Hot/Cold: VAMPIRES
I started the New Year off with a carefully crafted Blog Schedule. According to it, today I should be introducing the Blog Crawl feature, where I surf the blogs, pick up an interesting topic, and find a different spin on that discussion.
What's up, Blog World? I could only find HEA discussions (like this one at Dear Author.com) and what's left to say? So, let's play another game instead: Hot/Cold.
Hot/Cold: Vampires
Can you imagine paranormal romantic fiction (HEA'd or otherwise) without vampires? No way, you shout. Well, me either.
But.
I am about vamped out. When I get wind of a new series that's billed as Buffy in the Regency and I yawn, that is serious serious burn out. (A year from now I'll pick this book up, be all excited, and the rest of you will be yawning because you've so been there and so done that.)
I have fallen out of love with the current vision of the paranormal romance vampire hero. Now this is not a bad thing. It just means I can fall in love all over again when the New Paranormal Romance Vampire Hero arrives to sweep me off my feet.
What might I like to see in a New Paranormal Romance Vampire Hero, you ask?
(1) More violence. I'm sure this shocks those of you who know me, har har. But I feel that the fangs aren't sharp enough anymore. The aura of danger has dulled. I want me a real predator. I want my heroine's la petit mort to be mixed up with the real threat of dying.
(2) No more angst. I want a new emotion from my vamp hero/anti-hero. I leave it up to the author which new emotion, but I want to be surprised. Give me a new emotional tone to a romantic vamp, please!
So what's your take on the Vampire? Is he still hot? Would any changes to him make you go cold? Or do you agree with me, he's cold like yesterday's Bloody Mary, and what would make him hot again for you?
3 comments:
I agree on more violence. As to attitude, give me one that enjoys being the badest ass this side of the Transylvanian divide. Give me one that purposefully wants to steal the heroine's soul, for an incredibly selfish reason: and then must somehow get redeemed: and yet, not necessarily be sorry he did what he did. OR give me VERY suave, VERY decadent, VERY VERY Dark - like Darth Vader meets Antonio Banderas with James Dean DNA. Or, give me all villians: hero's a bad ass, heroine's even a badder ass, and throw them up against yet a third ultimate evil. Is that too much to ask?
The core question I guess is this: can the HEA-defined romance genre provide the ambiguity in the good guy that we seem to crave?
Fear. All the vamps seem to fear is losing their girl, nothing else scares them. And so, I find myself not afraid at all, since I know they won't lose the girl. You have a point about HEAs...it might be impossible to be really scared by a book with a happy ending, but I don't really want to give my HEAs up...maybe I'm just not ready yet.
I think a non-alpha vamp might be kinda interesting too, but it might not work...
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