A recent trip to the library revealed that at–*least*…!–13 books on vampires and werewolves from “The Little Women” to Leo Tolstoy; classic books that have been treated to a “supernatural” twist on the various themes which you and I grew up reading on as kids and teens.
I just stood there and went, “WTF?!?..!!!”
I thought Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was bad enough…but from what I saw…?
I started to weep a little inside because of what’s being done to my childhood memories.
This is getting to be too much!
The genre’s getting killed over so many vampire books flooding the market–with some of them not making a lick of sense; sounding like a dark crossing between Angel and True Blood on some of the themes and a poor man’s excuse for another Twilight clone.
My wife recently read “Shadow Kiss” and even though she likes the book, I was just appalled by what the author was able to get away with and I was completely turned off–seeing how it’s just another “boy-toy”-vampire cliched novel: Girl loves guy, wants to become a vampire herself and yadda, yadda, yadda.
Insert love triangle, mortal danger, and cheesy HEA endings that make people like me want to ralph.
Where’s the imagination and the creativity in these books? Whatever happened to sticking to the lore and genre and try to maintain some semblance of originality? (Not to mention DIGNITY?)
Why the weak characters? The impossible romances? The milk-curdling plots that make absolutely no sense whatsoever?
Where’s the solid story-telling and the great character lines? Whatever happened to just “writing” a book and not worry about what the other guy has out on the shelves?
You know, it makes me almost hesitant to finish a vampire book I started 10 years ago.
I say *almost* hesitant here. I plan on finishing it and the others on my list, but I don’t want a book that is just like everybody else’s.
I’m horrified and mortified by what’s on the shelves. Very few books I’m running into makes any lick of sense and it’s becoming harder to try to find something close to home.
Y’know?
When I started it out with my first vampire book (as I write mostly science-fiction/fantasy), all I wanted was a simple half-human/vampire romance between a hunter and her human companion.
A journey of discovery and redemption. Nothing special. Nothing crazy. No “turning” the guy in the end, no trying to force a romance out of the ether, but just let things happen as naturally as possible.
And while the first draft didn’t end in an HEA (I hate those!), but tragedy for the main character–as she had to lose everyone she knew; including the guy she was with.
The second draft was altered a bit, a little more in depth with the characters, but it hasn’t contained anything abnormal or deviant–with the minor exception that the main character craves chocolate and sex. (I thought that would be a nice–normal–twist; focusing on the human aspect of the character rather than what she is: Half-vampire.
I already know what she is. Why make her out to be more than the sum of all her parts?)
But outside of that…? There’s no secret–or earthly–power to be had, no secret coven of vampires or werewolves dueling it out for power or control over the Earth, or some other whacka-doo story plot element that is totally–freakishly–*alien* to the lore/genre itself.
Nothing that trashes the supernatural genre that makes it look both silly and utterly tasteless–y’know?
I’m not doing this to be different or in “defiance” of what’s already out there, but I just don’t see how all these variant books out already is going to make people like the genre any better–than what I grew up on reading as a kid.
It’s my belief that is trend is backfire and *badly* at some point–where someone is going to cross a line that shouldn’t be crossed and people are going to go, “Okay…whoa! That’s enough! Stop!”
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Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” is a timeless classic because it embodied so much of what we didn’t *know* about vampires, but kept true to the idea of the dark and forbidden elements which made the author’s characters likable, memorable, and loved.
But I think the mainstream is pushing things too far in order to get out the next “best-seller” in the supernatural lore–by putting out soap-opera styled, media-circus, trash-tabloids that isn’t supposed to even…*exist* in the first place.
Certainly not in a publishing industry that was built on…well, *TRADITION*.
Now I see agents scrambling for the “next Twilight”–gushing about how “great” the book series was and how new writers should emulate SM’s literary genius. (And on that note–can someone stick a fork into my brain? I think
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B&a Peeps: With All The Books Out On Vampires And What-not, Is The Genre Becoming Too Convoluted For Readers?
Posted on August 30, 2010.
Yes, I think the genre is very… saturated now, but if writers want to add to the load, they can do that. Many of them won’t be remembered as great influences on or bombshells in the genre or the writing evolution, but we can’t all be original. It’s those who aren’t too unique that make the more distanced in popularity… more profound. More recognized, more remembered in some cases.
I actually love Twilight, to be honest, because I see it as a sensitive love story with that supernatural twist but I’m just not interested in all these other series coming out all the time… I think because most of them try to echo Meyer’s style and plotline, but more often than not it’s with these savage, bloodthirsty vamps and a slut girl and loads of jealous violence that just bores me.
