Poll about vampires

[mdin]

This evening I was discussing this with a friend, and I thought I'd put this here. I'm very curious about the results.

[Satsya]

In high school eight years ago I told my best friend, a vampire fan, that the vampire craze would soon be over.

I sometimes wonder if she thinks of me when she sees Twilight everywhere.

Ironically, I am heavily into mythology but vampires never particularly interested me.

[Mara]

The vampire craze has pretty much been going on since Bram Stoker. :)

[mscelina]

Yep. A pre-contracted co-writing series with my publisher. First book done, second book out in a few weeks, final book due in October.

And, quite frankly, I really like the story and the genre. Although there's a lot of vampire overkill out there, I'd like to think that our vampire tale which is original to its Gothic roots is entertaining. It was entertaining enough to warrant a top ten P&E Readers Poll finish this year.

The industry may think that vampires are done, but obviously the readers don't agree.

[maxmordon]

The industry may think that vampires are done, but obviously the readers don't agree.

Hey, if they're getting done it means people are buying it.

[mdin]

It seems obvious the vampire genre is still pretty popular. What my friend and I were discussing was actually the evolution of the vampire from a "monster" centered firmly in the horror genre to more of a mythical creature, one where most modern vampire authors consider themselves as writing urban fantasy.

[Nivarion]

I've got vampires. They aren't main characters but they do make an appearance.

I like my vampires strong, cunning, and heartless. Especially when the MC is on the menu.

Or when I have an MC slowly descending into vampirism. Hmmm, might be a plot there.

[Talihashi]

I love vampire stories, I really do but with my writing I'm trying to be more unique. As in not using vampires, elves, fairies, dwarfs, dragons and whatnot.

[defcon6000]

I had an idea for a futuristic version of a vampire, but no outline or anything solid at the moment. Just an idea.

I kinda wish robots would become the next craze. :D

[Zoombie]

My WIP has no vampires. It has demons made of trash, the souls of serial killers bound into their implements of murders, animated corpses of car-crash victims fused with the wreckage of their cars, psychopathic invisible orthodontist, cthulian nightmares from the depths of our collective subconscious, and a race of bugs that lives beneath the sewage system who are the real source of 95% of the cocaine on the market.

But no vampires.

[CScottMorris]

First novel has no vampires. Second novel(in outline stages) *kind* does. I have a parasitic race of intelligent nematodes feed on blood. When they get big enough, the hosts blood is not enough, and they need to feed. The host vomits up a length of the worm to feed. An obscene, toothed proboscis. But they don't act like vampires in any way. Not immortal. They don't have any of the standard vampire powers.
From what I am reading on agent's blogs right now, the market is rather tired of vampires. Or any other supernatural beings attending highschool and falling in love with humans.
Anybody have any ideas what the next big thing will be?

[Cathy C]

Vampires will never go completely out of the reader's consciousness. They were "over" when Tanya Huff was selling. They were "over" when P.N. Elrod was selling. They were "over" when Laurell K. Hamilton was selling and now they're "over" because Twilight is selling. And yet . . . they're STILL selling.

We sold a horror/romance vampire (our Thrall series) with vampires of a totally new sort years ago when vampires were "over". We nearly made the short list for the Bram Stoker award. Two votes shy.

And yet . . . notice my BRAND NEW series below, starting in June. Heh... ;)

[FOTSGreg]

My latest story accepted over at Bewildering Stories has vampires, but it's not the main theme (PI who attracts weird cases is the central theme). The Light Of An Oncoming Train was described by a reader down in SYW as a story about a guy trying to find something which also has vampires in it.

They're not the sparkly type either (though the story has its fair share of humor).

[SPMiller]

The vampire craze has pretty much been going on since Bram Stoker. :)Or earlier.

I'm no fan of vampires, but there has been strong demand for well over a century, and I can't see that changing anytime soon.

[Chris P]

The only SFF I've written (and all of them shorts) are either technology or spirit world. Vampires have never appealed to me, not even Bram Stoker's or Anne Rice's. In all honesty, when I started reading Twilight I thought Meyer was spoofing the genre (I mean, come on, the main character is named Bella!)

[Adam]

I have an epistolary novel in the works about the life, death and undeath of a vampire. Very rough at the mo, but it'll get written eventually. ;)

[Shadow_Ferret]

Yes. My WIP has some vampires in it. They aren't the focus of the story however.

