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Aug. 25, 2005 I play at writing paranormal romance fiction and I once tried to write a thesis for an English graduate degree on the feminization of the vampire in fiction, so I know a little about writing and sadly a lot about vampires (this is a talent if you will that I have had almost as long as I can remember). Frankly, it could be just me but there seems to be this glut in the market of women's romance fiction on vampires. Now once this would have pleased me, especially, when I was hunting down all manner of vampire fiction in the 90s for my thesis, but nowadays it just seems sad. Not only is it just sad, they really kind of suck, pardon the pun, but these books are mostly just bad fiction. Hokey is the word that always comes quickly to mind when I read a page or two from most of these. Okay, I will admit that a few books out there aren't so bad at least at first, but then the author seems to ruin it for me somehow. Some of you are surely saying, "hey all romance fiction is hokey," but that's not true. It just seems that there are a lot more hokey out there now than say 5 years ago. First let me clear up a few things about vampires. They make interesting characters. In fact, I have a few 100 pages of a vampire story that I wrote myself, but my vampire Alex is not the hero and the story is not quite tame enough for romance fiction--dark erotica, maybe. There is something quite seductive about the idea of living forever even if you have to suck blood to do it. Maybe it calls out to a woman's vanity, but I don't think that is the real attraction for the woman reader. The real attraction for me was the psychic connection, bond---that's just so cool. Scholarly speaking, the attraction was a discussion of how male writers differed in their portrayal of vampires from female writers. I guess the reason most women that are swept away by vampire romance is that vampires just seem oh so sexy. Vampires seem to ultimately have better sex, or so it would seem in the last few vampire romances that I have tried to read. I would name a few, but I'd hate to drive a nail into the coffin that insures I never publish anything because I insulted a particular publisher. The only thing that might rival vampires out there in the paranormal world of romance fiction is werewolves, but that is a whole other can of worms. So writers out there find a new story line, motif, something. There are so many creatures out there occupying the unseen world why get stuck in a rut with vampires. There are elves, ghosts, warlocks, were-jaguars, pookas, aliens, devils and angels just to name a few that offer just as much in the realm of possibilities as vampires. Maybe the truth is I look for a well-written story that is about something that pulls at your heart and does it in an unusual way. Not that it is romance but Michael Crichton's Timeline is a book that does that sort of thing for me...then again I saw the movie first and maybe it's Gerad Butler that does it for me. ------------ About the author Lee Caldwell-Owens: Graduate of #Artbell channel on Efnet IRC. Has a BS in History and English with a minor in Women's Studies and if she had completed her thesis, would have a Graduate Degree in English. Likes to dabble in writing about the paranormal. Email: zommbywu00f@aol.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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