In which I am entirely too negative.
Let's start with this, from this morning's Lunch Weekly:
Sarah Gray's WUTHERING BITES, a retelling of Wuthering Heights in which Heathcliff is a vampire, to John Scognamiglio at Kensington, in a very nice deal, for publication in September 2010, by Evan Marshall at Evan Marshall Agency (World).
For those who don't know Publisher's Lunch codes, "very nice deal" translates to somewhere between 50K and 100K.
Now, I want to emphasize that I hold no ill will toward the writer, whom I don't even know. Good on her for landing a fat deal like this on a debut novel.
What gets me is... the market-chasing. Again, no aspersions cast at the author; she may have written a masterpiece for all I know. But the publisher paid at least 50K for yet another vampire novel.
I have been very, very tired of vampire/supernatural critter novels for several years now, and the latest iteration, in which 19th-century classics are retold with the insertion of zombies, vampires, or werewolves, has not improved my thinking on the genre.
I might be less annoyed if it were another literary period. My intense allergy for 99% of 19th century prose surely colors my feeling on this point.
Or...maybe not. "Shakespearean vampires." "Philip Marlowe vs. vampires." "Vampires at the siege of Troy." "Nick Carraway witnesses a vampire hunter stake the Great Gatsby."
No. No no no no no! Do not want.
Please, readers, enough. Stop. There are enough books in the world of this subgenre that you have all the reading you want. Please stop buying them, and let other sorts of books get some shelf-time.