Been Travelling the Universe

Or rather I'm just a super lazy blog updater. Seriously, my lj barely gets updated nowadays. Mostly I'm a facebook hussy, I am on occasion prone to updating my status' more than is socially appropriate. Although, I do draw the line on updating from where I am located, no one wants to know that I'm standing in a queue for KFC or whatever.

Technically this blog was supposed to be about my journey into writing my novel. Sadly, the novel that I had planned (and which I was running a vague idea on) has been put on the very tall pile of ideas for later use. Most of these ideas are for my historical fantasy of werewolves which perhaps fortunately have not come to fruition. The market for paranormal romance is still running strong but seems to have taken a markedly strange turn into the fallen angels angle. But as an update apparently there is a zombie romance novel. I'm not going to try and think how it works. (Iago: "Braiinnzzz." Katerina: "Oh Iago, you are the one for me!").

The thing that mostly stopped me however, the massive case of writers block aside, was the fact that I got a bit too caught up in WoW. But now that I have briefly recovered from my intense addiction to said game - mainly due to most of the people I was friends with disappearing - I am now working my way back into writing again. So my goal is to try for 150 words every day or two until I've reached the level of inspiration that I had a few years ago where I could write 1500 words in an hour or so. The funny thing is, I actually had no real interest in knuckling down no matter how much I told myself I wanted to until I talked to one of my WoW buddies recently.

So now I've started making a plan, which is something I never really did for my writing. I've gotten down my ideas and characters and I've finally started writing. I don't particularly want to say much about it besides the fact that it's mostly modern fantasy and that people close to me won't even see it until I've written at least fifty pages. Mostly because I want to have written down something that long or substantial, to prove to myself mostly that I do still want to be a writer and that this is what I want to do for a living. I have tossed up the idea of having more than one of my friends reading over it though so I can get varied feedback that should help.

I also started reading again which is something else I sorely neglected. Finished about seven - eight books so far in a couple of months which is a lot more than what I was reading before. Mainly fantasy of course, one of them is an Australian author as well that I gave a second chance after buying the series on a whim.

Essentially, I am more or less going to try to come back so I can update more regularly on my progress like I originally planned to do.

Word Count: 547

Relevant Question is Relevant

Or at least semi relevant in today's young, hip population. Most likely the most you'll take away from this blog is how much of an old person I sound, instead of a young, hip twenty year old. I have been known to shake my fist at more than one hoon driving on the road as I shuffle along the footpath. But I digress.

(Also in the whole digressing tangent whilst we're here. I was told by my pal Anthony that I had to throw an honourable mention his way as he was the one who linked me to the Raptor watches Edward pic. So, here it is. *honourable mention here*)

As I briefly made mention of yesterday, I do plan on writing a novel. What kind of novel some of you ask? Well. I did have plans to write a werewolf novel. Yes, now you see my dilemma and the entire theme for the rest of this post:

Werewolves Vs. Vampires.

Now, usually I wouldn't be thinking much of this. Hey, I like fantasy and werewolves and so naturally this makes sense to write about it, right? Well, the problem that I see surfacing now in the modern YA/adult fantasy book market is that I might be jumping on the bandwagon after everyone seems to have gotten bored and jumped off. The thing is, there aren't that many werewolf novels floating around, or at least ones that have become best sellers. This is a good thing in some ways because it means at least I have a possible niche to get into - the downside is The Vampire Problem or TVP.


TVP is relatively simple. In the last five years (maybe even shorter), Vampires have suddenly become a huge thing again. Normally this wouldn't be much of a problem, but most of the time, Vampires and Werewolves kind of have a thing. Their bitter enemies, pitted against one another, constantly destined to be each other's nemesis' in books/movies/comics. Basically, where there are werewolves - there are usually vampires too (ok, sure. There have been numerous Vampire novels without werewolves. But for the sake of this argument, lets just ignore those).

People are getting sick of the whole Vampire Craze. Every where you go, pictures of Vampires and other vampire related objects are practically being broadcast into your face if you happen to be wandering around innocently at Conventions or the Bookstore. I myself happen to like occasionally spending time in the Young Adult section because I find it often has some quite good books and when I just want a holiday read and not srs bzns. YA is probably the market that I would aim for because it just seems to be the right fit, that and adult novels scare me sometimes. Most of the YA section is now taken up by the masses and masses of Vampires Series.

What hardcore readers consider a light reading list.

Now, I'm not just hating on Vampires for the heck of it. I have read a couple of lulzy Vampire Series that have entertained me such as the Vampire Beach series, Evernight Series, and the first three books of the House of Night series. Twilight (although I refuse to read the last book) is a completely different matter. Twilight seemed to alleviate TVP. All of a sudden, after Twilight, Vampires became a huge craze again and so the whole mythological Vampire (and to some extent Werewolf) market has become something that people are now going to avoid. So, pretty much writing a werewolf novel may not get me very far.

	Vampires: Mythical creatures which were once considered genuinely scary, but are now the laughing stock of the monster world thanks to Stephenie Meyer and her extreme pile of fail 'Twilight', otherwise known as 'Necrophilia for Tweens'. - Urban Dictionary

What is it about Vampires that attracts people though? I actually do not see what people find interesting in them. I haven't read Dracula, or Interview with a Vampire, or any of the other older series, but it's clear that there's been something about them that keeps people reading. To me, Werewolves are just so much more fantastic. And alive. I think that's a big thing for me. Vampires have never really interested me because they aren't alive.

Seriously. No one would tap that.

Why is it just Vampires that people seem to get so hot and bothered over? The thing that bothers me the most about Vampires (besides the obvious necrophilia issues) is that when I'm reading them, the Vampires are just so... argh. I had major issues with the House of Night series that I stopped reading half way through the first book. For some reason, all the female characters in Vampire novels are huge hussies. Is there something wrong with having one boyfriend/partner/significant other? All, if not most of these girls end up in love quadrangles. D: It just seems to be showing young girls the wrong idea about relationships and love. DEAD PEOPLE ARE NOT SEXY. This is why there are no Zombie romances. For serious.

Whereas werewolves are just: they're people. Monsters, yes. I can agree completely that werewolves can be vicious blood thirsty creatures, I'm not going to completely cotton ball the issue. But they aren't dead. They are mostly human 87% of the time (depending on which werewolf medium you are looking at). To me, the werewolves in the Harry Potter series showed both sides of the werewolf. One in Remus Lupin, the boy who grew up with it after being bitten and learnt to live with it and choose to not give into his bestial instincts and Fenrir Greyback - who, lets just admit it - was a complete psychopath. With werewolves, there seems to a more "normal" romantic relationship. They die. They're mortal. They aren't going to live forever in shiny happy land of rainbows and sparkles. There are still consequences and to me, most Vampire novels just seem to gloss over them.

And that is pretty much my entire issue with my novel. How am I supposed to enter a market for a young adult series when people are getting bored of Vampires. Werewolves are pretty much considered to be in the same area as their bloodsucking arch-enemies, so what do you do when the bandwagon seems to have left a long time ago? One suggestion was a Chupacabra romance but I dunno, it seems almost as bad as the Minotaur idea.

The next Edward Cullen?

I think I'll just write a children's book about Cyril the Sad Squid and call it a day.

(So, that was less of a question and more of a 'My incoherent thoughts, let me show you them.')