I read this interesting post on the blog Here Be Magic. It’s a really good read and I strongly recommend those who are considering submitting a paranormal romance with vampires or werewolves read it. To sum up, it seems that some publishers are slowing down on publishing vampire or werewolf stories. Some feel we’ve hit the saturation point.
I’m thinking we have. I’m getting very tired of all the titles involving vampires that seem to appear at every store I visit. Vampires can have a lot of depth if written correctly. Zero (Vampire Knight) and Lestat (Interview series by Anne Rice) are the first that come to mind. And, although I didn’t watch the show very often, I liked Angel from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Too often, though, they end up flat or worse, unsympathetic.
I’ve found I like stories with shape-shifters better (though not werewolves for some reason). The River’s Gift by Mercedes Lackey, for example, does very well with the sweet romance between a kelpie and a princess. Though I really think it was a short story fluffed into book size, the ending, for me, was completely worth it. And one of the things I loved best about this story is that it used a creature I knew next to nothing about and had an ending that I couldn’t predict. I had a general idea, but the way it worked out pleasantly surprised me. I wish there were more stories like that out there.
Anyway, a quick update and then I have to go do other things.
Proofing of my short story should be done by the end of next week. The cover is pretty much finished. It was fun playing around and trying out the different effects, but I want to give it a few more days before I say for sure that I’m done with it. I’ll post it sometime next week, probably later rather than sooner in case I need to fix anything, though you never know with me. Then, I start formatting/uploading to places like Kindle, PubIt, etc.
More later.
Amy Keeley 