I've been thinking if any of you think the genre may be ruined. It turned into boy meets girl, boy is a vampire type of thing. And the popularity of Twilight and The Vampire Diaries turned every mention of a vampire novel into an eye roll. It became so hackneyed and despised because of such romantic novels that use these supernatural beings for no explicable reason. What reception would a mature vampire/werewolf novel receive? Something along the lines of Underworld, but with a more engaging story, more developed history and social structure where the world isn't rotating around one romantic relationship, and where vampires aren't Smallville supermen rip-offs. Perhaps there is a work like that out there that I'm not aware of (Anne Rice excluded)?
Well, The Walking Dead had gotten people crazy about zombies again and by then, zombies were diluted to enemies you shot up in those brainless FPS games. I think if done well, with exciting characters and interesting plot twists, you could really pull it off. I don't think one could really kill a genre. Dampen the meaning of it, sure, but not outright kill it. Otherwise no one would be writing about zombies anymore.
Personally I was done with vampires and werewolves after the Buffy series. I didn't even watch the Twilight movies (unless you count the Rifftrax versions. I did watch a couple of those.) However, that's me. I firmly believe there's a market for everything. Some people are still really into vampires. So you have to go with what you're into. If you like vampires and want to write vampires, then go for it and trust that there will be a market for it. The only way you could mess up is if you write something you're not passionate about.
I believe there is a market for vampire fiction, specifically an audience that isn't of the Twilight flavor. You may have a slightly larger hurdle, but not an impossible one.
I always loved vampires as an idea, and I'm writing a novel about one right now. But I don't really care for the YA angle on it, the whole 'Twilight' it's not what I have in mind at all. I am not really aware of anything exactly like what I'm writing, with elements of sci fi/cyberpunk, mystery and vampire genre, which doesn't mean it's not out there. In other words, no, I don't think vampire genre is finished, far from it. I think though, there's a saturation in YA market, with romantic teenage stories involving supernatural creatures. But there's so much more to the vampire myth than that, if you feel you can write it well, go for it!
Is it possible that the way most people view vampires today is just the apotheosis of the vampire concept? Vampires have been around for centuries, and at last, the verdict is in, the entire idea is silly. To me, vampires were always a metaphor for the wealthy elite. Fair skinned people who sleep all day in their mansions and then go out at night to pursue carnal pleasures. They live longer than your everyday commoner because they live off of your everyday commoner (vampires don't work). Christianity, which condemns the rich, also condemns vampires (they hate the cross). Vampires and the upper class (back in the day) both hate garlic, because it's crude. And let's face it, if you're living off the backs of other people, at least from our humble opinions, you should have trouble looking in the mirror. Also, none of them have souls. The problem with hating vampires is the same problem with hating the rich. Most Americans would like to be rich. Most Americans (or enough of them), it seems, would also like to be a vampire and or bang one. So gone is the fear we once had for these creatures, replaced by a reverence akin to that given to the Kardashians. The final result, Twilight.
When I added vampires to my WIP, I never knew the reason. Guess I was simply fascinated by, and scared of them. I think vampire fiction is already an established genre, so there's always demand for it. Vampire YA fiction is still YA, you don't have to like it if YA isn't your cup of tea. Twilight was written for teenage girls, and it hits the nail in the head because so many girls identify with Bella. You don't have to like it if you're a 30-something man. I didn't like it, but the book wasn't written for me anyway. I think doing something original with the vampire is important, but WITHOUT deviating from the formula, otherwise they aren't vampires anymore. The reason Meyer's vampires are "wrong" isn't that they sparkle, but that they aren't nocturnal. If your vampires aren't nocturnal, you might as well call them something else. This is only the modern vampire aka Bram Stoker or Sheridan le Fanu (Carmilla) or even Anne Rice vampire. Originally a vampire was basically a corpse of a sinner that came back to life, and not necessarily linked to Christianity at all. Anne Rice's vampires aren't even vulnerable to crosses (Louis states this in Interview with the Vampire, and they can enter churches without problems), and she did a good amount of research while writing.
