A formula

[sfph.livejournal.com]

(Success as a writer of vampire books) x (Duration of success)

Predisposition towards sanity

=

Craziness

 

 

Bram Stoker seems to have been sane, but from what I can tell, Dracula wasn’t particularly successful in his day. His ghost must be batshit.

Amelia Atwater-Rhodes, from my brief glance at her Wiki page, is also fairly sane. However, she was never as successful as, say, Anne Rice or LKH, and the duration seems to have been shorter.

Stephenie Meyer seems to be less crazy than LKH or Anne Rice, but she’s been successful for much less time than they have.

 

To count here, an author has to be known mainly for their vampires. Someone like, say, Jim Butcher doesn’t count; his stories contain vampires, but they aren’t the focus.

 

Anyway, that’s my theory.

Edits because my formatting skills are butt

Comments

[mystickiwi.livejournal.com]

Ohhhh man. Amelia Atwater-Rhodes was my FAVORITE (and In the Forests of the Night is still one of my all time favorite books). I think for her audience and her age she was one hell of a good writer, although she fell into a somewhat formulaic track and her shapeshifter stuff didn't interest me. She's the reason I started reading LKH, because she listed her as inspiration.

Fun trivia fact though- She had a mental breakdown and had to drop out of college to recover, however she seems to be doing perfectly fine now (I've never met her, but her best friend went to college with an ex). I think this says something, because she knew when to step back and collect herself, something LKH certainly doesn't.

[evewithanapple.livejournal.com]

I can speak for Amelia Atwater-Rhodes being level-headed- she participates on her official forums, and once cheerfully took part in a thread entitled "Aubrey [one of her characters] is a shallow, poorly thought-out character with no brains". Her early stuff isn't great, but she hasn't gotten the anti-criticism attitude that Rice & co are so obsessed with.

[easol.livejournal.com]

Atwater-Rhodes is average at best now, but her early stuff was absolutely ghastly. Vampire slaves who get to use the gym? Speshul-coloured hair? Buffy ripoffs named "Sarah" with witch pals? Not to mention her sullen oh-so-lovely writer-Sue who falls in love with the 2-D vampire hottie, and turns out to be a Superspeshul demi-vampire since fetushood blah blah blah.

[summersdream.livejournal.com]

So true. But then, she was a teenager writing for teenagers. And I fully admit to being utterly in love with those books when I was 13 too because no one had written Twilight yet so my hormone-soaked brain took what vampires it could get.
...
The highest praise I can give those novels now: THE VAMPIRES DIDN'T SPARKLE. See? They could be worse.

[easol.livejournal.com]

And your formula seems to be sadly correct. I think Meyer will catch up to them fairly soon -- despite the backlash she sold a lot of books recently, and sparkly vampires won't lose their appeal to the shallow.

[chadam-lives.livejournal.com]

well, since I plan on publishing a buttload of books about vampires, I see a lot of insanity in my future. Oh well. Least I'll be publish! xD

[chadam-lives.livejournal.com]

*published. Fuck's sake. lol

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

Try to become the exception that proves the rule?

[easol.livejournal.com]

If you must go mad, be sure it's an entertaining, colourful madness. Run naked through the woods and talk to the voices in your heads during cons, that sort of thing.

[sfph.livejournal.com]

Well, that partially depends on how crazy you are to begin with. But like Easol said, see if you can make it an entertaining kind of crazy rather than the infuriating, pull-your-hair-out kind.

[pandaemonaeum.livejournal.com]

I suggest practising now. It'll be fun :D

[notadoor.livejournal.com]

I think it's not just vampires that are the key; I think it's "wish fulfillment" that's the key, and I think an awful lot of writers, especially female ones, turn to vampires as their "wish fulfillment" -- which makes sense, cause vampires are the original sexy bad boys & girls (mostly thanks to the movies) and are a huge metaphor for sex, and so on and so forth.

And I think the wish-fulfillment thing might be why they are so defensive and snap easily; it's one thing to hear "you know, the characterization here doesn't work for me" and another to hear "yeah, your dream guy is actually a really creepy stalker type. That girl you wish you could be? Is manipulative and abuses her boyfriends." The latter feels like a personal attack.

But yeah, there are a bunch of paranormal/otherwise vampire-using authors who are not crazy. Kim Harrison's main character has been involved in crazy vampire love triangles since the first book, and she seems to be a classy, quiet and productive lady.

[gwynethfar.livejournal.com]

She wears a red wig to book signings because she has a weird belief that people expect her to be redheaded.

[gothgoddessrhia.livejournal.com]

Is that why her hair always looks so strange?

