Precious and Fragile Things

To which my response was, "I have to wait until April?!" And yes, it is indeed Michael Stackpole. I can't wait!

Now back to my water-less existence (going to turn it back on this afternoon) and my sore throat and slightly runny nose.

So, Blizz did an Ask Me Anything on Reddit today for World of Warcraft. You may or may not have heard a girlish squeal when I checked out Wowhead's coverage of the questions.

How many novels are planned to be released over this expansion?

I'm glad you enjoyed the novel! Golden is a fantastic author who works very closely with us to do justice to the franchise.

If you're getting psyched about the storyline, I think you'll love the next novel which focuses on Vol'jin. Have you played the troll 1-10 intro experience? Vol'jin flat-out tells Garrosh he doesn't trust him and he'll stab him in the back the moment he sees an opportunity. The novel carries his story forward and really meshes in with the events of patch 5.1.

One of our ongoing goals is to make sure that the games and novels compliment each other, and that major lore events don't happen in the novels without some kind of representation in-game. This is a huge challenge for us!! But I think we're getting better at it.

OH MY GOD THEY'RE POINTING OUT THE ENTIRE REASON I FELL IN LOVE WITH VOL'JIN AND USING IT AS THE BASIS FOR A BOOK!!! Ahem, I believe this is my approximate reaction:





Also:


Please, please, please don't let it be Knaack writing it. Golden is better than him. Pleeeeease don't fuck this up. D:

Of course, even if it's Knaack, I'll be buying the damn book because he's my favorite racial leader for one of my favorite races. I'm that much of a fangirl.

I plan to read it while camping Magria/Ankha/Ban'tholos in Hyjal.

Yes, I'm going to be totally torturing myself twice over. I'm a masochist.

EDIT: I meant TIDES OF WAR, though I wouldn't mind a book all about the Throne of Tides instance.

Dear Laurell K. Hamilton,

I may be sexually frustrated, but it's not because I read your books and become jealous of what I read. In fact, I just finished Micah last night and I can say with confidence that the two chapters of sex was some of the most ridiculous, cringe-worthy "erotica" I have read in a long time. And I used to peruse sites like Nifty and Literotica for my smut and I liked it. (In my defense, I was young and a little sheltered.)

As a sexually liberated woman who believes all women should fuck whoever they want when they want, please understand when I say, "SHUT THE FUCK UP, YOU ARE NOT HELPING! SIT DOWN AND LISTEN TO WHAT WE'RE ACTUALLY SAYING!"

The problem is not that Anita is a woman. The problem is not that Anita fucks a lot of men. The problem is that your writing post Obsidian Butterfly, well, sucks. The sex is boring at best and laughingly bad at worst.

The people who criticize your writing have reasons for it. I don't mind sex in my books. In fact, I love sex in my books...when it's written well. Once upon a time, you were great at writing horror and making me want to sleep with a night light. Now, you're a joke and when I say I'm reading all the Anita Blake books, the words "I might be a masochist" quickly follow.

Please, go to Home Depot, buy yourself some lumber and use it to build a bridge so you can get over yourself.

Sincerely,

Jade

I've been reading Wizard's First Rule by Terry Goodkind. The book has been engaging, the plot moves at a good pace, and apart from some eye-rolling at the gender stereotyping when it comes to the Confessors (women are maternal, ergo they're always compassionate and empathetic; men are biologically incapable of learning these traits and are always power hungry and prone to abusing their power) and a lot of fantasy cliches (including the straight-up Gollum rip-off), I've been enjoying it.

And then...suddenly, femme domme leather S&M! Not. Even. Kidding.

