Vampires are bloody annoying

    * Robyn Riley
    * From: Sunday Herald Sun
    * July 04, 2010
         
A WOMAN crashed her car into a Colorado canal this week and then told police she did it to escape a vampire.
OK, enough of the whole vampire thing. Put a wooden stake through the lot of them, I say.
My dislike of all things vampire has been building for some time, fuelled by seeing screaming preens asking actor Robert Pattinson (Edward Cullen) to "bite them".

And the other day when I went into a bookstore and saw most of the top sellers had that same blood-curdling theme, I decided it was time to make a stand.
I am all for encouraging people to read, and I don't mind the fantasy themes - Harry Potter is a wizard, after all - but do books and movies really need a vampire these days to be successful?
Whatever happened to a good read or a good story being enough?

Books in Stephanie Meyer's Twilight saga have sold a staggering 100 million copies in 50 countries. Sure romance rules, but there is so much implied violence and blood and her audience seems to be getting younger and younger.

And now the author of the teen romance - this fanged Romeo and Juliet story - has trotted out a novella that has also made it to the best-seller list after selling a reported one million copies in less than a month.
What worries me is The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner is about a newborn vampire who was a minor character in the Eclipse book.

If Ms Meyer is going to start telling the story of every minor character in her successful saga, this vampire obsession could become bloody annoying.