But no, I don’t think anyone should take a classic, or anything that someone else has already created for exactly what it is and is meant to be, and then pervert the whole of it. To change an ending is a thoughtful advance… To change it in its entirety it to make it something else, and that is senseless.
I’m not afraid of controversy and I’m not afraid of being a bit different.
I’m writing a book about different kinds of love, and the main character is a 13-year old boy who is in love with a 24-year old man. They embrace their love for eachother. Because that’s all it is. It’s not a story of a helpless little child being seduced and sexually dominated by a selfish paedophile. It’s a story of love.
There’s also a supernatural twist, but it’s not vampires 😉 And I don’t think it’s cheesy or far out, either. Someone will tell me one day.
I don’t and won’t strive to be like other writers… But I wouldn’t write something different simply jn defiance, that is also petty.
What can I say? All I can do now is just give you a pat on the back and sigh with you.
Books, in any genre, with a good story and some literary merit will be published – it’s just a matter of finding the right publisher/venue. What you are seeing now with Vampires & Werewolves is the result of the most current fad. Profit margins in publishing are paper-thin, so companies are always on the look-out for the new, hot trend to capitalize on. One publisher puts out a book on Vampires and it explodes in popularity, sales and ancillary product (TV shows, merchandising, etc). All the other companies perk up and attempt to capture the same lightning in a different bottle. THey scramble to find that same magic formula. So they scour their submissions for anything resembling vampires or contact their contract writers to quickly bang out a vampire romance book of some kind. People who read and loved Twilight then see this clone and hop all over it.
This trend happens repeatedly in this industry and it sucks when it affects a worthy, legitimate genre story like yours. 10-12 years ago it was boy magicians. 5-7 years ago it was 20’s something women with grrrl power who try to shop their way out of their problems. 15 years ago it was Pathology (look at all the forensic investigator books that started popping up in the mid/late 90’s and all their spin off) and 20 years ago it was Generation X knock offs.
For what its worth, this too will pass. Keep working on your legitimate story and shop it around when ready. Real stories within a genre will still be giving a look at and 3 years from now when everyone is talking Robotic Super Spy Cross Dressing Chefs as the next trend, your work won’t get lumped in with the dross.
Aww.
It is sort of ridiculous, but there has to be some good vampire authors out there. I haven’t touched those “classic gone supernatural” stories that I have seen. Some of them are my favorite books and I hate to see them tampered with.
And I actually like your idea too…
Yeah, I know. Since the Twilight obsession, there have been wayy to many teen vampire books. I walk into the library and a third to half the teen section is filled with stories similar to Twilight and vampire romance novels. I mean it’s getting kinda ridiculous.
But actually, if you read Shadow Kiss (the 3rd book in Vampire Acadamy, right?), you would know it’s not about a girl who falls in love with a vampire and wants to get changed and yada yada yada. lol. The series is actually about a guardian girl (called a dhampir- a cross between humans and vampires) who’s job is to protect Moroi (living vampires who can feed on blood and work elemental magic). There’s actually three types of vampires in this book. It doesn’t only focus on the romance and her ideas are kinda interesting. The book can get pretty fluffy and stuff, but the girl doesn’t want to be changed into a vampire and doesn’t really fall in love with a vampire…
Anywho, that’s besides the point..
I totally agree that someday people will say enough is enough with the whole vampire genre. I hate how books have on the cover or reviews “the next twilight”. Like it’s really an accomplishment. ha. I do think that some of the vampire books can be good, though. But every phase has to end, and hopefully soon the mass making of teen vampire books will too. We need new, original ideas on the shelves.
I agree. The market for this kind of work is over-saturated. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies had the potential to be a quirky new classic. However, because it was so quickly followed by Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, Android Karenina and Little Vampire Women (just to name a few,) very quickly killed any possibility of the book being memorable in it’s own right. Now it’s just an entire genre that relies on the same joke being told over and over again.
As for the teen vampire romances, I don’t take much notice of them. This is probably because of my age. Also, they just seem to me to be like Mills & Boon aimed at a younger generation. The same plot churned out over and over again in a slightly different guise. I don’t blame teenagers for reading the books and enjoying them – after all, it’s all new to them and is designed to appeal to their age group. However, I would be disappointed if they didn’t go on to learn about the classics – the books that helped to create these and other legends.