[BlackMagic528]

That would only be the cornerstone of my writing . . . . :D

[cryaegm]

Nope, not anymore at least. People might think they are vampires in my novel, but they're really not. The next novel I want to write (not the second one in my sig), I plan to have vampires, or at least an incubus, but it won't be like Twilight or what people (girl teenagers) consider to be vampires now.

[Lydia Sharp]

I had to vote "no" but that's a little misleading. I have a sci-fi novel (ideas only, nothing actually written yet) on the back burner that has an MC with definite vampire-ish traits. I don't know when I'll ever get to it, though. It's not one of those stories I feel I *must* write anytime soon.

[jennontheisland]

No.

I've never had any desire to write vampires (mostly since I write romance and fucking a dead thing that sucks blood is just icky).

I didn't mind reading Anne Rice, up to Memnoch, and I suffered through Dracula in school, but beyond that, not even in my reading pile. Never really had any interest in them at all.

[Anaquana]

My WIP has no vampires. It has demons made of trash, the souls of serial killers bound into their implements of murders, animated corpses of car-crash victims fused with the wreckage of their cars, psychopathic invisible orthodontist, cthulian nightmares from the depths of our collective subconscious, and a race of bugs that lives beneath the sewage system who are the real source of 95% of the cocaine on the market.

But no vampires.

Holy crap! I so want to read this!!

Yes, there are vampires in my series. They're the big bads in my first book and the third book features a race of vampires created by the government.

[dempsey]

I do not care for and have never cared for vampires. They don't particularly interest me as a concept. Though Bram Stoker's DRACULA was a pretty good read.

[DeleyanLee]

I'm waiting for vampires to go back to cursed, blood-sucking monsters who no mortal in their right mind really wants to have sex with.

I want them to have that aura of danger and mystery and evil and all the things that made them cool to start with.

But, then, I often want that with all the creatures and monsters that have been Hallmarkanized in the last 40-50 years.

[dirtsider]

Not at this point. I wouldn't rule them out but my current WIP doesn't seem to be heading in that direction.

And I don't consider the Spark-lites to be vampires.

[CScottMorris]

Vampires will never go away completely. They are part of our collective dreams/nightmares. They are powerful, mysterious, dangerous, and sometimes sexy.
But their popularity waxes and wanes. There will alway be vampire novels. But right now, the market is saturated with urban romances featuring vampires and werewolves. Publishers are buying fewer vampire novels, because fewer titles are selling. People are tired of vampires. It's called 'market fatigue'. I said fewer novels, not zero novels. Vampire stories will always sell. And if you can sell one now, then you can be assured it's a good one. I speak not from experience, of course. I am not published yet, and have no vampires in any of my work. However, I spend a great deal of time informing myself about the state of the publishing world/process. Take what I say with a grain of salt.
Also keep in mind, there are still more vampire books being sold than steam punk, which is what I write.

[cryaegm]

I'm waiting for vampires to go back to cursed, blood-sucking monsters who no mortal in their right mind really wants to have sex with.

I want them to have that aura of danger and mystery and evil and all the things that made them cool to start with.
That's exactly what I'm doing with the vampire book I want to write.

[Ruv Draba]

I voted no, then realised that maybe a tad more than three years ago I wrote an unfinished story about a man with a degenerative neurological disease becoming obsessed by a succubus who'd kill him faster, but make him feel better along the way.

[ChaosTitan]

My current series features a spin on vampires as a species, rather than as infected humans (the humans who get infected are completely different animals). They are supporting players only.

I've used my traditional vampires in other stories, as well.

[hillaryjacques]

I have supporting vampires (the amoral, medieval kind) in the ms currently looking for representation, and a supporting character in my current WIP that may have delusions of vampirism.

I've always like vampire stories, and have seen such interesting interpretations of them in recent UF. The sexy, tortured, strong/mopy kind is not my favorite. I don't really care for any man who's like that, blood-drinker or not.

[yttar]

The book I'm nearly done revising has a vampire as the villain. And my main character is scared of her (the vampire) and runs away at every possible chance she gets. At least until the final showdown.

I'm working on this book, not because it has vampires in it, but because I really like my main character. I like my vampires too, and, at least in this book, no one would think about getting in bed with one, or even kissing one.

Yttar

[JMBlackman]

<--has one WIP with supporting vamps

<--has another WIP with a vampire as a MC, with a human baddie as the biiig antagonist

[Lydia Sharp]

I'm waiting for vampires to go back to cursed, blood-sucking monsters who no mortal in their right mind really wants to have sex with.