If you've read the book, you should know I'm referring to the Mord-Sith. I am being totally serious when I say I nearly threw the book across the room and stopped reading entirely. The thing is, I would have been okay with it if there'd been any sort of warning that it was coming. Before this, any mentions of torture and abuse happened off-screen, or they were covered with a few sentences that weren't just descriptive enough to get the point across without being explicit. Then, Richard was captured by Deena--excuse me, Mistress Deena, and we are treated to roughly forty pages (not an exaggeration) of Richard being tortured brutally both physically and psychologically, and from their first "lesson," it's quite obvious Deena is a sadist and is getting off on Richard's pain. We're all but told, "Deena is getting wetter each time she makes Richard scream." The only good thing I can say about the scenes is that we at least got a fade to black before the actual sex (because of course, Richard is so awesome that Deena wants to make him her "mate").

Truthfully, it felt like I was an unwilling participant in Goodkind's sexual fantasy, and it left me feeling vaguely nauseous and horrified. When I wasn't revolted from the sudden left turn into Kinky Town, I was rolling my eyes at Deena's over-the-top characterization. Cliche doesn't begin to describe what she is. And to be brutally honest, I could probably find better written S&M with less cartoonish dommes on Literotica (and I have in the past).

I forced myself to keep reading, to get through it, and then got pissed off all over again at how this "conflict" is resolved. Richard gets to learn how to master the Sword of Truth, and then he has to kill Deena (which, she actually wants him to because, you know, it's the only way to truly "save" her since she's so "broken"). Of all the ways for him to figure out that particular mystery, we had to suffer through all those pages of descriptive sadistic torture. Other than that, this whole scenario serves no purpose to help the plot. Well, okay, a half-assed way to get Richard and Darken Rahl in the same room, too. And then, Richard simply walks out of D'Hara after killing Deena and another dominatrix Mord-Sith who helped Deena torture him.

When Sam was talking about his favorite characters and aspects of the series, he mentioned the Mord-Sith. Given that it was Sam, I was thinking I'd encounter an elite assassin group, or some other super bad-ass soldiers who strike fear into the hearts of everyone just by mentioning their name. This was totally not what I expected. At all. (Sam, sweetie, I love you, but I am giving you the side-eye so hard over this.)

I am going to finish the book. I'm less than 100 pages from the end. At this time, I'm not sure if I'll read the second book. I might give it a shot. As I said, up until the Mord-Sith, it wasn't terrible, and I was actually mostly enjoying it.

(And if anyone wants to accuse me of being prudish, or try to say I don't "get kink," I'm warning you in advance, I am going to point and laugh and mock you publicly here on my journal.)

First, the good: Kiddo is officially out of school for the holidays. Hooray!

The ranting: Started sneezing this morning and have been having random sneezing fits throughout the day. Usually this is a sign that I am headed for a head cold, right when I don't need it. Not only is Mom coming up here Sunday and we have to clean the house, I'm also supposed to be meeting Sam's maternal grandparents for the first time. Great first impression, huh? "Hi, nice to meet you. Pardon me while I blow my nose and try not to cough all over you and the food."

Oh, and did I mention I'm making my mother's semi-famous corn and string bean casserole, my grandmother's no-bake pumpkin pie, and candied yams? I really, really, really hope the sneezing has been some sort of fluke.

And I'm just grumpy after dealing with jerks in LFR (hey, asshats, rp is not "gay," though it is pretty damned fabulous) in WoW and then having guildies forget to invite me to the second half of Dragon Soul. I'll probably run it by myself tomorrow and just hope I don't have to deal with too many jerks. Didn't help that the first part of it I lagged horribly because, apparently, even when a download is capped, WoW doesn't like ANYTHING to be using bandwidth. (Strangely enough, it's fine with someone running another MMO--Sam was playing CoH--but downloads? To paraphrase Little John from BBC's Robin Hood "Downloads it does not like!")

Anyway, I bought two new books, found some Nag Champa incense at the Asheville Mall today (I've been out for months), and some lavender oil on the cheap. Santa, however, was a no go. Kiddo didn't really want to go because he reasoned he'd already sent Santa an email and got a response, so why repeat what the man already knows? (That, and I suspect he's been feeling more and more self conscious about talking to strangers lately.) We were going to insist he do it anyway, but $21 was the cheapest picture package and that plus the probably half-hour to hour wait in line was so not going to be worth it.

