Ever since Stephenie Meyer's vampire romances became a smash success among teen readers, particularly girls, all things dead have been given a new life—at least in the minds of children's editors hoping to take advantage of the trend. But that's not to say that every project with a supernatural cast is being green-lighted. Far from it. As every editor knows, oversaturation can be a stake in the heart of any trend.
“The hunger for these novels is still unsatisfied,” argues Elise Howard, senior v-p and associate publisher for fiction at HarperCollins, “but the market is becoming more discerning, and you can't just publish any old thing,” Howard, editor of Claudia Gray's Evernight (May 2008) and the forthcoming Stargazer (March 2009), is looking far beyond vampires these days. “I've been interested in zombies ever since I saw Max Brooks's books [The Zombie Survival Guide, Three Rivers Press] explode a year and a half ago.”
Howard thinks that the typical female Meyer fan isn't necessarily going to go for books about zombies. “Zombies are basically a straight-ahead, masculine proposition,” she explained. “With all the exploding body parts, it feels very masculine, so I don't think we should be trying to do zombies with a girl twist. We are still looking for that perfect zombie property.”
At Simon Pulse, vampires, zombies, witches and their paranormal siblings rub shoulders on a diverse list. “Amanda Marrone's Uninvited [2007], which has a vampire, has done really well,” said editorial director Jennifer Klonsky, who points out that Marrone's newest, Revealers (Sept.), is about a coven of witches. “Amanda's books feature angst and frustrated love, and I imagine her reader is the girl who has been devouring Stephenie Meyer.”
Jean Feiwel, publisher of Feiwel and Friends, thought she was ahead of the zombie curve when she published Brian James's Zombie Blondes this past June. “I got the idea for Zombie Blondes one day when my daughter and I were in Greenwich [Conn.],” she recalled. “These three girls passed us and I thought to myself, these girls are beautiful, popular and dead. Their eyes are vacant, they aren't thinking about anything. I thought, these girls look like zombies.”
Feiwel immediately pitched writer Brian James the idea, and Zombie Blondes was born, but it appeared right at the same time as two other novels about the undead: Generation Dead by Daniel Waters (Hyperion, May) and ghostgirl by Tonya Hurley (Little, Brown, Aug.). Feiwel wasn't all that surprised that she didn't single-handedly rediscover the zombie genre. “Having been in publishing since time began,” Feiwel said with a laugh, “I know there are certain things that get into the air. You think you are at the head of something, that there are no other books on the subject. But I do think it's pretty bizarre that there is this sudden trend of zombie books.”
Alessandra Balzer, co-publisher of Balzer & Bray at HarperCollins, who edited Generation Dead while at Hyperion, reflected on the category's current popularity. “What recent authors have done is reinvent the genre,” she said. “Twilight took vampires—which are scary—and made them sexy. In Generation Dead, you have an allegory about discrimination, which makes zombies fascinating. These creatures provide great allegories for the issues teens face in their lives, romances and school.”
Balzer's new imprint, which launches next fall, hasn't yet picked up any paranormal books. If something fantastic (in both senses of the word) comes along, though, she is open to snatching it up. “Now that people realize paranormal books are popular, everyone is publishing them,” she said. “Soon it will be harder to get those books the attention they need, so we have to be really picky about what we publish.”
Running from Overkill
Vampires and zombies may be big this year, but authors and publishers are banking on other creatures to emerge.
Alvina Ling, senior editor at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, home to both the Twilight Saga and Tonya Hurley's ghostgirl, was looking for something new when she acquired Simon Holt's The Devouring: Sorry Night (Sept.) along with two sequels. “I think the vampire trend is pretty saturated, so people are looking for other undead creatures,” Ling explained. “What attracted me to The Devouring is that it is supernatural, but not your typical vampire or ghost or zombie book. The Vours are demonic creatures from another dimension that are able to devour humans' fears and take over their bodies.”
Ling believes that most of the horror books published these days are aimed at boys, “but we positioned The Devouring for a female audience. There is a strong female heroine and a boy best friend that will probably develop into a love interest.”