I want them to have that aura of danger and mystery and evil and all the things that made them cool to start with.


Haha. Well, maybe I *should* get to writing mine then. Looks like I've got a reader. :D

[Rhys Cordelle]

I have people who are extremely photosensitive, but they aren't immortal and they don't drink blood so they don't qualify :)

[mdin]

Out of 71 votes, it looks pretty close to what I would've guessed. 1 out of 3.

[reiver33]

I wasn't really a fan of vampires (apart from 'Buffy') but based on a throwaway line in a critique of another person's piece (different website) I've ended up writing a 100k word novel. The hero is an ordinary guy; regular job, Church-going, just proposed to his girlfriend. It's just he's a pre-blood vampire (hasn't bitten anyone so still has a soul), who's being shielded by the Catholic Church and his girlfriend is a disfigured former prostitute who has just ratted him out to those who hunt his kind for fun and profit. Oh, and his 'uncle' (a full-blown vamp) is pressuring him into a spot of industial espionage at the biomedical research facility where he works.

Then it gets nasty...

[Death Wizard]

I have vampires, but they play a very minor role and are among the weakest of the monsters.

[brokenfingers]

I kinda wish robots would become the next craze. :DWhy? Don't wait to follow others - blaze your own trail. Write an awesome story about a robot and make other writers wish they'd done that.

As for vampires - I've never written about one and never would. Just like I'd never write a story about hobbits or sandworms or werewolves or elves or unicorns. Part of what I like about writing is creating my own world and creatures to suit it. It's part of the enjoyment for me.

Plus, I can't stand vampires and still feel old school about them - that they should be eradicated.

[Mara]

My first WIP ever (and I might revisit the idea once I have more experience) is about a modern-style (i.e. not very monstrous) lesbian vampire who likes to wear black trenchcoats and pretend to be all badass. Early in the novel, she meets a girl and is trying to seduce her for some consensual bloodletting, when all of the sudden the entire city is transported into a post-apocalyptic hellscape full of cannibal zombies, demons, and monsters. Basically, theme is "Fake Vampire vs. Real Monsters." :) Like if Edward from Twilight got tossed into Doom 2: Hell on Earth.

My current WIP has vampires in the setting, but they're probably not going to be mentioned at all in the current book. (And the setting has pretty much _everything_, so it's obvious that vampires probably exist.)

A back-burner project of mine has vampires among the ranks of generic undead, but mostly I'm using jiang-shi (Chinese hopping vampires) rather than Dracula-pires.

[Kitty27]

I am a diehard vampire writer.

I have quite a few books with vamps as the MCs. I.love.them.

I always have. I hate the current trend of Care Bear vamps with the heat of a thousand fiery suns. Absolute bitchassedness has been delivered on one of the greatest monsters of all time. I write scary,badass,and completely nasty vampires. Sure,they're hot. But they will kill you. Slowly.

*cackles madly*

I don't go into urban fantasy territory with my vamps. They are strictly in the horror realm.

[Jess Haines]

We sold a horror/romance vampire (our Thrall series) with vampires of a totally new sort years ago when vampires were "over". We nearly made the short list for the Bram Stoker award. Two votes shy.

Really liked the Thrall book I read! :)

My MC isn't a vampire, but she ends up having to deal with one pretty regularly.

[Rhys Cordelle]

I wasn't really a fan of vampires (apart from 'Buffy') but based on a throwaway line in a critique of another person's piece (different website) I've ended up writing a 100k word novel. The hero is an ordinary guy; regular job, Church-going, just proposed to his girlfriend. It's just he's a pre-blood vampire (hasn't bitten anyone so still has a soul), who's being shielded by the Catholic Church and his girlfriend is a disfigured former prostitute who has just ratted him out to those who hunt his kind for fun and profit. Oh, and his 'uncle' (a full-blown vamp) is pressuring him into a spot of industial espionage at the biomedical research facility where he works.

Then it gets nasty...

That sounds fascinating.

[scarletpeaches]

My WIP has vampires in it. It's my trunk novel, rewritten as a paranormal erotica novella. About 10k away from finishing that.

It's the only vampire story I've ever come up with and/or written.

[Satsya]

Vampires will never go completely out of the reader's consciousness. They were "over" when Tanya Huff was selling. They were "over" when P.N. Elrod was selling. They were "over" when Laurell K. Hamilton was selling and now they're "over" because Twilight is selling. And yet . . . they're STILL selling.

