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Drive a Stake Through the Vampires' Hearts! 2/6/2014 8:32:11 AM
What's the deal with all the vampire books and movies?
I read about a lady who sold a million copies of a vampire romance e-book at a dollar a pop who was given a publishing contract for her efforts.
How do I say this without sounding like a snob? There's nothing original about another vampire book. DRACULA by Bram Stoker is the original. If there's anybody left from Stoker's family they should sue. Then there's Anne Rice who wrote the well-received VAMPIRE CHRONICLES featuring Lestat, a character later played by Tom Cruise in the movies. She was very good at it, but she turned to religious literature after becoming born again. I'd sooner take a bullet to the brain than read anything else about vampires. What's the appeal? Is it a sex thing with the ladies? Vampires don't exist. Would you want one around if they did?
Believe me, Hollywood and the publishing industry have noticed. My niece recommended I write about Zombies. I'd sooner be a zombie than write about them. What's wrong with a novel with an actual theme, well developed characters, conflict, and resolution? Those contemplating writing a vampire novel for the money it might make should think about selling used cars instead or becoming an agent. You don't need an MFA to become an agent; you don't even need a high school diploma. I won't say it, but I'm thinking it.
Obviously I'm got an axe to grind. I'll admit it, I'm a novelist and I'm a little bitter about the process it takes to get something published and all the hoops you have to jump through. I just read two guys talking about a vampire novel on Facebook that one of them wrote, and the chat went on for like forty posts. You'd think they were talking about WAR AND PEACE. I was also asked during a writers' conference of all places, by the conference moderator of all people, if I planned to turn my novel into a series. Not on your life. I'd be bored to tears. Half of the fun of writing is creating new people and often, but not always, the most interesting people are the lead characters. It's a godlike feeling when you create a good character. Think Lisbeth Salander of THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO. The plot wasn't that interesting; it was mostly Lisbeth.
Here's another thing that's bugging me about the publishing industry: they let authors like James Patterson, Clive Cussler, and even Glenn Beck, hire other people to write their books. Patterson claims to write an outline and stay in communication with the ghost. Yeah, right. He's just selling his name. Even more astonishing is that people buy this dreck. Patterson is always on the New York Times best seller list and nobody seems to care. Where's Stephen King when we need him? He'd never let anybody else write his books and put his name on the cover, although he does do a lot of blurbs. But I believe him when he says he actually reads the books he reviews.
Donna Tartt, an excellent writer, made the best seller list with her new work, THE GOLDFINCH; it's 771 pages long and people still read it. I reviewed it and I was on the homepage for exactly one day before they buried me. It took me a month to read that book.
Oh, yeah, I should mention my next door neighbor in respect to classrooms at the school where I used to teach. She always claimed she liked to read trashy novels. So it's not just the 40% of midwestern women who read romances.
What to do, what to do? Bennett Cerf founder of Random House and "I've got a Secret" panelist was on the board for the Book of the Month Club. After Bennett died, Random House sold out to some German conglomerate. Authors were worried this would mean more of an emphasis on business versus art. So who owns Harper Collins and Doubleday and Little Brown these days? I'll bet they're not run by people who love books.
But there's your solution. Make sure the CEO can read and do what Oprah does with her book club to educate the public. We've had several Oprah imitators, but nobody could make a book into an immediate best seller like she could. And Oprah had taste; most of the books she recommended, including Wally Lamb's SHE'S COME UNDONE could be classfied as literary, and there were no vampires or zombies. The book was a fat girl.
