Vampires "R" Us

I must admit at the beginning of this blog that I really don't 'get' the latest trend in paranormal romance and that is Vampire Romance. Oh, I've read them. In fact I probably started reading them before they became the rage. I read Interview with a Vampire long before the movie with Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt came out. The first vampire romance book I read was Maggie Shayne's Twighlight Phantasies which I read when it first came out in 1993. I also read Forever and the Night by Linda Lael Miller and a few by Amanda Ashley who was also writing vampire books around that time. While I enjoyed them, I wasn't that taken with them that I was hooked on the genre.
The genre really took off I think due to the popularity of Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel. I watched those shows sometime but didn't really 'get' them either.
It's not that I haven't read quite a number of the current crop. I've read Christine Feehan, Susan Sizemore, Karen Harbaugh, Sherryilyn Kenyon and a few others. I just don't understand why they are in so much demand these days. So many authors are writing them. It's not that I don't like the authors. I loved Feehan's Wild Rain and Sizemore's time travels. I just don't enjoy their vampire books.
To be honest, a lot of them creep me out. Let's face it, the vampire heroes are cold and dead. I don't get the appeal of a cold, dead love interest. I was reading one of Christine Feehan's Dark books and when the hero explained to the heroine who he had just converted why they had to sleep in the ground, I thought "EEWWW. No matter how you try and spin it that's just not romantic." And the whole drinking of blood just gives me the willies. Maybe I watched Dracula with Bela Lugosi too many times when I was young.
It's not as if I don't like the paranormal. I like werewolf books. Susan Krinard has some really good ones. Rebecca York has a series of werewolf books that I like better than quite a few reviewers. And I love a good ghost love story. Lynn Kurland wrote a wonderful ghost story in Stardust of Yesterday. Christina Skye wrote some wonderful ghost stories in her Draycott Abbey series. Susan Plunkett in another "ghost" author. Susan Krinard's Body and Soul is a book that had me tearing up. Yes, I know, the hero/heroines are cold and dead in ghost stories too. But somehow it seems different.
So quite a few of the wildly popular vampire authors of today, MaryJanice Davidson, Katie MacAlister, Lynsay Sands won't be making it onto my bookshelves.