I agree the vampires are a metaphor, for what, it really depends on the time and place. 'Vampir' is an old Serbian word, and the first known vampire craze was recorded in London, through re-telling of old stories concerning Arnold Paole and Petar Blagojević, first known 'vampires'. When the Austrians occupied northern Serbia, they saw an old custom of exhuming the bodies and 'killing vampires' by driving a stake through their hearts. It's believed that the occurrence of blood seeping through mouths of some corpses gave rise to the belief that they must be drinking blood after the death. But vampiric-like creatures, in one form or another, have been described in pretty much all the cultures, since Mesopotamia (just the names were different). Even Australian Aborigines have a spirit who hides in the trees and drinks the blood of travellers. Bram Stoker wrote his novel around the time all this was hot topic in England. He only used elements of the Serbian vampire myth, the undead corpses, stake through heart etc, combined it with the Romanian story of Vlad the Impaler (the Romanians also had 'vampyr' as the word spread through the entire Slavic world, all the way up to Germany and Russia) to tell the story that was primarily a metaphor for the Victorian society and particularly the sexual repression of women. Hence the strong romantic element. The whole seduction, machismo, biting of a neck, sexually disinhibited behaviour in women following the contact with the vamp, you can imagine those poor women of the time lapping it up, since they had to wear corsets, layers of ridiculous clothing and any indication of desire in them was deemed evil, uncivilised etc. Also, most literature of the time described aristocracy. So this is where the vampires became rich, beautiful, seductive, rather than some peasants that rose from the dead to terrorise the local village. But it's not their primary quality. Since then, the vampire myth has been used to explore different contemporary themes in different places, the vampiric qualities get a lot of artistic licence and can be whatever you want them to be. As long as the core elements are present, and that seems to be immortality as an 'undead' and living off the blood of the living. Maybe stake through the heart, perhaps garlic and crosses, being fully nocturnal gets repeatedly challenged, but some degree of sensitivity to sunlight (and UV since we tend to be more precise these days) usually remains.
I don't know why people hate twilight so much. I think that it was the movies that were bad. The books definitely aren't the best I've read but they also weren't the worst. I admit that I don't like the way they sparkle in the sunlight. But the rest of it is pretty well written. I too have added vampires into my novels, and I created a greek mythology that never made it to human view. But in my novel they can also walk in the sun and their eyes are always red, no matter what type of blood they drink. My main characters are werewolves, their eyes are always a golden yellow colour and their history is based on the Greek King Lycaon and his sons, but what the human's version of the mythology doesn't state is that Lycaon also had a single daughter (In my story only female werewolves can turn a human). I also have witches, werecats and I have actually just added a werebear. My point is that the writer makes their own version, something that they believe is still the same but different enough that it can draw people in to read it. Amanda
Well I never really found interest in vampire romance. But I dislike Twilight for a number of reasons. One of them is because of Bella Swan entirely. I watch the Vampire Diaries and True Blood, however I mostly watch it for the plots and character development. I actually prefer vampires as bloodthirsty monsters like in Underworld and Priest. For an upcoming novel I plan to have a vampire hybrid protagonist. She lives as a supernatural hunter after her human family was slaughtered. While she'll be weak in the sun, has to have blood every day, she will also have traits that make her human.
My non romantic SF vampire/werewolf novel is doing quite well, so I wouldn't worry about how your book would be received so long as you have an interesting story to tell.
Vampire novels have been around years and years, even before Bram Stoker wrote "Dracula" . The reputation of vampire novels may have been at least slightly ruined, but as long as it isn't all about killing vampires and/or at least some of the vampire characters are good (or, at least, not all bad), as a vampire lover, I would totally welcome another gothic vampire story...
Granted, I only read about five or six pages because that's all I could stomach, but well written is a hell of a stretch. She put the words in the correct order, generally, and used punctuation, but that's about the limit I would personally put on the quality of the writing.
