JZB POV Scene

[thevikingsgirl]

I love your posts, Victoria. The dog/bunny analogy is a great one. It's hard to think about how to not hold one species to the moral constructs of another. I sort of got used to it with the Southern Vampire series, because she (CH) was always so clear early on that vampires are NOT human. They don't act like humans or share human morality. Except that they *used to be* human and the fae never were.

Personally, I LOVE getting the same story from another viewpoint. It's amazing how it changes your perspective to see it from different sides. Yep, I loved Midnight Sun. And one of my favorite series is by Orson Scott Card - there are two, Ender's series, and the Shadow series. The first book of each one is the same period of time in battle school, one from one child's perspective, the second from a minor character in that book. It makes me feel like I have a greater depth of understanding for what battle school was really like. There are always expressions crossing people's faces that the character whose perspective we're getting can't understand, cryptic comments, etc. I always wish for another version from that person's POV so I could understand what's really going on.

I had read Fever twice before I ever read the Highlander books. I only read them to get the background on Fever, because typically I stay away from romance novels. But even so, I didn't think they seemed stupid in the Fever series. They were trying to do their duty (protect the queen). And yeah, they were part of a failed ritual, but so was Barrons. I never got the impression they didn't take it seriously, or know what they were doing.

[Karen Marie]

To me the author should then stand behind the character as written, not propose what-if alternatives in the face of fan disquiet.

(And again - not specifically talking about Karen, though using her comments about V'Lane immediately following the release of Shadowfever to illustrate a point…).

___

You are specifically talking about me. I appreciate the frankness, but you’re wrong.

My Fever notes were written long before Shadowfever was published, for my use only, no other purpose. I made the decision to make them available to readers because so many had expressed interest in knowing more about my writing process, and my thoughts on the characters.

Am I afraid of reader reprisal if I fail to make everyone happy? Got over that years ago. Am I so in it for the money that I’d do or say something I don’t mean just to placate? I wasn’t born with that bone.

Do I stand behind the characters as I wrote them? Of course. My notes didn’t make them any different than they were in the books, didn’t recant a word, change a nuance. It was merely a look inside my head while I was writing the series.

If anyone read my notes and came away with the idea that I was trying to sell any of my characters as nice guys, or was unwilling to stand behind my characters and books exactly as I've written them, or was trying to appease anyone, they’re wrong.

[melissa]

I apologize Karen if you feel insulted by my comments - if you read the first few lines of the post you quoted you will note that I specifically said that I thought V'Lane ended up in Fever exactly how you intended him to be.

Several of the posts on this thread were moved from another thread and were also continuations from another discussion and I feel some of them are somewhat out of context. However, I don't mod this board and I don't have any control over where or how a mod chooses to move posts. The comments posted here were not about your notes - in fact I haven't read your Fever notes at all.

I had stated that I had seen several authors backtrack or change their tunes in the face of fan disquiet over the actions of a favorite character and used your "what if V'Lane had had a different publisher" comment after NOLA as an example of the sorts of comments I was talking about (since your comment was a familiar one to the posters on this board) though I was not specifically commenting on that statement.

Again, I apologize if you were hurt or felt insulted by the comments I posted, as it certainly was not my intention to do either.

[jayzee]

The only previous post on that thread that I didn't move was this one.

HIJACK!

So I finally read the Barrons scene and I am not happy.

I apologize if not all got moved, but I didn't see any preceeding posts that had anything to do with this topic.

I know that for whatever reason you wanted it kept in the hijackable thread, but also said you were looking for more input so I felt that it was better off in a place regarding that topic, since there seems to be a core set of posters in the hijackable thread.

[Grneyes]

Given your feelings on him after Shadow, I didn't expect you would be. I'm a little surprised you read it.

I look at it this way, we were promised sex, not romance. We got sex, and it wasn't prettied up. In retrospect, we're lucky it involved Mac at all and not some alien creature. (Barrons is just the kind of bastard to slip by on that technicality. "You didn't promise it would be with a human, much less Mac.")

