"You're just jealous."

Sara and I went on a magickal** adventure to our neighborhood Barnes N Noble this weekend, which will lead to my book review tonight,(I swear I will start reviewing books again and actually doing what I said I would do in this blog description)-- and also spawned the discussion on “Well if these books are so crappy, why don’t you write one and make like a bagillion dollars and STFU?” (Except it was nicer and Sara was honestly asking.) It’s a good point. Especially in light of the recent explosion in teeynayger vampeeeer luuuuurrrv story books that are, quite frankly, disgusting fill- in- the blanks:

Hot Vampire In Highschool For Some Reason: Hello Young Girl, I am going to ignore you/be a dick/say cryptic things to you for a while
Young Girl: But you’re sooo hot!
Hot Vampire In School: Okay, we can date, but I am like 100 years old(A PEDOPHILE, HELLO)/a monster who wants to drink your blood/have a spotty past/have dangerous frenemies!
Young Girl: But you’re soooo hot!
(they date, YG IN DANGER, make out scene, fade to black)

For those of you who are just tuning in to this genre, no this is not just the “plot” of twilight, it’s the "plot" of 900 other popular vamppeeeeerr books right now. I don’t even have to read them to know-I am just that good. At this. Quiet sobs.

Well, there are a few reasons I don’t just try to write one myself(AND NONE ARE THAT I’M JUST JEALOUS), and here they are. In the process I’ll try to slam as many books as possible, because I AM the Grinch That Stole Your Young Adult Gross Romance Noveelllll.

1. If you write a book when you are too young/have little experience writing, it’s going to turn out as a mirror image of the book(s) you love.
I don’t know this from experience or anything(I know this from experience) but trying to write fantasy is really hard. It’s true that nothing is really original anymore BUT, as Stephen King points out in his new forward to the Dark Tower series, if he tried to write fantasy when he was 19, it would have been a sad mimicry of Lord of the Rings. (See: Eragon, et al. AKA Diet Lord of the Rings. LOTR Light. The Fellowship of the Rings: Zero, The Two Towers Ghost, Return of the Diet Sprite.) And so, though these Vamp books are sad little paint-by-numbers, and they actually SHOULD and DO mimic each other, I don’t think I could even mimic them if I tried-it would be a mimic of a mimic of a mimic, it would be three pages long and covered in my own tears and blood. It’s hard enough to try and write ORIGINAL stories, I can’t even imagine trying NOT to.
2. I don’t want my name attached to that!
3. It just doesn’t work. I once heard an interview from the most famous Romance Novelist Everrr on the radio(can’t remember her name right now…) and she was talking about how so many people make fun of romance novels and say that "they could write one in the snap of a finger"-but when they try to write one, the books are terrible-because it’s clear in their writing that they hate the genre and are making fun of the readers. She may have even cited a few authors or something. Anyway, the target audience would hate my book because there would be a lot of “And then Julia Delurvely realized she was in love with Martin LeVampsies, even though he may not have a soul, may kill her, and if things progressed the way she wanted to it would be statutory. Because Julia Delurvely was just that “brave.”)
4. I don’t want to.
5. If I ever do get the balls to try and write something, I don’t want it to be intentionally bad.

Instead, I have decided to transcribe Romanda’s attempt at a vampire love story-forgive her, remember that she’s illiterate- and has trouble understanding a few basic things about fiction-anyway, here you go:

ROMANDA GETS A VAMPIRE BOYFRIEND, by ROMANDA POO-LEWIS

ONE DAY I WOKE UP AND THERE WAS A VAMPIRE IN MY ROOM HIS NAME WAS EDWARD CULLEN HE WAS PRETTY IN THE FACE I SAID DID YOU EAT MY BABIES HE SAID NO YOU ALREADY DID THAT I SAID OKAY, I SAID WELL I WOULD KISS YOU BUT MOST PEOPLE ARE REPULSED BY THE SMELL HE SAID OH NO YOU SMELL SO GOOD I LOVE IT I SAID OKAY SO WE DID WE MASHED OUR FACES ALL TOGETHER THAT’S WHAT PEOPLE DO WHEN THEY MAKE OUT RIGHT OKAY SO THEN HE WAS MY BOYFRIEND.

***An actual spelling of the word “magical” in the description of a book Sara and I found- that I decidedly, did not buy.