Melanie Cecka, publishing director at Bloomsbury and Walker Books for Young Readers, said she is very cautious about signing up books that fit this burgeoning undead trend. However, like Ling, she's not opposed to novels about new creatures, saying she finds it interesting how people are trying to differentiate these titles.
“If it's deadly, notorious, or from the other side, you can bet it's already out there in manuscript form, so it's getting harder and harder not to be redundant,” Cecka said. Last summer alone, she turned down four zombie submissions from agents.
Cecka believes that Bloomsbury is well-known among booksellers and librarians as a “destination fantasy list”—with award-winning authors like Shannon Hale, and now with Wendy Corsi Staub's Lily Dale series and Celia Rees's Sovay—so the paranormal is familiar territory. In December, Bloomsbury releases Need by Carrie Jones, a novel that features pixies. “People think of pixies as cute and sparkly,” Cecka said, “but not so in Jones's book. She's made them vicious, soul-sucking and diabolical—she throws the pixie concept on its ear.”
“We've almost hit maximum for vampire books—I think there were about 27 in a one-year period,” said Heather Doss, children's buyer at Bookazine. “But between Generation Dead and Carrie Ryan's The Forest of Hands and Teeth (Delacorte, March 2009), we are just starting to build the zombie trend. The ghost trend—the actual dead teen—that's just barely started, too. As for the dark faerie—we've had quite a few of those in the last couple seasons. I'm still waiting for the werewolf books.”
Doss won't have to wait long: spring 2009 will see the publication of Heather Davis's Never Cry Werewolf (Bowen Press). Anne Hoppe, executive editor at Bowen Press (also Melissa Marr's editor for Wicked Lovely and Ink Exchange), is excited to try out the werewolf on teen audiences. “The paranormal trend is so hot right now that I don't know whether anything new is driving it per se,” Hoppe said, hoping that Davis will do for werewolves what Marr did for faeries.
Demand in Stores Stays High
Valerie Koehler, owner of Blue Willow Bookshop in Houston, sees no sign of dropoff of popularity in the category among her customers. “Twilight really opened the door for that for that genre,” she says. “A lot of these kids grew up on Harry Potter and totally accept fantasy in their lives.” She's having success with Melissa Marr's novels, the Blue Bloods series from Melissa de la Cruz, as well as Tantalize by Cynthia Leitich Smith and Beastly by Alex Finn.
And readers will continue to have plenty to choose from. This past Halloween, HarperTeen sent three of its vampire authors—Claudia Gray (Evernight), Nancy Collins (Vamps), and Ellen Schreiber (Vampire Kisses)—on a five-city tour dubbed Pitch Black: Books with Bite. And an even bigger promotion is planned for next year—Supernatural Summer, an author tour and online program featuring five authors. The mother-daughter team PC and Kristin Cast, authors of the bestselling House of Night novels from St. Martin's Griffin, will release book five, Hunted, next March. Australian writer Catherine Jinks launches a new series in April with The Reformed Vampire Support Group (Harcourt). Marlene Perez's Dead Is the New Black mystery series (also Harcourt) is going strong, with two new installments releasing next spring. And of course, the film adaptation of Twilight premieres on November 21, which should re-intensify interest in the genre.
At Books Etc. in Falmouth, Me., a Halloween display of paranormal YA novels hasn't been taken down yet, because the books are still selling. Children's book buyer Donna Gerardo reported that the category as a whole is still very strong, adding, “It's pretty sad when the undead are getting better sex than I am!” Koehler at Blue Willow worries that shelf space might soon become an issue: “These series are so long, and the books are so big—where are we going to put all of them?” And Gerardo wondered if the trend might be at its peak. “I saw a whole bunch of the books in spring catalogues. I said, 'Really? Will it still be hot when they get here?' ”
Some publishers, in fact, have tried to anticipate and ride this wave. “If fans are demanding these books, then we want to fulfill the need,” said Bloomsbury's Cecka. “But we are all getting more calculated about the books we publish. We are being watchful about what each house is doing, and how to position our authors to guard against having this bubble burst spontaneously.”
For the moment, however, the bubble shows no sign of bursting, and the darkness that Twilight helped usher in looks to be lingering on YA lists for some time to come.