Besides, it could all be made up, a delusion in his head.

Consolation: as a friend put it after reading it, "It was all about power, not sex. And a power scene with no emotion, is just power.

Now a Roarke power scene, sex or not, stirs up so much more..."

LOL--she just read the scene with Roarke and Webster a couple of weeks ago, you know what SHE was thinking of there.

Whoa whoa whoa...what scene with Roarke and Webster?

[VictoriaP]

Whoa whoa whoa...what scene with Roarke and Webster?

If you haven't read it, you're in for a treat. Around book 12 or so, IIRC. ;)

[Alainna]

I've read through this thread, and I never got any of that. The only thing that ever bothered me about KMM's writing, and it didn't diminish how I felt about the book in sum, was that all the Highlander girls were virgins. Ok, I said it.

Have you ever been surprised by something and then not at all surprised by it? V'lane? I was actually surprised when he was Cruce, even though I thought earlier that all the attention being paid to Cruce's death meant that he was most surely alive and floating around somewhere. It's not even a new literary device. The fact that in my mind when Cruce plead his case (he and his brethren had been oppressed) I tried to figure out a way for them to all get what they wanted really surprised me. I hope that I had the intended reaction in that it was somewhere closer to ambiguity than to neatly judge and compartmentalize.

I love deleted scenes, director's cuts, even just little bits of back story because I want to know the whole story. Examples- Kingdom of Heaven director's cut made a whole lot more sense than the cut short for theaters stuttering flow of events. Harry Potter (lots of extra stuff there), Tombstone, Eragon (the movie being proof that somethings should not be rushed), the book of Esther in which she marries the same Xerxes as in 300 because she was different, which reminds me- 300, on and on.

The Lord of the Rings is another example. When you dig into Middle Earth (gosh I am a geek) and read further, everything takes a different shape. Who knew that elves would hunt and slaughter each other over three jewels of power? Or that Elrond and his brother Elros would be raised by a man who not only killed their parents, but was known as the second best singer ever? Elros chose to be human and from his line, Aragorn was born. This is important stuff. How could it not be included? It took me three weeks to read LOTR, and the extended editions totaled 12 hours. Sometimes there's just not enough time.

I think the JZB scene could be either a lie or truth. Mac always wanted him and seemed to be waiting for him to just make his move. I know I waited for it. I don't think it's out of character because when someone is in a raw state of grieving their behavior can sometimes take a completely out of character turn. When Mac got to Dublin, she was deeply grieving Alina, and then weird crap started happening to her. Her perception of her life was already changing and evolving.

Character has a funny way of defining itself during crisis, loss, and when your whole world changes, so do you. In my introduction, I said that I had kids. I didn't say anything about a husband because he died last year. Grief changes everything.

Alina had Darroc first. As near as we can tell, he'd be a totally out of character kind of guy for her. He had put himself in the position of being the first story she heard. Which means that it was the first to take root. Barrons got to Mac first. Had Cruce been first, the story would have been different. One more note on character, when Adam asked the Keltar to not perform the ritual on Lungnasaah, and they agreed, it showed that they were willing to do anything in their duty to serve the Queen. Duty to the fate of the world is not always the same as duty to self. What they did in Fever only reinforced that.

This is what I love about these books. In my opinion, KMM wrote a complete world with strong characters who were true to both themselves and to human condition. Can't eviscerate essential self.

[Grneyes]

If you haven't read it, you're in for a treat. Around book 12 or so, IIRC. ;)

Ah okay. Read that scene! Thought there might have been a recent one. I haven't read Treachery yet. It's in my TBR pile.

[Lynetta Halat]

I wanted to read the scene, but the link is broken. Can it be updated? Pretty please? Dying to read it...

is HERE!!!!

http://www.karenmoning.com/kmm/jzbscene.html

[MouetteSheridan]

Agreed, link isn't working, and I was so looking forward to rereading this. Mmm.