why all the pretty monsters?
Because of what happened with the Twilight saga, I think it is safe to say that copying another writer’s work has become a mainstreamed dilema. Vampires are the IT monster nowadays. They’re the happening- – supernatural creature of choice, and it’s only a matter of time before another monster is glamorized and takes its place.
Here’s my first point. Anne Rice was the first one to romanticize the vampiric perspective. Vampires were no longer the Christian hating subjects we fear, but the outsider inside all of us. They were the rogues, the vagabonds, the wild and free. They were the powerful and fearless.
Let’s ramp it up a notch. In 1990, Annette Curtis Klause published The Silver Kiss. A story about a depressed, lonely girl by the name of Zoe who falls in love with Simon, a powerful, lone wolf vampire who has wandered for years with no one to connect to.
Buffy The Vampire Slayer dominated television nationwide in the late 90′s and broke into the 21st century, even creating a spin-off TV show that starred her first vampire lover, Angel.
Dracula 2000 comes out in theaters and, although it holds true to the vampire being the villain, it casts a gothically rocking trendy look and pulls vampires further into the mainstream. And casting Gerard Butler as Dracula certainlyhelps. At the very least, it does not hurt the movement.
In 2001, Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris is released, featuring waitress Sookie Stackhouse- a telepathic who ventures into a serious relationship with Vampire Bill in a time when vampires have “come out of the coffin.” Her boss and secondary love interest is a shifter named Sam, who happens to be her boss.
2005, Twilight by Stephenie Meyer hits the bookshelves and is met with a surprising amount of enthusiasm. With each following publication of the Bella Swan saga, more fans are acquired until the fourth release in 2008. Bella Swan is a “normal” teenager who becomes smitten with (sparkling vampire and mind reader) Edward Cullen. Her best friend is a shifter named Jacob Black, whose tribe holds a treaty with the vampires.
Apart from the Twilight films and True Blood (based on the Sookie Stackhouse series), a large portion of the bookstore has become vampires. The last time I did a walk-around in a Barnes&Noble, I scoped out the vamps. Twilight, Nightlight, Vampire Diaries, Vampire Academy, the Evernight series, the Morganville series, the House of Night series by the Cast women- – and that’s just the Young Adult section. Go beyond that and there’s The Historian, the Sookie Stackhouse series, the Anita Blake series, the Night Huntress series, Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, and my beloved Hollows. I didn’t even bother checking out Stephen King’s work, although I could probably add Salem’s Lot and others, or the Romance section.
So, what’s the point of this?
How many vampires stories can there really be? Are these all truly unique? Or is everyone stealing from everyone else? For every one good idea put out there, there seems to be one hundred copy cats. I will give that they all have different writing styles, but apart from that- – what on earth is the point?
Personally, I’ve had it with vampires and witches. They’re flooding the shelves and need to be put on hold for a good ten years. At least. I’ll continue on with the Hollows, of course, but those books deal with various supernatural species. Not just vampires and witches.
But what is the latest trend? We can’t stay on vampires forever, thank God. What will we be seeing more of in the future? I can’t say that it will be werewolves (although I wish). Werewolves are too challenging. Most authors can’t straddle the beasts down.
I see the writers splitting off into two different directions. The ones that will fight to have the “monster” back in fiction will go with zombies. There’s already a hype growing around them from The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z by Max Brooks… and the recent young adult novel: Pride & Prejudice & Zombies.
The writers that want to have sparkles and glamour will write faeries. In adult fiction, we have the Fever Series by Karen Marie Moning and in young adult we have Melissa Marr’s series, and Holly Black modern faerie tales.
That’s the theory.
I hope I’m wrong.
