006 02:54:00 PM
CRAZY, RABID, FANThis is why the LKH mb has become the mess that it has.
I was an avid reader of the AB series, I paid for each hardback book, including Narcissus In Chains, Cerulean Sins, and Incubus Dreams.
I finally joined the mb after Narcissus In Chains, to try and ascertain what happened to the kick ass character I enjoyed. When voicing my concerns I was then given the label of Hater, Negative Bitch,and Sexually Repressed Prude by those who are seen as her positive fans, Jealous Bitch by the author, a Masochistic Idiot and Troll by her P/R person. Oh and least I forget, I was told "if you don't like it don't read it. One an idiotic statement, if I don't read it how will I know if I like it or not.
After a while I begin to bite back, and I bit hard.
Now don't get me wrong, I have read many authors whose main character begin one way, but changed their views because of different experiences throughout the serie. But the character in this book went from Anita to Sluhnita without any rhyme or reason and I simply wanted to find out why.
I begin reading her blogs and the correlation between what her protag was going through and what this author was going through was so damn similar, I begin to understand why a favored character was trashed and the books became a sexapolooza.
I had made up my mind that after Narcissus In Chains, that I would no longer support this author with my dollars, but she then promised that Anita would get the arduer(AllDoHer) under control, so I shelled out more money on Cerulean Sins, and the mystery, murder and mayhem, and smart mouth animating detecteive was back. Well I then shelled out more money for ID and got badly edited poorly written porn.
This is why I no longer pay for nor read this particularly authr.
She needs to stop being the Martyr, as well as other authors, whose books are being critiqued by long time readers. Accept that some did not buy the series for fuck me while I'm tight, or how to give oral sex without puking upon said penis.
Little violins playing my heart bleeds for you does not contain enough wood to make a raft to float on, but the cross they've nailed themselves upon is large enough and bouyant enough to stick their asses on a river in some uncharted territory to never be seen or heard from again.
7/18/2006 08:14:00 PM
I love LKH and her books. I don't know any writer who isn't eccentric. It's just part of the craft. Same goes for actors, actresses, and performers. All of them are a tad nutso.
It's all good.
7/20/2006 12:30:00 AM
I love all her books, although the latest are very different to the start of the series. I never go to her web site anymore as it is filled with negative, crazy, opinionated fans. I listened to an interview with her once and she was a bit odd, but I am interested in Anita and Merry, not Laurell and her idiosyncrasy's.
7/22/2006 02:14:00 AM
I just read my very first Laurell K. Hamilton books. I spent most of yesterday morning finishing it instead of packing to move...
I loved it. I found it absolutely enthralling. There has been no outright sex yet, nothing too crazy...just an intriguing world that the author throws you right into in a sink or swim fashion. I definitely recommend giving her a try...
7/28/2006 11:45:00 AM
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