Vampire Use In Contemporary Fantasy

[fjeastman]

I'm curious about the opinions of the authors on the boards as to vampires in current popular contemporary fantasy/supernatural stories.

How many of you, working in those genres, use vampires in your works?  Why?

Why do you think there seem to be so many out there?  Especially newer stuff. 

And, how many of you are, or can think of, authors currently using vampires but NOT in a "Sexy/Hot/Sensual" role?  If you're working in the genre, why have you chosen to go the way you have with "them"?

--fje

[terroja]

I think vampires are in over-use right now. If I were going to use any contemporary monsters in any of my stories (and why should I when I can make up my own?), I'd use werewolves.

Vampires appeal to people because they are sexual and passionate, yet completely in control--and since most people are dull, passionless and unable to control their lives, a vampiric existence can seem very romantic to them. However, I often feel like I'm too much in control of myself, and what I long for is my appetite to be unleashed--so I prefer werewolves.

I think we want to see ourselves in our monsters for some reason. Probably because it's cathartic.

[becroberts]

I think vampires are in over-use right now.

Agreed, though I feel the same way about werewolves and shapeshifters at the moment. I don't think it's necessary for a character to be inhuman in order to be inhuman, if that makes any sense, and my favourite type of vampire is the "regular guy" variety of P.N. Elrod, or of Forever Knight. (Though I may just be prejudiced in favour of  cops and private investigators.  )

I'm writing fantasy in a world where vampires could potentially exist because there other magical creatures, including demons, but I'm choosing not to use them because I prefer to keep everything a little more on the mundane side. That is to say, mages are commonplace and aren't given much in the way of special reverence, psychics get bad press, dragons run pubs and even demons need accountants. Vampires tend to draw too much attention to themselves (not for nothing are they leeches) and stand out from the crowd, which would change the emphasis of my books in ways I don't want.

[Cathy Clamp]

And, how many of you are, or can think of, authors currently using vampires but NOT in a "Sexy/Hot/Sensual" role? 

ME! Well, me and my co-author. Our latest series has EVIL vampires in a paranormal romance setting. Vamps (called The Thrall) are the bad guys--sentient parasites with a "killer bee" hive mentality that attach to a human's spinal cord. We've gotten more than one "ICK!" from our readers, while others cheer our new concept!  It's called "Touch of Evil," and the sequel will be called "Touch of Madness."

We decided to go with a new twist on the vampire myth because it felt like "traditional" vamps had been overdone. The ones we've done are in an alternate reality, where they evolved alongside humans. They're right there at the top of the food chain with us. None of the "legendary" stuff work on them, of course. They attach to only the most healthy humans and are very short lived (because how long can a parasite grow inside the skull before it runs out of room?) Regular humans can't spot them at all.  They can be out at all hours--although they PREFER night. Garlic, silver, crosses--nope. But break off their teeth? Yep! It's a central nervous system shock.  And you can kill the human Host and kill the parasite (which brings up all sorts of ethical issues in the world.  Does a human Host who's been "infected" with a parasite deserve to die?) Etc., etc.

I think there's lots of ways to improve or skew the vampire myth, saving some elements and rewriting others. I too find the whole "sexy, leather wearing guys" to be tiresome. I still read some, but eventually I'm afraid I'll get tired of it.

[Mickey Finn]

They'll exist in my books, because most of the things that go bump in the night exist in my books, but they're not the sexy kind

[Dom]

I have a single vampire, but he's not really a vampire, because I, like everyone else, am sort of getting tired of them!  I'm guessing within the next decade, most new series on the market will not have vampires anymore, because everything's sort of tilting the other way in response to the overload of vamps on the market now.

There's a lot of things in mythology that are supposed to suck blood, but otherwise don't act like the Western vampire at all.  Spirits, beasts, demons, etc.  My "vampire" is one of those.  He's actually a faerie creature, and it's not the blood drinking that's the problem with him; it's the cold iron in his skin that freaks his faerie relatives out.  And although he is technically dead or transformed, his magicalness has to do with time/the future more than death and blood and night.

As a side note, I also predict that werewolves will go "out of style" soon, unless a series emerges that is really the defining series for werewolves (I've read a few with werewolves in them, but they didn't really TAKE the legend and OWN it like vampires have been owned by a few authors).  I do have a werewolf story, because I latched onto them before werewolves started surging behind the vampire wake.  Ah, well.

