LJ Smith: Strange Fate
On learning of the death of a favorite YA author
Hi Stackers,
During my Sunday writing session, I learned that LJ Smith, an author I adored as a teen and new adult, recently died. I’m not sure how recently I’d thought of LJ, though some of her books are sitting on a bookshelf I see every day, but I was absolutely poleaxed to learn of her death.
My love for Lisa Jane Smith and her books is twinned irrevocably with my memories of coming of age in the late 90s/early 2000s in the early days of widespread Internet usage. I connected with other fans of LJ’s via a webring called nightworld.net, even writing early fanfic collaboratively with other LJ readers.
There’s so much I could write right now, but a lot of it would be a rehash of what I’ve already written previously. I found comfort in reading through the Reddit thread about her death and especially this comment:
That's way too young. Her publishers did her so dirty. They forced her to write certain plotlines she never wanted and in the end they stole the vampire diaries series from her. She had submitted a book and when she received a letter back from the publisher, it was addressed to someone else telling them to rewrite the entire book. That's how she found out she was fired. In the end, she was only allowed to write online fanfiction about her own series.
This post over at r/fantasyromance details some of it as well.
I wrote about LJ Smith on my old blog a few times. The link above is to a post I wrote about re-reading The Forbidden Game series at 32. But I wanted to make sure I shared this post with you, one of the most popular of all my posts on my pretty much defunct blog, even now. If you click on the link, make sure you scroll down and read the comments from others. It was so rewarding connecting with nostalgic readers of LJ Smith, both those who were teens when she was originally publishing (like me) and younger generations who discovered her work through the two tv series and reissued editions. I got another taste of that experience at my writing group when a Gen Z-er who is a published author told me how influential LJ Smith was for her growing up.
Here’s the blog post in its entirety (except for the comments), almost exactly 14 years after I wrote it:
LJ Smith: Strange Fate
A little while ago, Borders sent me an e-mail and said I might like to pre-order Strange Fate, the tenth and final (?) book in the Night World series by L.J. Smith. I couldn’t help but laugh as I scrolled through the comments from readers that all generally said the same thing, “I love this series, but I’ve been waiting for it FOREVER.” The comments are generally the same over at B&N and Amazon, where there’s even a forum called “When is this REALLY coming out?”
I’m not laughing to be cruel, it’s just that I’d be willing to bet money I don’t have that most of these readers/commenters, a lot of them anyway, have not been waiting over a decade to read this book, as I have. Most of them don’t even know that Lisa Jane Smith’s books were originally published when I was a teenager, before they were born in some cases. Strange Fate‘s original publication date was shortly before the new millennium and accordingly, the plot of the earlier books reflects that.
When the Night World books were published, 1996-1998, I was 14-16 years old and L.J. Smith was my favorite writer. Her books meant the world to me and I was bewildered by the inscrutable, almost entirely unexplained delay in the publication of the last Night World book. I went to college and still periodically checked in on a giant fan site for updates. L.J. was sick, we heard, but was back to writing and the book would be published soon.
Years passed and I started to believe that the book would never be published. Then, just a few years ago, all of her books were re-issued in new editions that would appeal to rabid fans of Twilight. The Vampire Diaries series was adapted into a t.v. show, which I watched for a while. I had to stop, though, because the t.v. show didn’t reflect either the books or my experience of them as a teenager, or both. But then, I knew they wouldn’t. To be successful in this millennium, they couldn’t. The Secret Circle series is being adapted now and I’ll probably watch a few episodes out of curiosity and because I like Britt Robertson from Life Unexpected. I think she’ll be a great Cassie.
I’m a little annoyed that when (if?) Strange Fate is released, it won’t match my series (though, yes, I have bought all of the reissues). On the left is what MY Strange Fate should have looked like a decade + ago and on the right, what Strange Fate will (maybe) look like when (if?) it’s ever published. And that’s something Lisa Jane’s newest fans may be learning, which her most senior fans have long known – I’m not going to invest my money (and hope) till I hold the book in my hand.
Many of the teenagers reading Lisa Jane Smith (or L.J., as I’ll always think of her) don’t realize these are not new books, as evidenced by one of the comments I read that said Lisa Jane should stop writing multiple series of books at the same time and just finish Strange Fate. 🙂 I feel sad and nostalgic when I think about these books now, especially Strange Fate. Now that I’m almost thirty, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to experience it the way I would have when I was 16 years old, moving to Louisiana and completely adrift.
But just like a teenager, I’m waiting… and waiting… and waiting… to find out.
P.S. While researching online for this blog, I found the following paragraph on the Wikipedia page for The Vampire Series page. This horrifies me as both a fan and a writer:
Unfortunately, Smith stated in her blog on the 9th of February, 2011 that she was fired by Alloy Entertainment and that ‘Midnight’ is her last book. Alloy Entertainment will be hiring a ghostwriter to continue the series. She will still be mentioned as the creator of the series on the covers of the new books but she will have nothing to do with them. Smith has asked her fans not to boycott Harper. L.J Smith has also already given Alloy Entertainment her manuscript for ‘The Hunters: Phantom’, although there are no guarantees that it will be released, let alone with any of her input.
As a writer, I think LJ’s experience with Alloy, as well as a few other publishing experiences some mentors and friends have had really made me hesitant about traditional publishing. While I’ve always pursued publication, I’ve always been a bit skittish about how much of the process is entirely out of the author’s hands. But that’s a story for another time, perhaps.
In the meantime, teen and young adult Emilie is sad because Strange Fate will never be published. Adult me has been resigned for almost 20 years that I’ll never read the conclusion of the Night World series as LJ intended. Even in my resignation, I think I’m mourning the books that never were just as much as I’m mourning as LJ herself.
Ultimately, the thought I’m left with and that I want to leave you with is: How remarkable, to have influenced several generations of readers and writers, to have remained important to them into their adulthood, and to have created so many rich and remarkable worlds. At the end of LJ’s story, I think that may be the most inspiring part of all.