> On Thu, Feb 13, 2003 at 12:08:03PM -0600, David Rodemaker > <dar at horusinc.com> wrote: > > Probably to one degree or another, but I think that mainly > Steve wants to be > > published. > > Norman of Gor didn't seem to have trouble. Y'know that's sort of like discussing H.R. Eddison as being at the forefront of modern fantasy writing, or Lord Dunsay. > > Laurell K. Hamilton had an interesting set of comments on this 'issue'. > > Evidently one of the reasons she can write that sort of thing (or Anne > > Bishop or Jacqueline Carey I would guess) and not have it > rejected as porn > > (soft or hard) is because she's a woman. > > Then she gets nailed because 'nice girls don't write (or read) > that sort of > > stuff'... And then everybody goes out and buys it! > > Eh. Not anymore. > > Her first 4 or 5 Anita Blake books were really good adventure > stories that happened to have a bit of sexual content/tension. > Then she turned off practically everything but the sex, and the > books started to suck (no, no, in a BAD way). It's been going on > that way long enough that I've pretty much decided not to buy > anything of hers in hardcover until she straightens out again... > and this was just after she got promoted to hardcover in the > first place. > > Since everyone else I know who has been reading the books has > been saying the same thing, I suspect that the publisher must be > going "ouch". Since she's on Book 10, with #11 coming out this year, in hardcover, I suspect that somebody's buying the books. Evidently she's one of the few authors to have a seriously cross-genre (like fantasy-horror-romance) fanbase. The complaints I've read and heard focus less on the increase of sex and more on the lack of Jean-Claude (and sex with him). That's before we even touch the Meridith Gentry novels which make the Anita Blake stuff look like tame. Besides, Obsidian Butterfly had hardly any sex in it at all. <g> I only just started reading the damn books this Yule, and was suprised at them, but still liked them. As did my wife, as did the other people who we threw them at. David