[BigMama]

In conversation with Charlaine, we touched upon the "fashionable genre's"  in popular fiction. One genre will ride the wave of favor for a while and then fade and another become predominant. The paranormal genre seems to be on the crest at the moment, but it is beginning to get overwritten, IMO, and readers are going to begin looking for something new.

[fjeastman]

This brings up another topic I've been curious about:  Where people think the market will be shifting. 

For my part, a quick look at the local BigChain Bookseller shelf in the SciFi/Fantasy section shows quite a few supernatural/contemporary fantasy series with the hotsexy vampires in play ... LKH, Butcher, Harris, Harrison, Briggs, etc.  Some of these are established series, some are relatively new, some don't even have the shiny worn off them yet.

Is the backlash imminent?  Are sales for these series already beginning to flag?  Is the backlash building in the market or in the eyes of authors?  (I.E. are we going to find the hotsexy vampire in particular and the supernatural genre in general fading because the reader base gets bored or are authors searching elsewhere from a perception, in-the-forest, that the market will HAVE to get bored and by the time they finish the Great American Genre Novel it'll be utterly unsalable?)

I, myself, after reading around in the genre for a few months, am finding the abundance of hotsexy vampires ... obvious.  I haven't exactly had my finger on the pulse of genre fiction in the last few years (graduate studies) so I'm not sure if I'm seeing the tail end of a fad, the core of a new long-term market, or the apogee of a market pendulum.

An additional question:  Will the "backlash vampires" sell?  I see some people working in those directions ... nobody has, thus far, stepped forward to say:  "My vampires are hot, sexy, and like leather corsets and I'm PROUD OF IT."  I take it _Touch Of Evil_ has been picked up by a publisher?  How many others writing an alternate vampire mythos into their work intend to shop those works out?

I'm sort of picking brains right now.    For myself, I'm in the initial stages of a work and I sort of had to pause and ask myself ... "Is the market going to turn this into an unmovable lump before it ever gets finished?"  Both because it doesn't have hot'n'sexy leather-fetish bloodsuckers, and because the plotline centers on a different take on the mythology (though sort of in a single-plot-in-a-series way) so they're there.  AND because it's noir + monsters = 1st person narrative (no wizard, though).   

Good writing can help, but I'd rather not get lumped into a market burn-out for lack of dilligent audience research.

--fje

[Tersa]

I don't know how much of what I read really qualifies as fantasy, but most of the stuff I trip across with vampires either paints them as seduction machines or angsty seduction machines.  I personally love vampires and would really, really love to write something centering around them, but I think right now people are getting sick of them.  That really saddens me, because I don't like seeing them as just pretty sex machines, or just anything for that matter.  It makes them so dull, and there's just so damn much potential for making them into interesting, facinating people who are incredibly sexy because of how interesting and deep they are, which is far hotter than just being a seduction machine.  But maybe I'm romanticizing it all far too much... 

[Dom]

I think the market is looking for the next big thing.  Which is vague, I know, but nobody will know what it is until it comes out.  Basically, the next big thing is pushed by the next big author.  The next big author sets the trend, and it sparks a certain creativity wave that is reflected with bunches of new authors.  It could be anything.

The first fad that I have personally seen is dark urban fantasy; Anne Rice, Laurell K. Hamilton, Jim Butcher, Tanya Huff, P. N. Elrod, Patricia Briggs, etc.  It's still going on, but I'm not sure how much longer it can go.  I entered it early; I picked up LKH when I was 12 (about 10 years ago), and I didn't touch Jim Butcher until a few months ago because I was overtly jaded about urban fantasy and I thought it would suck (Ha!).  So for me personally, interest is flagging.  But I can't tell if it will die down for others or not; perhaps it will become an enduring sub-genre of SFF, much like how Tolkein-esque fantasy is still big (when done right).

Sub-Fads in Dark Urban Fantasy:
- Sexy, Erotic Vampires (the biggest fad)
- Witches/Wizards (well, it's fantasy) in The Real World
- Werewolves (the second biggest fad)

The second fad I've seen is erotic fantasy.  Anne Bishop, Jacqueline Carey, the crossover fantasy/romance imprint Luna, and there's this knockoff of Carey's Kushiel series I've seen, but I don't recall the title or author.  Also, I think this is churning around with all the slash fanfiction online, some of which is very hard NC-17, feeding on itself.  It'll probably explode into mainstream in a much bigger way soon, we've just seen the first shots.