[gwynethfar.livejournal.com]

I guess. I met her this spring, and her hair was a total wig. It was very obvious.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

Well, maybe she just doesn't want people who know her as an author to recognize her in real life.

[gwynethfar.livejournal.com]

No, she wears it only to the signings... she was out and about at events with her name tag on during the conference without it. She honest to God said "people expect me to have red hair, because my character has red hair." Seriously, I would not make this up, because I know how much shit gets made up about authors.

[gwynethfar.livejournal.com]

Seriously, I think her series is the only one that hasn't rocketed downhill lately.

[summersdream.livejournal.com]

I find that kind of hilarious and sadly telling about the genre- we all just expect that the heroines will look exactly like some sort of wish-fulfillment version of the author. Did that trend begin with Laurita or does it predate her?

Which will be why my herione-who-deals-with-vampires-and-stuff will be short and blond. Thus when I am published and have signings, I will not need to wear a wig or heels and people can easily identify me as the author.

[gwynethfar.livejournal.com]

I've actually had people tell me at signings that I don't look anything like my main character... like I lied to them somehow... "YOU WRITE IN FIRST PERSON, AND YET YOU AREN'T REALLY SAYING THOSE THINGS ARE ABOUT YOURSELF? YOU MONSTER!"

[easol.livejournal.com]

You mean... you don't actually kill vampires/cast spells/save the world? AAAAAAAAA MY FAITH IN HUMANITY IS DESTROYED!

[pandorasblog]

Did that trend begin with Laurita or does it predate her?

Some pics of Anne Rice from the days when the Coven Ball still happened (the 90s, I guess) show that she had a taste for unusual and vaguely anachronistic clothes, at least during her work-related appearances - lacy shirts and the like, and one of the book jacket photos features her with some kind of gold-thread head-dress on. Nice, vaguely Egyptian-looking, and probably something one of her characters *would* wear...

[sfph.livejournal.com]

True. This formula might fall apart when you get away from writers as famous as Rice and Meyer.

[pandorasblog]

WORD. I've always thought that was why Anne Rice was so against fanfiction. It's not that she was so hot on copyright law not being broken, or that she thought it would damage her reputation: her major characters are mostly aspects of her own personality, so her plea not to write stories where the characters do things she would never make them do strikes me as from the heart: as if, in writing fic about her characters, people were writing fic about her. Which doesn't remotely justify the cease and desist letters, but there you go...

[orthent.livejournal.com]

I've always thought that was why Anne Rice was so against fanfiction. It's not that she was so hot on copyright law not being broken, or that she thought it would damage her reputation: her major characters are mostly aspects of her own personality, so her plea not to write stories where the characters do things she would never make them do strikes me as from the heart...

A somewhat-related issue: would you say that Anne is one of those authors like LKH who claims that she writes what the characters "tell" her they "want" to happen? If she claims to have this kind of special relationship with her characters, maybe she's dead-certain that no one else can write them.

[pandorasblog]

Anne's thing with her characters does sound quite similar, in that there's been times (like after Memnoch the Devil) when she said she felt Lestat had 'left' and she couldn't write Lestat stories any more, sort of like he was a muse. It took time for her to get him back, and we know how that went...

[orthent.livejournal.com]

I've gotten involved in a (sort-of) argument with someone who is fond of that quote from Gide's Counterfeiters journal--"The bad novelist constructs his characters; he directs them and makes them speak. The true novelist listens to them and watches them act; he hears their voices even before he knows them." Now, I admire Gide's novels, but being a great novelist is not a magic inoculation against ever being wrong about anything, and in this case I think he was talking through his hat. So I tried to think of novelists who claim that "the characters forced me kicking and screaming to write them the way they want to be written!" And I got Stephenie Meyer and LKH--if Anne Rice did it too, I could point to a trifecta of abject awfulness as a result of this notion that the writer should not be controlling the characters.

[sinanju.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. P. N. Elrod seems to write exclusively vampire novels. There's the Jack Fleming series, the Jonathan Barrett series, the Quincy Morris, Vampire novel (only one so far), and at least one collaboration--also about vampires. She's successful enough to have gotten all these books in print and written two series.

But--judging by her livejournal, at least--she seems to be sane enough. Maybe she's predisposed to sanity. Or maybe she knows enough other writers (Rachel Caine, among them) to have some people to help keep her grounded.

[pandorasblog]

Tanith Lee has written the Blood Opera trilogy and a few other vampire books, as well as a bunch of other fantasy and sci-fi, and from what I understand (via her blog, and a friend who met her at a con) she seems very sensible and nice. But again, she's not on the level of Anne Rice, at least in the vampire department. Maybe moderate success is less injurious to one's personality than extreme success.