We sold a horror/romance vampire (our Thrall series) with vampires of a totally new sort years ago when vampires were "over". We nearly made the short list for the Bram Stoker award. Two votes shy.

And yet . . . notice my BRAND NEW series below, starting in June. Heh... ;)

Isn't it the truth. My brash high school self would be pretty disgusted.

My current self, however, is much more mellow about the subject. ;)

As a side note, if I were ever going to do a vampire story, I would go for the dark yet still thoughtful type. Characters that have had to murder/injure routinely to retain their sanity while living forever (or close to it) would make for very interesting subjects indeed...which is part of why they're so popular a subject in the first place. :tongue

[BlackMagic528]

Side question: Why is it there seems to be a bias toward always portraying vamps (and, remember, for me "vamp" is a little different a slang term, but I somewhat digress . . . .) as the "villain," or "antagonist," or "baddie?"

Why not portray vamps - and, in this, I really mean individual vamps, not the society as a whole, really - as the story's protagonist and lightly suggest humans are the "villains," "antagonists," or "baddies?" ;)

Just a thought. :)

[Mara]

Side question: Why is it there seems to be a bias toward always portraying vamps (and, remember, for me "vamp" is a little different a slang term, but I somewhat digress . . . .) as the "villain," or "antagonist," or "baddie?"

Why not portray vamps - and, in this, I really mean individual vamps, not the society as a whole, really - as the story's protagonist and lightly suggest humans are the "villains," "antagonists," or "baddies?" ;)

Just a thought. :)

It's because traditional vampires are more often evil than not, and because most of the earlier literary vampires were villains.

Personally, I've always hated "always Chaotic Evil" races (that's not from TVTropes, but from AD&D, btw). They're good as forces of nature, like zombies in Romero films. They're just a barricade to force the real conflict, man vs. man, to happen. But as characters, I like variety and free will, because it makes stories and characters less predictable.

[scarletpeaches]

Vampires were human once - in fact, still are technically - so why wouldn't they have the same range of personalities as 'live' humans? This isn't a black hats/white hats debate.

[BlackMagic528]

Vampires were human once - in fact, still are technically - so why wouldn't they have the same range of personalities as 'live' humans? This isn't a black hats/white hats debate.

My point almost exactly. :) (I do disagree with the 'still human' thing, but that's just a matter of interpretation. ;))

[defcon6000]

Vampires were human once - in fact, still are technically - so why wouldn't they have the same range of personalities as 'live' humans? This isn't a black hats/white hats debate.

Wiki says this:
In Russian folklore, vampires were said to have once been witches or people who had rebelled against the Church while they were alive.
Cultural practices often arose that were intended to prevent a recently deceased loved one from turning into an undead revenant. Burying a corpse upside-down was widespread, as was placing earthly objects, such as scythes or sickles,[34] near the grave to satisfy any demons entering the body or to appease the dead so that it would not wish to arise from its coffin. This method resembles the Ancient Greek practice of placing an obolus in the corpse's mouth to pay the toll to cross the River Styx in the underworld; it has been argued that instead, the coin was intended to ward off any evil spirits from entering the body, and this may have influenced later vampire folklore.

Basically, vampires are demons or anything anti-christian God, and therefore makes it automatically evil. So it's just cultural carry over from the taboo against heretics.

If you're not with the Church you must burn!!! :flamethrower

[JoshW]

Steampunk vampires. Come on. You know you want them!

[Katrina S. Forest]

I answered "no," but if we're stretching it to "creatures people might consider vampires," I do have an alien race that likes to eat people.

I also have a cast of characters in another novel that are human-animal chimeras. At one point I was considering a character who was part vampire bat, and another who was part spider. Neither of them ever made it to the final novel, though.

So depends on how much you want to stretch that definition, I suppose.

[STKlingaman]

Originally Posted by Zoombie
My WIP has no vampires. It has demons made of trash, the souls of serial killers bound into their implements of murders, animated corpses of car-crash victims fused with the wreckage of their cars, psychopathic invisible orthodontist, cthulian nightmares from the depths of our collective subconscious, and a race of bugs that lives beneath the sewage system who are the real source of 95% of the cocaine on the market.

But no vampires.


Is this the plot of Transformers III?

Cos' it sounds better than the first two.

[Ardent Kat]

Out of 71 votes, it looks pretty close to what I would've guessed. 1 out of 3.

