Vampires, Werewolves, Zombies, OH MY!

Oh, Vampires! How I have loved you since I was a little girl and saw my first Dracula movie when I was four years old in a movie theatre with my babysitter! (Um, yeah, she got in trouble for taking me!). But with the way that vampire books, movies and just pop culture altogether have been going, I think I'm done with my vampire fettish. WHAT? I know, I know, how can I give something up that I've loved for 40 years?

Actually, it's quite easy. It's called over-saturation of the vampire market. Everywhere you look, there is another vampire story popping up. Some good, some dreadfully awful. We have sexy vampires, we have sparkly vampires and we have vampires that can't seem to get enough sex that we all want one ourselves! But we know that vampires don't really exist. Only in our very greedy imaginations do they exist. Dracula is portrayed as a lover who is destined to find his better half for all eternity. Edward is portrayed as a lover who is destined to find his better half for all eternity. Same with Damon and Stefan, Bones, all the BDB's etc... Sure we love the erotic stories that take us into this dark, blood read world of sex and blood and gore. True Blood introduced it to our living rooms. One of my all-time favorite vampire series which when you think about it is less about vampires and more about growing up, falling in love, losing the love of your life, trying to move on with another person, but it's just not the same and then you're accused of murder! Is the Vampire Academy series. There's just so much going in these books that vampirism really just takes a back seat. Rose is like Buffy. She's strong-willed, she'll kill the person she has to to save a race. Of course, like Buffy, she tends to make misstep after misstep when it comes to the person she loves. But that's neither here nor there.  Basically what I'm saying is that love with vampires has been slowly dwindling. Oh, I have no doubt another vampire series will come along (hopefully in a few years) and my love with return bigger and stronger than ever.

I've never been a huge werewolf fan. I mean really, who wants to fall in love with a half man/half dog? Just never really intrigued me. Oh, yes, I've read several were books. Shiver, Linger, Forever. I didn't really care for them. They were destined to be the next Twilight, but then again, everything that was published in '07, '08, '09 was destined to be the next one. Oh they did extraordinarily well, but just not for me. I do enjoy the Patricia Briggs' series enough. I like the dynamic between and alpha and his pack. Yes, I like a sexy alpha male, but they don't have to be dogs to be one. Any man who wants to take charge and growl at me, hell yeah! Just don't become a slobbery mess. I don't need a Jacob-like person to make me whole or to imprint on me. My first run-in with werewolves was a book that was probably written in the 70's, it was also made into a movie, The Howling. I read the book, saw the movie, again, never really made me love werewolves as much as I loved vampires. Sorry dogs, I love you as pets, not as a love interest. So that brings me to...

I will never, ever understand the zombie love-fest. I'm sorry, I don't get it. Oh, I watch The Walking Dead and I enjoy it enough, but I don't see the appeal. I've read a few zombie books and to me they've been "meh". I will say that one of my favorite zombie books that is also a bizarre love story is Lia Habel's series, Gone with the Respiration. Those books pack so much into one series. It's sci-fi, it's dystopian, it's steampunk, it's Victorian, it's progressive, it's a love story, it's about freakin' zombies! But this one works. Because she is able to poke fun of the genre and her main character's Bram and Nora, while an unconventional lovers, work as well as Romeo & Juliet or Hamlet & Ophelia did. Is it a doomed affair? Well he's a zombie and she's proper Victorian lady in the year 2500 or somewhat! Now we have another book out, Warm Bodies, (of which I have not read), and the movie will be out soon. Now we are humanizing brain-eating zombies by having them fall in love and develop a conscience and conscious. Okay, okay, I'm contradicting myself because I love Lia Habel's books so much. But I love them because they don't take themselves seriously. She says, yeah, who the hell falls in love with a zombie? Oh, well the proper girl who's family pretty much started the whole damn thing. It's ironic. But with most zombie books we get a lot of the same. People running away from zombies, killing zombies, having to kill infected family members, etc... It gets a bit tiring, don't you think?

We deal with a lot of horror in our every day lives. Just watch the evening news and you hear of horrific stories on a daily basis. In our books, we try to humanize the bad person, make them pliable and lovable. Eh, on some level it works, on others it can be a total failure. I know that as long as there is a market for these books, people will gobble them up and keep buying. But for the time being, I think I'm done with the paranormal market. I had a great time reading those books and they will always hold a special place in my heart, but overdosing on things tends to go badly. I'll probably overdose on the mature YA market that is out there right now. The contemporary romance market is blowing up. Even some of the self-published authors out there that are becoming household names. We'll all overdose on our sexy tattooed bad boys, the ones who get caught cheating because they can't seem to commit. Or the good ones who try to walk us down the path of life. But for now, I'm going to enjoy some normalcy in a book. I don't need a sparkly vampire, a down-on-his-luck werewolf or a zombie with a heart.