Vampire fiction bites.
Not because it's bad. It's just crowding everything else out of the market.
Dear Edward Cullen and all wannabes: please, take it easy for a while. Can you pull a Luke Skywalker and disappear to the vampire equivalent of Dagobah just so I can walk through my local bookstore and library without tripping over another vampire book? Please?
(Why yes, I am a nerd. How could you tell?)
To be fair, the whole genre is called Paranormal Fiction, with subgenres like vampire, werewolf, fairy, and ghost subsets. Plus a bunch of others. I'm not going to offer an opinion on any of these (except to say Aprilynn Pike's book Wings is great) because my opinion of the content doesn't matter. What I'm offering is an opinion on the VOLUME of this stuff out there. I listened to an editor the other day say that there's no end in sight, either. They're looking to buy books now that won't be coming out for another couple of years.
I should probably just buckle my seat belt and deal with it, but it's getting near impossible to find anything else but vampires, vampires, vampires.
I like small stories, well-told. I keep getting fanged epics. Or I don't, actually, because I don't buy or check them out. (*Er, hold that thought.)
Still, there's hope out there. I loved Janette Rallison's releases last year. And I just got my hands on Becca Wilhite's newest (giveaway coming soon!).
But I'm developing a strange tic that worries me and I don't know if I'll survive until the eventual fizzle of this super-hot-genre. Any time I come across another vampire book, I feel the overwhelming urge to kick something. Or someone. Maybe Sookie Stackhouse. Maybe an innocent Barnes and Noble employee. Maybe the oblivious librarian in the YA section of the library.
Hey, I'm not saying it's right. I'm just being real, yo. That's why I said yo. It's such an accurate reflection of the way I speak every day.
Anyway, I have to go. I've got a book to read that's not about vampires in a pile that I worked long and hard to cull from the library last night. (*And I still ended up with a stupid vampire book somehow. But I'm putting it last before the due date and if I don't get to it, don't cry for me, Argentina!)
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22 comments:
I'm so glad to see there is interest in something other than paranormal fiction. Yay! Great post.
You are go right, girl. I walked down the Walmart YA section last week and half the books were vampire books. How the heck did you get Becca's book already? I've been looking for it everywhere!
Dear Lord,
Thank you for Melanie.
She always knows.
Amen.
Vampire books? Where have I been? Kiddin'. I am so sick of it too. I wanna read your book. No fangs, right?
Whatever happened to the normal books about a teenager who tries to seduce their adult teacher? Those were the days.
I'm sick of Vampire books as well. And fairies, and werewolves. I just want a good, fun romance with no paranormal critters in it!;) Great post. Loved "Wings" as well!:)
Dude, I know, right? What is it with those books?
You mentioned Star Wars :) :) :) :)
Seriously.
Seriously.
I'm too tired to come up with more than that, but I agree with you. And 10 points for the Star Wars reference.
Blah. That's how I feel about this whole vampire craze. And I'm sitting here with the first Sookie Sackhouse book, waiting to be read.
I think the only solution is to write something amazing that is in another genre and make sure it's the next bestseller. Simple, right?
My 6 year old noticed this as well. She calls it "the bleeding part of the bookstore." So right on so many levels.
I am one who loves to read about the paranormal, the normal, and the extraordinary. I love variety. So when the market is flooded with just one flavor it makes it hard.
I'm not really into paranormal fiction any more and that's because of this same saturated market. I love Becca's writing and Jannette is a fresh voice of REAL in the midst of unreal. (My friend Carolyn V. reminds me of that and I can't wait for her to get published!)
Yes, I'm a fantasty/speculative genre girl but even then, I steer away from the vamps.
Terry Pratchett writes satire, and his vampires (one in particular) are hysterical. This vampire is a photographer, but every time the flash goes off, he disintigrates into dust. So he keeps a little glass vial of blood around his neck, which breaks after he turns to dust, at which time he then is reconstituted. The whole visual is hilarious.
Beyond that, yeah, ix-nay on the ampires-vay.
I love those Pratchett books DeNae mentions. A hoot and a half (and that is SO an accurate reflection of how I talk - yeah).
I'm tired of ALL genres so I'm making up a new one!
WHAT TO THE WHAT WHAT HOMIE.
(We're So Freakin' Street.)
I am totally not into the paranormal stuff. I read *that one super popular series* and didn't love it, but did it because I caved to the pressure. All the vampire pressure! Augh!
Enjoy your non-vampire book. I am currently reading Jane Austen.
I don't personally like The Twilight books but I don't mind them being out there. What I mind are all the wannabees that keep showing up. You are right, there isn't room for anything else. What ever happened to variety?
I read 'em sometimes 'cause I like to know what's going on out there, and some are better than others, but ya know, I think it's time to move on.
To me what's worse is the new wave of dystopian YA.
I have no desire to write about ways the future might suck rocks, but that's what all the agents are looking for. Grrrrr.
It appears that books these days are a lot like bubble gum music in that people are writing on a subject that is popular at the moment and not actually writing anything of substance. Once the YA readers move on to something else the publishers will be forced to pull those books from the shelves and put the next "flavor" out there. Hopefully it will be a flavor you like to read.
Hey, be soft on those oblivious librarians in the YA section of the library. (I'm one of 'em, girl!) :)
Well, rest easy. You know the publication trends after vampires, right?
Angels.
Then mermaids.
And that came right from the lips of Jen Rofe, agent extrordinaire at a SCBWI conference a few weeks back.
I can picture it now, shelves full of the stuff, feathery wings, halos, and flipping wet hair. Be scared, be very scared...
Have you read The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova?
This vampire fiction (not YA, very period, very well-researched) doth not suck. It rocketh. In a creepy, this might almost be real, way ahead of the vampire curve sort of way.
Give it a shot if you haven't already. And if you have, please tell me what you thought!
(I just remembered this book the other day because I picked up her new one, The Swan Thieves. Which I am enjoying so far, about 75 pages in.)
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