Is Laurell K. Hamilton’s Publisher Dropping The Anita Blake Series?
Sunday, April 24, 2011Posted in: Laurell K Hamilton
Enquiring minds want to know, as apparently there hasn’t been a new book since December 2009…Or has there?
Posted in: Laurell K Hamilton
Jane A
April 24
1:22 pm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Blake#Bibliography
KB/KT Grant
April 24
2:12 pm
She has a book coming out in a few months. I know LKH has always had a long time in between books, usually a year and a half for her Anita Blake series.
Rachel B
April 24
4:02 pm
She published Skin Trade in 2009, the novellas Flirt and Bullet in 2010. Hit List is due out in June of this year, according to the ever-knowledgeable Wikipedia.
Flirt was the very last one I bothered with, and I am embarrassed that I hung in there so long. I just couldn’t believe that the Anita Blake I knew and loved from the early books was gone forever, so I kept reading and hoping….and being disappointed. Flirt was the proverbial last straw, being inconsequential, unimportant AND self-involved. Useless.
Maddie
April 24
5:23 pm
Off topic some what but Karen I think you should do a blog about RAPID FAN GIRLS/BOYS.
I’ve never read LKH books but I was a Diane Palmer, Lora Leigh auto buy books and I had to give them up due to the horrific story lines, really no plot what so ever and the suspension of disbelief of what I was reading on the pages.
I felt like the author with the help of the Rapid FG cheat us the true fan base out of good plots because FG will buy any thing that is put out and rave on Amazon about hoe fab the book is when the true fan is left scratching our heads.
Stringing sex scenes together and squeezing a thin plot in between will just lose the author more and more future readers.
Repeating the same angst through out the book does not a good book make it just makes the H/h seem stupid, yes we know for the fourth time that your best friends with the h older brother you don’t have to tell it again every other chapter.
Plus in this time of financial strain shelling out money for mediocre books with out plots and tab insertion of H/h from one book to the another just insults us the reader.
Gas is almost 5.00 a gallon over here, so spending on books that do retreads is just crazy in my mind.
Sorry for the rant, but when I read my last Diane Palmer and Lora Leigh books I felt I was just conned out of my money and I was not happy.
DS
April 24
5:28 pm
The rumor about a dropped series I mentioned in a comment to a previous post was about the Merry Gentry books. The last new one was Divine Misdemeanors published in the US in 2009. With the upcoming publication in June of Hit List, she has put out 3 Anitas since then. I was a fan through Obsidian Butterfly but haven’t finished anything by her since.
katieM
April 24
5:42 pm
I haven’t read anything since Obsidian Butterfly, either. Instead of just dropping her, can’t they renegotiate her contract and ask for some things like good editing, a plot other than insert parts b, c, d, e, f, etc into part A, continuity with the first four books, and removal of all characters since book 4? Or, maybe have someone else, someone with real talent, write the books?
Karen Scott
April 24
9:22 pm
We talking about JR Ward now?:)
sallah
April 24
11:03 pm
lol about JR Ward… I havent read her in awhile either…
It was the Merrys, that lost their last publisher, and are now, according to her blog going to be published by the same publisher of her anita books… personally after the last Merry, she killed all interest for me in reading them… I gave up on Anita after INcubus Dreams…
Keira
April 25
1:44 pm
I’ve read Flirt and Bullet and the books while having a few flaws and things that I was tired of or didn’t like, are bringing the series back on track. I can’t wait to read Hit List. She managed to get me to like Richard Zeeman (a first) in Bullet so I have hopes for a stronger delivery in the upcoming books. I’m still waiting for the ardeur to turn into a love plot device and not a lusty plot device.
BevQB
April 25
2:36 pm
As for her new publishing schedule, I am cautiously optimistic that it means that she will return to writing for content and not page counts and deadlines. She was doing at least one ABVH book a year and sometimes a shorter ABVH book plus an MG book every year. Now I realize that, for some authors, that’s relatively eazy-peazy, while others take years to write one book, but LKH could no longer do it and was rushing to turn her work in only a few weeks before publication apparently with less regard for quality of story or editing and more emphasis on page counts. I truly believe that she still has the ability to write fresh, multi-layered stories but she lost her way when she forgot that her (infamous) muse should be more important than page count goals.
Based on comments she’s made on Twitter about the upcoming ABVH HIT LIST, I gather that her new contract has iron-clad, smack-a-bitch deadlines this time and that the MG series is also now with this publisher (don’t know if it was dropped by previous pub or ABVH pub made on offer when MG’s contract ran out) But as of right now MG doesn’t appear to have any deadline at all- maybe kind of a “If/when you write it, we’ll publish it, but in return, you get no wiggle room any more for the ABVH series.”
Let’s also hope that her new contract drops any “no-edits” clause she may have had previously.
sallah
April 25
9:46 pm
my problem is I can’t unknow, where she took the series… anything less than a (the books from NIC on were just a dream) isnt going to work for me…
DS
April 26
8:24 pm
I never thought to look at who was publishing LKH’s books. Apparently Anita was with the Ace imprint (SFF) until Obsidian Butterfly. After that Penguin put her AB books out under the Berkley imprint. Berkley and Ace are both owned by Penguin. I hadn’t realized that there was such an obvious break in the imprint after Obsidian Butterfly (which was the first AB in hard cover so it wasn’t the shift to hard cover that did it.)
The Merry books came out under the Del Rey imprint which was also SFF– Del Rey is for Lester Del Rey (AKA Leonard Knapp) who was an early SF writer. He died in 1993 so he can’t be blamed for anything done in the MG series. Del Rey is owned by Random House.
Kate
May 2
12:42 am
Just wanted to point out that the MG series was always a sex-based series and i wish she would continue now that Merry finally got preggo, also for those who gave up after Obsidion, just get an over-view and read Bullet, seems like thing are finnaly shaping up, the other commentators are right, with new publishers come better books apparently.