Also, the kiddo got Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz today (seasonally appropriate, I know), which I'm eager to read to him because, holy cow, nostalgia like whoa. I used to own all three and read them over and over and over. The first time my third grade teacher read "The Thing" to us, it terrified me so much I had to get Mom to reassure me that night. And then...I wanted more.

So, how many books does James Patterson have this year? I mean, are there some he's not making television commercials for?

(No, I haven't read any of Patterson's work, it just seems like he has a new book on TV every other month.)

Pro-tip: Following me on Twitter isn't terribly likely to get me to read your self-published novel. I follow writers because I happen to enjoy writing and want to some day put that talent (if you can call it that) to use. The authors I follow happen to be authors whose works I admire and enjoy thoroughly (Keri Arthur, Steven Brust, Neil Gaiman, Stacia Kane, etc.). None of them followed me first. In fact, none of them follow me back and that's okay because I know they're busy people (though I am prone to squealing like a fangirl anytime I get a response).

Furthermore, if you include excerpts from your novel, might I suggest links to actual passages rather than single Twitter-length lines? Then again, I'm not sure how you can improve upon "Not a wine rack. His swine rack. Ol' Bert likes to get jiggy with a piggy." Shakespeare would weep at the beauty contained within those 140 characters. (Not really.)

Other lines I'm reading on your feed:

My face met the window with a sick thunk and I felt important bones shatter.
The fist withdrew with a ghastly, slurping sound like twisted gristle expelled from a turkey baster.
And the sound of wet slurping just below my ear ripped a primal scream from my fractured core...

Also, a vampire novel titled Juice? Not sure if want. (No, I'm pretty much decided this is in my DO NOT WANT file.)

...and I clicked on your link and you have a sound file embedded in your webpage. What is this, 1998?

Okay, Okay, I just started looking over this guy's website. Lawls! This will need its own post.

ETA: A new line was posted just now. "I scratched my crotch and noticed the SUV next to me. A gorgeous female eyed me with a sly smirk." Oh, baby! Nothing gets me hotter than a man inappropriately scratching himself in public next to his SUV! I'm getting the vapors!

So we ordered some Scholastic books for the kiddo through the school and they arrived today, much to his excitement. (NOT the dilemma.)

One of the things we ordered was a three-book collection of E.B. White novels. The dilemma is that I remember reading Charlotte's Web in second grade (same age as the kiddo) and I thought I might read it to him.

How am I ever going to get through it without bawling at the end and possibly freaking the kiddo out?

(Totally not a serious post.)

The other two books in that collection are The Trumpet of the Swan and Stuart Little.

On the plus side, I managed to convince him to get Sideways Stories from Wayside School by Louis Sachar, a book I read repeatedly as a child. I predict much giggling.

Not only will our friend and the king of Stormwind (and my heart) Varian Wrynn be getting his own novel soon, but said novel will also be released as an audiobook. Richard Knaak's Wolfheart will not just be released as a novel, but also as a recording with special effects, in-game sounds and narration. The novel is scheduled to be released this September 13 and the audiobook is expected not long after. [Link]

Now, I don't buy audio books, mostly because I know I'd tune it out and never get the story, but an audio book with in-game sounds? This sounds (ha!) like a big gimmick meant only to appeal to the huge nerds fans and serves no purpose other than being, well, a gimmick. Maybe I'm being silly because it's a World of Warcraft novel, but it seems to me that while you certainly want to appeal to fans of the game(s) new and old, it's also good business to appeal to other people who might be potential new subscribers, or at least book buyers. Plus, you're not playing the game when you listen to an audio book, and after you've heard the same sounds over and over again while playing, I'm not so keen on listening to it while I'm trying to hear a story.

Of course, it doesn't really matter to someone who is not going to be buying this book. I've read an excerpt provided a few weeks back and it put me off reading any of Knaak's work. I think after two paragraphs my Gary Stu meter pegged out an exploded. It was seriously that bad.