valarltd | Literary Analysis

So, after a great deal of talk, we have hit on where I've been going wrong, why I'm a has-been and how I need to get out of it.

Too many of my personal beliefs are creeping in.

Not my ideas. Nikolai was full of my ideas and projections, extrapolating from where my research took me. But my beliefs. My ideas about how the world works. These are becoming intrusive. "You can know a lot about an author just by reading their books." We trace the rise and fall of Laurell K Hamilton's marriage and divorce and love life through Anita Blake. We can track Stephen King's various addictions by the quality of the books, and the fears he addresses. And I am not different.

--Despair.

This shows a lot in Hard Reboot. The world is almost unchangeable. There will be no great revolution that destroys the arcologies. If Sean and Niall fought their way in, killed Zara and Gemini, the board of directors would simply appoint a new CEO, and probably be relieved to have the actual heirs out of their hair. And Leda Corp would continue. It's more my comment on a corporatocracy than an actual love story.

The DJ'verse suffers from this as well. DJ is smart, tough and making a living on the Nightside. Except the story ends up constraining, confining and making her dependent. As one of my readers said "She's the most obvious self-insert I've ever read from you, and I hate what the stories you tell about her say about your life."

Even Barbarossa's Bitch has a hopeful and happy ending. Humanity is back to being a going concern and starting to get something like modern civilization happening. Our hero gets an almost impossible fantasy come happily true. (and he's a daddy to three little girls as well) The older men of the group find a place to live in peace and practice their Before trades instead of riding with a motorcycle gang and being vigilantes.

But nothing I've written since has worked so well. And even as far back as Alive on the Inside, I've been wanting my books to be more than they are. But once I write everything in me on a subject, I'm dry. And it's never enough to make a good book.

--General Misanthropy

"Every man in Adventuresses is a rotter, a rapist or generally horrid. But every woman in every book is either a doormat or a high-iron bitch. I can't decide who you hate more."

In my experience, there are very few types of women. There are the dull mice. There are the manipulators, who act nice, but shiv you in the back every time. And there are the outright bitches. We may be mean or not, brilliant or not, but we take no shit and give no quarter. I write what I know. And I detest manipulators.

DJ is a bitch. She admits it freely. Sara Brown, in the Lord Withycombe adventures, revels in it, and is egged on by her equally bitchy male secretary. Lillian, ditto. She is a nonconforming woman and doesn't care. She has enough money to get away with it. Fran, likewise. Flossie appears to be a mouse, but turns out to have a bitch streak in her. And all the women in the Cyber'verse and Eight Thrones are terrifying.

I don't write men well, in conjunction with women. Men on their own, they do fine. But once women are introduced into a storyline, and especially as romantic interests, the men turn stupid and brutal and possessive. It's one of the reasons I don't write heterosexual content on a regular basis. I don't want to encourage what I see every day.

No woman I know has ever been better for having a heterosexual relationship. It always ends up damaging or destroying something in them.

--I'm not much of a plotter.

I do great characters, workmanlike action sequences, great quick-sketch descriptions that make the reader feel they are in a place without overwhelming them and snappy dialogue. But I'm not good at plot.

So, I improve what I can, root out my personality from the books, and quit tipping my hand.