Tag: Zerbrowski

Dead Ice: Zerbrowski 

Here’s the next blog in the series leading up to Dead Ice. I thought I’d leave the leading men behind and go to one of my favorite supporting characters, Zerbrowski. 
  
Question: What is Zerbrowski’s first name? 

Answer: Sorry, but he’s keeping that secret a bit longer. He considers it pretty awful though.
Secrets to share: He’s Sergeant Zerbrowski now, moving up the chain of command, but he’s still making wisecracks and being Anita’s main partner when she works with the Regional Preternatural Investigation Squad, though most people call it the Regional Preternatural Investigation Team, so they can use the acronym, RPIT, for the Rest in Peace Team.
Question: When will we see his entire family on stage?

Answer: “Dancing” is an e-special short story where we finally got to see one of the police barbecues at Zerbrowski’s house.  
Secrets to share: I’d been wanting to see Zerbrowski, his wife Katie, and their kids on stage in a major way for years, but there never seemed to be enough time in one of the main books. “Dancing” exists because I wanted to see him at home. I wanted to meet his kids, not just talk about them off stage. Zerbrowski and Katie stand up to any of the police, or their spouses, that are unhappy with Anita taking Micah and Nathaniel as her dates. They bring along four-year-old Matthew who they are babysitting. Seeing Anita dealing with a child at an event with a bunch of other children and parents was very fun.
Question: When will we see Zerbrowski in a major roll in one of the books again?

Answer: Dead Ice has Zerbrowski back at Anita’s side helping her track rogue zombies and evil necromancers.
Sneak Peek from Dead Ice:
Zerbrowski made a face. “I bet. Nothing like coming to put flowers on Grandma’s grave and discovering she’s been scattered all over the place like dog food.” 

Don’t Feed the Trolls

I’ve been getting two new questions online, the last few days – One how did people get my brand new Anita Blake novelette, Dancing, early? Two why are they giving it one and two star reviews, and is the novelette worth the money if it’s getting such bad reviews? To answer the first question, none of the people leaving those reviews have read it yet, they can’t have, but yet they’ve “reviewed” it. This happens a lot with books, movies, music, any kind of art. People decide they hate it, before they’ve read, seen, or listened to it, which means their opinion is uninformed, at best. Most of these people will actually buy my novelette, and they will then hate on it with more detail, but remember they have decided to hate it, which makes them trolls. All haters are trolls on the internet, please ignore the trolls. Whatever you do, don’t feed them.

Yes, I know that even writing this blog feeds the trolls, because they seem to thrive off of any attention be it negative, or positive, but I felt that the people that are asking me how these haters got the novelette early, needed to know that the haters don’t have it early. They don’t have it. They don’t get it, the “it” not being the novelette, but more what I do, what all artists do. We create, haters just try to destroy. The world is divided into two main camps, one tries to build things and build people up, the other side tries to tear things and people down. At the end of the day, I am happy to be in the camp that creates, builds, and tries to make the world a better, more positive place. Those that can only hate and try to cause harm, I’ve never understood them, its too alien to who I am.

So, for all you readers out there asking if you should pay attention to the low star reviews out already for Dancing, the answer is, no. Now you may hate the novelette, you may think it’s not worth the money, that I can’t control that. If you hate it, I’m sorry, but I enjoyed writing it, and thought it was very fun to finally get to share Zerbrowski and his family with all of you. I loved watching Nathaniel, Micah, and Anita interact with other police officers and their families. It was fun as hell to have Anita and the men have little Matthew in tow, and Anita have to do the family thing at the cookout. Now, if none of that interests you, by all means skip this one. But I’ll say that you will miss a deepening of their relationship, and revelations about Zerbrowski and his family that will play a part in at least one more novelette, and maybe a novel. I was really trying to keep the Zerbrowski clan out of a novel length piece, because such bad things can happen in my novels, but I’ve written the beginning of the story, so we’ll see.

So, to sum up, no one has Dancing early, the low star reviews are trolls, please ignore the trolls. On the question will you think the novelette is worth the money, I have no idea, I don’t know your criteria for that, but if I didn’t think the story was interesting and added to my character development and world building, I wouldn’t have written it. Maybe you’ll get it and hate it, I hope not, but regardless of how you feel about my story, or anyone else’s art, try not to feed the trolls. I think if you let the trolls drag you down to their level you risk becoming one of them, and no one likes a troll, not even the trolls. Try it sometime if you think you’re friends with a troll, try disagreeing with them about anything and see how fast they turn on you. Haters are gonna hate, its what they do.