Last week I was hanging out with my friend in Borders at Santana Row after seeing The Mummy: Tomb of The Dragon Emperor (the best straight-to-DVD release movie I ever saw in a movie theater), I noticed that the entire store was filled with young girls.  Most appeared normal, some had faces painted white with red lips, and a few wore bizarre costumes.  I asked my friend if they were there for The Tales of Beedle The Bard pre-order by the Harry Potter author, J.K. Rowling, which I saw mentioned in an email from Borders a few days earlier.  He said they were here for the Breaking Dawn midnight release party.  Never heard of it.  When we came upon the display stand, it was quite obvious why I haven't heard of it.  The book comes from the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer belongs in the ever popular paranormal romance genre.

Seems like you can't be a female author writing a series book unless you take a standard genre (i.e., science fiction, fantasy or horror), add a dollop of romance, and blend well into a new genre.  (Male authors don't face the same pressure, but some do add a tarball of porn that leaves the story dying on the bedsheets,  and no marketing department would dare claim that as a new genre.)  If Amazon Recommendations are any indicator over the last few years, the paranormal romance genre is getting saturated with wannabe titles that lacks any trace of originality like a bad date with a vampire.

I'm a fan of Kim Harrison's The Hollow series about a witch, a vampire and a pixy working together as independent bounty hunters in Cincinnati, and the titles are inspired by Clint Eastwood and Spaghetti Western movies (i.e., Every Which Way But Dead, and The Good, The Bad and The Undead).  There's a strong touch of sexuality that goes either way depending on who's in trouble.  I just speed read through those parts since that's not what I'm reading the book for.  I got into this series while reading another supernatural mystery series, Jim Butcher's Dresden Files, about a wizard for hire in Chicago.  According to Amazon Recommendations, The Hollow series now belongs in the paranomral romance genre, perhaps because the author has written several anthologies where paranormal romance was the main theme..  I get recommendations about every paranormal series out there—with some series being way, way, way out there—even though I'm not interested.  Subsequently, I run away from those books like a vampire waking up at the Gilroy Garlic Festival.

The Twilight series was illuminating for another reason.  Not because the series is seen as a potential successor to the Harry Potter franchise that can capture the hearts of teenyboppers world wide that makes bucket loads of cash for the author and publisher.  The general trend in fiction publishing is to have a series if you're not writing "serious literature" (whatever the heck that is since I don't write that).  If you're bringing a series to a conclusion (this applies to trilogies as well), you better wrapped up the series in way that keeps the readers satisfied.  The initial reaction to Breaking Dawn indicates that the author may have taken the easy way out that puts a stake through the heart of the conflict, disappointing many fans who expected a stronger ending.  A bad enough ending can easily kill the word-of-mouth popularity for the other books in the series, including the forthcoming Twilight The Movie.

I'm not sure if a one-shot book can be published these days.  The novel that I'm working on, and the research materials I'm gathering for two other novels, all follow a general theme of humanity, morality and technology, and each one is a one-shot book that isn't part of a series.  (I suspect a minor character from one book will become a major character in another book may be the only connection.)  The vampire novella that I'm working on now is the centerpiece for a pair of book trilogies.  Those books—if I choose to write them—will be different than the novels I got on the back burners.   If I ever end up writing a book series, I doubt it will be in the paranormal romance genre.