I don’t think you have too much to worry about- I think about it myself from time to time with that tinge of fear that ‘what if the publishing world decides it forever hates vampires novels because of this craze’ but I repeat: you don’t have anything to worry about. Remember Harry Potter? All those magic school books that came out afterward? Then the long while we didn’t see any on the shelves?

Guess what?

They’re back. Right now the shelves are full of vampy tales, in a few more months we’ll be wondering where they went as the publishing world takes a break. Once they get that break though they’ll be back. If they stopped publishing everything that became annoyingly popular for a time,… well, we wouldn’t have much.

My advice: If your book is ready to be published- wait. Wait, wait, wait! Wait until the craze is long over else you’ll be buried under tomes of ‘not so great’ or dismissed as ‘another one’ by your publishers. Wait until it’s over and people are going ‘You know what I could use right about now, one of those vampire books…’ And if you think there won’t be people saying that then you couldn’t be more mistaken. I’ll be one of those people, lol.

Good luck with your novel and thank you for the comment!

I love writing about vampires, love reading about them but right now it just seems like the quality of what’s out there is going kaput. Hopefully as the band wagon drives on to something else some true gems will start to shine through again.

Good luck with your vampires!

Stephanie Meyer’s books aren’t necessarily derivative of Anne Rice’s. J.K. Rowling’s work isn’t necessarily derivative of C.S. Lewis. Books written in the same genre will always share some elements. *steps off soap box*

In any event, I have read some great vampire books. I find that when authors take risks with the story, putting their own creative spin on an otherwise “overdone” story archetype, then the result is intriguing. For instance, Sunny writes a fantastic series of vampire books that began with her book “Mona Lisa Awakening” and continues many books later in her new series “Lucinda, Dangerously.”

Although her characters have vampire qualities, they are not classic vampires. The story feels fresh because she built this rich world around the story, and fleshed out her characters so that, even while I’m thinking “I’ve read vampire books before,” I still get surprised at some of the things her characters are able to do.

As far as having fear of writing something and fallen into a trend, I don’t think about that when I first get an idea. That comes up in the planning stages. I don’t want people to read my work and think, “that sounds like so-and-so author, so this person must have taken/derived this work from the other writers.”

One way I avoid that is by focusing a lot of characterization. I focus on their goals, motivations, internal and external conflicts. Those are things that won’t feel like retreads to readers because these conflicts should be specific to the character and the plot.