Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Vampires, the Fascination

Okay, so first thing to get out of the way. Its been a long time since I put up a blog post; apparently I skipped all of 2009. So yeah, I've been busy. Or lazy, whatever. I hope no one minds too much; since I think I have no comments and virtually no readers, it shouldn't be a problem. In reality, I've been in a creative slump for a while, and haven't felt like doing a lot of writing. Its been coming back, though, and as a matter of fact that's not just why I'm actually writing a post here, its in a way the subject of the post.

To get to the meat of the matter, I've noticed for some time now that one of the big phenomena in the entertainment world today is vampires. Every time I walk through a book store, I see vampire fiction taking up more space. Its to the point that its crossing numerous genres; no longer are vampire stories merely classic horror literature, they've worked their way into romance, mystery/crime/detective stories, and teen fiction, not to mention the books from my childhood. Feel free to explore, you'll find vast examples of varying quality. The Twilight series is now, of course, being made into a ridiculously popular series of movies, much to the dismay of the series' critics. Some people might simply notice the trend, others might be pleased or displeased at the wealth of material. I see an opportunity.

I've read a lot of these books; Twilight, Anita Blake, The Diaries of the Family Dracul, etc. They range from quite good to moderately entertaining to wall banger. I've in the past been accounted a fairly competent writer, able to devise enthralling D&D campaigns and skillfully woven creative writing essays. If I combine the popularity of vampire fiction, my own familiarity with it, and my own writing skills, I have a fairly simple process:
  1. Read vampire novels
  2. Realize vampire novels make lots of money
  3. Write a vampire novel
  4. Profit!
So, I'm actually doing it. I'm writing a novel. I will be liberally referencing history, other vampire fiction, and of course tvtropes.org. I probably won't go into details on the book in this blog, but I'll try to put forth some of the trials and tribulations of writing a book. I'll also try to get posts in here about my other thoughts. The world deserves to know what I have to say; isn't that the narcissistic point of most blogging?