It sucks to be a vampire writer... good thing I prefer werewolves

So I haven’t been living up to my New Year’s resolutions. Haven’t been focusing on my writing like I wanted to, haven’t been pursuing getting an agent, drawing any of the illustrations I wanted to, etc. Basically I’ve been slacking, and while there are always plenty of excuses, the primary reason is that I’ve just been losing my focus.

So one of my big agendas is to get one of my novels fully edited to where I think it needs to be. I’ve been editing that thing since 2009. I began writing it in 2008, and just as I got immersed in it, the first Twilight movie came out. Here’s the big problem with that: my novel is a werewolf novel. Yeah, there’s always been vampire movies and werewolf movies, but that was a bad year for my genre.

My preferred version of the movie

Then all these vampire shows came out. And I don’t mean specifically vampire shows. These were cross-contaminated supernatural shows. Where there were vampires and werewolves (and witches… sometimes). They just kept popping up

 

Technically this show premiered two months before they release Twilight

over

True Blood for teens

and over

and over

and over

Yeah, they're not called vampires in this show, but the glittery abominations from Twilight aren't vampires either (real vampires burn in the sun).

and over

Technically, a spinoff, but it still counts

and over again

Now perhaps this was just coincidence, but it seemed to trigger an over-saturation in the market. Everybody was into supernatural vampire/werewolf horror. So while my book is strictly a werewolf novel, nobody was looking for that. 

And it’s not like this is the first time they’ve done supernatural mashups. Hell, the original Universal Monsters had their own shared universe with Dracula and the Wolfman. 

It just seemed like it was becoming too much. The literary market felt the heat from this, and everybody was trying to get a piece of Stephanie Myers’ pie. I’m not even going to try and list all the vampire/werewolf novels that spawned from the obsession of so many Twi-hard fans. Just click here (the list exceeds 1,200).

Either way, hopefully enough time (ten years) has passed for the market to settle down, and maybe, just maybe, when I get it out there, there will be a place for my novel that isn’t overshadowed by everything else.