As for "backlash vamps"; I can't say if it will sell.  It might.  E. E. Knight has alien vampires, and he sells.  Then again, alien/parasite vamps is just a sci-fi spin on the fantasy mythos.  There's a line somewhere that says, "if the amazing thing/creature/whatever is done by magic, it's fantasy, and if the same thing is done by a machine, it's sci-fi."  That's what people are trying to do with vampires, and I don't think it will go over very big, myself, or maybe I'm just biased and I don't like it.  Mostly because it's so obvious, it's a staple of the SFF genre to flip something like that.  Tired of big sword-weilding barbarian men?  Have big sword-weilding barbarian women instead!  Tired of evil fantasy dragons?  Let's have good telepathic alien dragons instead. ::coughPerncough::  Tired of Dracula-type vamps?  Let's make 'em alien and biology-based instead of Evil and dead.

Things that I think might make it big are:
- demons (hey, vamps and werewolves have been done.).  Then again I'm biased here, as my biggest world has many demons.
- Epic Urban Fantasy (I think Jim is pushing the Harry Dresden series this way; it's basically a merger of dark urban fantasy and epic fantasy)
- non-gritty Urban fantasy/fairytale urban fantasy (things have been Gritty so long I think Heros and Flowers and Sunshine are going to make a comeback despite false cries of Mary Sue)
- fantasy based on some mythos we aren't familiar with (yet)
- christian fantasy (fantasy in general has really been kicking christianity around for years and promoting wicca and new age religions.  I think this will backlash; I'm not even christian, and yet I really like Jim Butcher's Carpenter family, because it's christianity treated with respect, which is so rare in the genre.)

Eastern and Asian fantasy have potential to be hits, look at the popularity of Manga and Anime, except for the fact that SFF is mostly a Western European genre, and most authors are white middle class western folk, and don't have the roots in Asian culture to really do it right. (Sort of like Historical fantasy; to do this you really have to do your research.)

African fantasy is entirely untapped, even more so than Asian fantasy.  This could go over really big, but then again, there aren't many black writers in the genre so there aren't many people who have the urge to really dig down to the roots and do the research to make it work.

Anyway, those are just some of my thoughts and opinions.

[BigMama]

Dom, I wonder if the trend will be away from the paranormal-- vamps, fairies and were's, and toward the supernatural--angel's, demons, ghosts. I think this may be the "new" genre that will become hot. I agree that the "spiritual" seems to be gaining some momentum.

[becroberts]

Dom, I wonder if the trend will be away from the paranormal-- vamps, fairies and were's, and toward the supernatural--angel's, demons, ghosts. I think this may be the "new" genre that will become hot. I agree that the "spiritual" seems to be gaining some momentum.

Demons? Oh good. I can be trendy for once, then. 

[Lord Arioch]

What I have been TRYING to write could easily be described as Dark Urban(-ish) Fantasy.

ALL the creatures exist in one form or another.  In the case of vamps, they are around, still hidden, but come in a variety of kinds.  I think, what I'm gonna do is use each legend from each area and play with them all.

aka where they are from, dictates how/what they are.  But demons are definately gonna be more 'center-stage' than most of anything else.


If I ever get it done, anyway.

[novium]

My interpretation is that it's the old sex and death fetish. It sort of creeps me out.

I think vampires are in over-use right now. If I were going to use any contemporary monsters in any of my stories (and why should I when I can make up my own?), I'd use werewolves.

Vampires appeal to people because they are sexual and passionate, yet completely in control--and since most people are dull, passionless and unable to control their lives, a vampiric existence can seem very romantic to them. However, I often feel like I'm too much in control of myself, and what I long for is my appetite to be unleashed--so I prefer werewolves.

I think we want to see ourselves in our monsters for some reason. Probably because it's cathartic.

[Amber]

My interpretation is that it's the old sex and death fetish. It sort of creeps me out.

Ohhh.... I think that's why the vamps and sex thing bugs me! I hadn't thought about it before...

I just have problems with trying to think of a giant tick as "sexy."