Are Vampires Really Dead?

So the other night I took a little mental health break and watched Episode 1 of The Story Board, an ongoing series created by Geek & Sundry. It was hosted by fantasy writer Patrick Rothfuss (Kingkiller Chronicle) and featured guests Emma Bull, Diana Rowlands, and Jim Butcher.

Now there’s a line-up for ya.

They each had their share of interesting observations, and at some point in the discussion, one of them asked that age-old question: Are vampire’s really dead?

Meaning, of course, is it still possible to sell vampire stories to publishers, and are readers still reading them. After hashing it around some, the group decided that as fictional characters, vampires still had life since “They” had been predicting the demise of vampire fiction since the ’80s and it hadn’t happened yet.

So what do you think? Would you try to write &/or sell a vampire novel?

You could argue the ongoing popularity of vampires and other paranormal characters is the result of all the demands being placed on women in real life these days. A woman who’s working and raising kids and keeping a Martha-Stewart-worthy house while wearing a push-up bra and slut shoes requires an uber-alpha-male to keep up with her. That’s the gist of the argument in an article by Ananya Mukherjea in the journal Studies in Popular Culture (http://pcasacas.org/SiPC/33.2/Mukherjea.pdf - long article but fairly accessible and well worth the read).

Related to this is an idea that turned up in a recent blog post by Erica Manfred, author of Interview with a Jewish Vampire, a book I will be reading as soon as I finish The Seduction of Phaeton Black (which is a YUMMY book, fyi). In her blog post The Undying Appeal Of Vampires, she argues that  vampires are the Bad Boys for women who have seen it all. Sullen and angry just aren’t enough, we need an actual threat of death to find a man appealing. And, she reminds us, they are gorgeous.

She has a point with that.

I turned to my trusty Google, hoping to find actual data, maybe statistics describing books sales or hard-hitting articles by agents who deal with this stuff. While it wasn’t a completely fruitless endeavor, there wasn’t as much out there as I might have hoped. And not much of it was recent. There were blog posts and discussion lists, but nothing after about 2010 (which, in today’s publishing world, was a LONG time ago). Even Erica Manfred cites sources from 2008 and 2010 – and I don’t mean that as a criticism, just an illustration of how the conversation seems to have fallen off the radar.

From what I did see, there was a unifying theme, which is articulated pretty well in this quote from Nathan Bradford, writer and former literary agent with Curtis Brown, Ltd.

Now. That doesn’t mean I don’t want you to query me with urban fantasy or paranormal. But I’m not going to be favorably disposed to something that sounds like the same old paranormal story. It needs to be something different and it needs to feel fresh. I know it’s really difficult to do something different and fresh when everyone and their mom and their grandma and her mom are writing paranormal. But thems are the breaks….You have to either trod new ground or trod the existing ground with spectacular, mindboggling execution. 

Even though Mr. Bradford was writing this in the distant past of 2009, I believe his ideas hold true, and they are echoed by Blake Snyder in Save The Cat, when he talks about doing the same thing, but different. A fresh story, well-told, will find an audience, even if there are vampires involved. Good writing wins.

Well, that settles that. I guess. And next week, we’ll examine another age-old question: Vampires or Zombies?

Yeah, no we won’t. I hate zombies. Ick.

Have a great weekend!

Peace,

Liv

 

Photo Credit: Luigi Diamanti