Is anyone else a little creeped out by this? I mean 1 out of 3? Wow. The genre isn't dead and won't be dead any time soon, but it's safe to say the market is extremely glutted. Supersaturated even.

I've gotta believe an aspiring writer's odds would be better to pick a more original subject. Otherwise you're competing with a flood of people writing different variations of the same thing, and odds are good that many are writing it better than you. =/ Better to go with originality rather than popularity, especially if you don't have any clips (http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-writers-clips.htm) to your name for your query letter.

[LordMoogi]

I have vamps in a few of my stories, but they never really take center stage. Like, in one of them- which takes place in a universe where hundreds of existing stories are true- vampires are known by the public at large, and while some of them are productive, good citizens, others are just ravenous monsters. (Surprisingly, this idea of public vampires did not come from the TV series True Blood, but rather from Buffy the Vampire Slayer's 'Season Eight' comic book series.) But as far as I've planned out, vamps aren't really that important to the story. They're really more or less background detail.

[Alan Yee]

I haven't written anything with a vampire in it since seventh grade (five years ago). Most of my recent stories, including my novel, involve demons, witches, and witch-demons.

[Satsya]

Is anyone else a little creeped out by this? I mean 1 out of 3? Wow. The genre isn't dead and won't be dead any time soon, but it's safe to say the market is extremely glutted. Supersaturated even.

I've gotta believe an aspiring writer's odds would be better to pick a more original subject. Otherwise you're competing with a flood of people writing different variations of the same thing, and odds are good that many are writing it better than you. =/ Better to go with originality rather than popularity, especially if you don't have any clips (http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-writers-clips.htm) to your name for your query letter.

Don't worry. You're not alone in that feeling.

As for me, I'm just going to focus on my 1920s-based political suspense and dark (non-vampire) fantasy. I'm definitely of the mind that people should write what they want to, rather than go with what's popular. For some people, their interest happens to genuinely be vampires -- *shrug* more power to them. The rest of us should write what holds our interest. :)

[Ardent Kat]

people should write what they want to, rather than go with what's popular. For some people, their interest happens to genuinely be vampires -- *shrug* more power to them. The rest of us should write what holds our interest. :)

Totally agreed, but even true vampire enthusiasts have more than one interest, right? If it's just writing for fun, that's one thing, but if it's writing with commercial intent, it just seems like good strategy to pick something that's not already exhausted by a glutted market.

I've been interested in vampires and Tolkien-style elves (among other things), but I discarded them both as potential novel ideas from the very get-go for lack of originality. Instead, I started with the question, "What am I passionately interested in that hasn't been done before?" I have to believe something more rare like a centaur protagonist would pique an agent's interest more than yet another vampire book. (I mean, 1 in 3, people... Think about it!)

[Satsya]

Totally agreed, but even true vampire enthusiasts have more than one interest, right? If it's just writing for fun, that's one thing, but if it's writing with commercial intent, it just seems like good strategy to pick something that's not already exhausted by a glutted market.

I've been interested in vampires and Tolkien-style elves (among other things), but I discarded them both as potential novel ideas from the very get-go for lack of originality. Instead, I started with the question, "What am I passionately interested in that hasn't been done before?" I have to believe something more rare like a centaur protagonist would pique an agent's interest more than yet another vampire book. (I mean, 1 in 3, people... Think about it!)

I have definitely thought about current popularity as well while choosing my own subject matter, with the same intentions as you say. However as said by others, right now it seems publishers are more likely than ever to publish vampire books, precisely because they are so popular. I can't say myself how true that statement actually is, but that's the rumor influencing potential authors.

Another thing to mention is that even if you do write about a currently overused subject, there are a nearly infinite number of twists you can put on it -- I wager that's why most people write a subject already popular: they want to put their own twist on it. If they succeed, they've both taken advantage of the subject's popularity and done something original and worth reading.

I believe what matters most is that the story is interesting and written well, regardless of how popular the subject was at the time it was written. After all, 100 years from now, people will look back on what's written now with a very different view of what's currently popular (probably). They will be influenced very little by the fact that their favorite story was written during a craze of that subject matter that happened to hit 100 years ago.

All that said, a centaur protagonist sounds interesting. I'm going to be wondering what that story of yours is all about, now. :)

[Faide]

I've never liked vampires, and I've never written about them either. They're blood-sucking corpses, and they don't interest me.

Short and simple x)