Moonlight's Mick St. John, was a ripoff of
Forever Knight's Nick Knight.
I hope the similarity of the names Mick and Nick won't be lost on you!
Forever Knight had better writers, director, actors, and even music!
In turn,
Forever Knight was similar
Lee Killough's cop vampire Gareth Mikaelian,
Tanya Huff's Vicky Nelson, and
P.N. Elrod's vampire PI Jack Fleming. ALL came out before
Forever Knight AND
Angel.
Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse came later (but before
Moonlight), but is still better done!
Elrod's got a less broody vamp character, but like Angel has a stuffy Brit, a kick-butt African American, and a beautiful girl as supporting characters. She's a fan of
Angel and Joss Whedon, so she didn't sue.
She's NOT a fan of
Moonlight, to judge by this
review
That it's a wholesale ripoff of
Forever Knight, her own stuff, as well as other writers of vampire books was not lost on her.
Her comments are
not for the faint of heart! (You have to scroll down, though.)
Most important--check out the comments under it. Those are from the potential readers of your story!
As stated in other posts--what do YOU bring to this theme that is different? Otherwise your work is derived from a badly done derivative TV show.
Also note: it's a TV show. You are writing a book. Different medium. Read the books by the authors above and work to make yours different from theirs.
Every writer has to develop his/her own voice. Your specific voice and style of writing is how you make your version of the "hot vampire detective" your own!
Beware of the Silhouette Nocturne series, as those are notorious cookie-cutter rips from better books. Much of the writing--I check them out in the stores--is not very good. (When a book has me gagging on p. one from bad writing and worse editing, that's a baaad sign.)
Now granted,
Moonlight has apparently inspired you, and that's a good thing to get jazzed up on something, but you can and MUST do better!
I read that Elrod got inspired by
Dark Shadows and
Kolchak--which were a big thing once, but kinda hokey now--but she went past them and expanded on stuff.
Go for it for yourself!
Good luck!
