Sunday, April 7, 2013

News Flash: This Blog is Over


So I recently heard paranormal romance was on its way out.

I remember when I was working on a vampire novel about 15 years ago and I learned that vampire novels were on their way out. I was seriously depressed and put my very unique vampire novel away. I still loved to read them, but apparently too many people had written them and the world had reached its vampire novel quota, and no one was allowed to write one ever again.

Silly me. A good seven years later, Twilight was born. But, see, now there have been too many vampire novels. Now we’re not allowed to write them anymore. They’re “over.” And some people will tell you it’s even Stephenie Meyer’s fault that vampire novels are over. She ruined them by writing a very unique vampire novel and that’s just not done.

So, giving up on my vampire dreams, a few years ago, I wrote a series about angels and demons. At the time, I’d never seen a fantasy novel about angels and demons so I thought this was pretty unique, but apparently, around the time I was shopping my series in 2010, angels and demons were already overdone. Imagine my chagrin when I realized I’d stupidly written something that was already passé before it had even become popular enough for me to have heard of. Good thing nobody told me angels and demons were overdone and I wasn’t allowed to write about them until I was already through or I’d have put that series aside, too. (Book 3 will be out in June of this year.)

So skip to 2013 and I’m working on my first paranormal novel that I’m actually intending from the get-go to be a romance. (My other books just sort of went there without my knowing about it until it was too late. Books often do things like that when you’re not looking.) I’m really enjoying this book and excited about getting it ready to submit. But hold the phone—haven’t you heard? Paranormal romance is OVER. So step away from the computer, all you writers who are doing what you love, and put those ereaders down, all you readers who love the paranormal, because we’ve apparently glutted the market and no one is allowed to do this anymore. (Not to mention that paranormal romance apparently ruined urban fantasy—or urban fantasy by girls ruined urban fantasy by boys—or urban fantasy ruined epic fantasy. Or something.)

But of course, books themselves are over, too. People don’t read anymore. Publishing is dying. Paper books are a thing of the past and nobody reads ebooks, because they’re not real. Tl;dr. (And never use a semicolon, because Kurt Vonnegut said they were “transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing.” Shows what he knew. Hermaphrodites can't be transvestites; they'd have nothing to wear.)

3 comments:

Jo said...

Okay - think you were spammed in that first comment...

Pshaw. I am a reader - and a high-test one at that, and I don't think that any genre is on its way out. People love their own little pockets of literature, and paranormal romance and urban fantasy are my absolute favorites. Keep writing!

(And as someone with a degree in Linguistics, I love semi-colons!)

Jane Kindred said...

Yay! I figured out how to delete the obnoxious spam! :D

As for semicolons, Vonnegut went on to say they only proved you went to college. ;) I adore them, myself. I've had editors who took all of them out, and one who said you couldn't "speak" a semicolon, so I wasn't allowed to use them in dialogue. (But apparently, you *can* speak other punctuation. LOL) I love Vonnegut, but he's just plain wrong on that one. I also love Stephen King, who says you should pretty much never use an adverb. (And he's not the only one.) But I still love adverbs; I just try to use them judiciously.

Jane Kindred said...

Ya see what I did there?? ;) (Also, how could I wink at you without the sublime semicolon?)