Standing out in the YA vampire genre

by Catherine Stovall

When Suzy asked me to be a guest on her blog, it took me a while to decide what to talk about. After all, shameless self-promotion may be part of the job but sometimes it does get old. Luckily, I happen to be at a birthday party earlier today and someone asked me a question that I felt was worthy of a blog post. The nice woman wanted to know, “Do you think your book will do well with so many other vampire books coming out?” My answer, “Of course, I offer something the others don’t. I have believable characters.”

When I started writing my new YA novel, Stolen: Book One of the Requiem of Humanity Series, I knew it would be tough to break into the market. In a world overran with vampire crazed tweens, teens, an even moms, it’s tough to get people to believe that you are giving them something original. Through every step of the process I had to stop and ask myself, “Has this been done before?”
With hundreds of popular vampire series popping up every day, it was a real challenge. I remember reading somewhere that if people couldn’t relate to the villain, even love them a little, then your character isn’t good enough. It became my goal to make my characters so that no one was pure evil or pure good. My solution to the problem would be to blur the line between good and bad.
For instance, we can take a look at Belle. Belle is the antagonist in the first book and we want to hate her. She orchestrates the demise of the main characters Jenda and Soborgne. She abuses her human servants and holds the world around her on puppet strings. She’s one of those women who are just vile. As she tells her story, you realize that the reason she became a murderer in life and a psychopathic vampire in death is because she was so badly treated as a young girl. Yet, the moment she begins to redeem herself and the reader starts feeling a little sorry for her, her dark nature reveals itself once more.
There are no guarantees in the publishing world. No one can write a book and say that it is definitely going to be published or printed. You can’t predict with one hundred percent accuracy what books will fall to the wayside or climb to the top best sellers list. The only thing you can do is try to stand out amongst the crowd. My way of doing so was to create three dimensional characters. I really enjoyed making my villains a little likeable. After all, the villains are the best part of the story. Without them, the good guys have nothing to do.
The Official Catherine Stovall WebPage www.catherinestovall.webs.com
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Twitter @CathStovall
To Purchase from Publishers Site: Untreed Reads http://bit.ly/qCgNAS