LOS ANGELES (AP) — Headstrong Bella is in love with a vampire. Zoey has a crescent moon seared onto her forehead, the mark of a fledgling bloodsucker. Sixteen-year-old Ever can hear people’s thoughts. Calliope is, reluctantly, Death’s daughter.

All are modern female heroes written by women, read by women and not only obsessed over by teenagers but also their older sisters and mothers. The economy may be deeply troubled, but urban fantasy novels about vampires, werewolves, zombies, supernatural creatures, blood and romance are booming, and women are sinking their teeth into them in ravenous numbers.

“We’re living in a frightening time. I don’t know if it’s an escapism as in there’s scary stuff out there so let me control it through the medium of reading,” says Amy Clarke, a lecturer at the University of California, Davis who teaches science fiction literature.

“There’s dreaming of being with a vampire or werewolf, but there’s always the danger of crossing over. I think it’s a post-feminist way of taking on power.”

The trend gathered steam with Bella Swan and her conflicted romance with gorgeous vampire Edward in Stephenie Meyer’s four-book “Twilight” series, which has sold more than 53 million copies worldwide since the first book’s release in 2005, according to publisher Little, Brown and Company. Meyer’s newest, the more adult-themed “The Host,” has 2 million copies in print domestically.

Call it dark escapism with a racy flair. The “Twilight” explosion, including its hit movie version, has deepened the needs of women urban fantasy novel readers.

Other authors are jumping in: P.C. Cast and her daughter Kristin’s popular “House of Night” vampire series; Alyson Noel’s “Immortals” books: the “Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire Mysteries” novels by Charlaine Harris, which inspired the TV series “True Blood” on HBO; Richelle Mead’s “Vampire Academy” trilogy; and books by more than half a dozen other female writers.

The genre’s popularity is bigger than just books, says P.C. Cast.

“With women, this is reflecting a shift in our society,” Cast said in an interview from her home in Tulsa, Okla. “I’ve seen a big shift, especially in my classroom, with women standing up and demanding respect. That’s in every woman, whether 16, 26, 56.”

“Our fiction is also reflecting that because we’re writing the fiction. We’ve given ourselves permission to be successful. We’re also giving ourselves permission to have fun,” said Cast, a single mother who taught high school English for 15 years before focusing only on writing.

Her five “House of Night” books, starting in 2007 with “Marked,” follow the adventures of Zoey Redbird, a high school student marked to be a vamp, who must enter the House of Night. Described as a “vampyre finishing school,” it’s filled with bratty girls, cute guys and no end of drama.

Cast enlisted the help of daughter Kristin, 22, to ensure that the teen-speak in her stories reflected current vernacular as opposed to the author’s “inner ’70s teenager saying things that were so not cool.”

It paid off.

There are 5.5 million copies of the five “House of Night” books in print in the United States and the series has been on The New York Times list of best sellers. “Tempted,” the sixth book, came out last fall. The series has been optioned by Empire Pictures, with a film script in the works.

“Vampires are super sexy. Vampires and teens have a lot in common. Teens have surging hormones, vampires have surging blood lust. Teenagers think they’re immortal,” Cast said.

And for older women, says UC Davis’ Clarke, “hot blooded” has taken on new meaning.

“All of the stuff I’ve read have some pretty heated sex scenes in them, and that brings people into the world of it,” Clarke said. “The teens haven’t had sex yet and the mothers have, and it’s maybe not as good as it was.”

Noel’s “Immortals” series focuses on the telepathic teen Ever, who gains her abilities after surviving a car accident that kills her family. Brooding and lonely at a new school in sunny California, she meets handsome immortal Damen. They’re drawn to each other like magnets.

“All of us older people reading these books magically survived high school even though we thought we wouldn’t,” Noel said in an interview from her home in Laguna Beach, Calif. “To be young and beautiful and have power forever is pretty alluring in this society.”

Amber Benson, who earned a huge fan base as witch Tara on the cult-hit TV show “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” which ended in 2003, channeled her love of urban fantasy into a trilogy, with the first book released this year by venerable science fiction and fantasy publisher Ace Books, an imprint of Penguin.

In “Death’s Daughter,” Calliope Reaper-Jones is a 25-year-old immortal who works in New York City. After her father, the CEO of Death, Inc., is kidnapped, she must run the family business.

“That was the beauty of Buffy, this female protagonist who looked totally harmless but could do all these amazing things and was trying to be a real person at the same time. She definitely influenced Calliope and her journey,” says Benson, as she sits in her Los Angeles home beneath a sign reading “Old Friends to Read, Old Friends to Trust.”

“We don’t just want to be the tough chick who has no feelings, or the super girly girl who can’t do anything for herself. We want that middle ground,” she says.

With online word of mouth driving sales, fan gals have also started churning out their own stories about witches, vampires, wolves and half-bloods on such Web sites as www.textnovel.com under categories such as “Romance — Paranormal” and “Romance — Urban Fantasy.”

“This is where the key demographic for the ‘House of Night’ lives, these teenage girls that are online most of the time,” Matthew Shear, St. Martin’s senior vice president of publishing, said.

Shear acknowledged Meyer’s effect on Cast’s series and other urban fantasy novels.

“We didn’t buy the ‘House of Night’ series because of ‘Twilight,’ but when we saw sales increasing, we went to everywhere Stephenie Meyer was selling,” he said. “Stephenie Meyer started the boom, and ‘House of Night’ has continued the boom.”

He’s cheering on sales.

“Is it welcome news to the publishing world? You bet it is,” Shear said. “We’re thrilled that people want to buy these books.”

On the Net:

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Source: The Daily News Online

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Stevie Rae looked from vampyre to vampyre. “Here’s a newsflash.. Zoey isn’t dead. And believe me, I know dead. I’ve been there, done that, and got the frickin’ tee-shirt.”

Originally all released as trade paperbacks, SMP moved the series into hardcover with the March 2009 publication of Hunted, which has sold 950,000 copies and will be released in trade paperback next month. The success of Hunted convinced SMP that there was a broader audience for the series, and SMP’s experience since last fall has proven that conviction correct. The house republished the first four books—Marked, Betrayed, Chosen, and Untamed—in hardcover in September, and the four have combined to ship more than 500,000 copies. Shortly after the publication of those four hardcovers, SMP released the sixth book in the series, Tempted, with a printing of just over one million; Shear said the publisher has now shipped 1.1 million copies.

As part of the marketing effort for the hardcover editions, SMP included posters of the characters in each book that when combined make up one big poster. SMP also upped its marketing budget, taking out ads in People and on Facebook and using more Google Adwords looking to attract fans of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series. “Our marketing has evolved to reach both the teen and adult markets,” Shear said, a strategy that has paid off. “At [Cast] events, there are lots of 20-somethings and older women in addition to teens,” Shear said. The series also has the obligatory Web site, houseofnightseries.com, which is now generating 500,000 unique visitors monthly, Shear said. Audio copies of the book can be downloaded from the site via links to Audible and iTunes.

House of Night is selling very well outside of the U.S. Sales have been strong in Canada (where SMP did a boxed set of the first four hardcovers), and rights have been sold in 35 territories. There will be 12 books in all in the series, and the seventh, Burned, will be published in the U.S. in April.

By Jim Milliot
Source: Publishers Weekly

Not that yesterday’s sweet and innocent girls have grown up to be lusty ladies looking for something kinky, but if you’ve been paying attention, you’ll know that they just have vampires on the brain. Walk through any bookstore these days and the word just jumps out from the covers: The Vampire Diaries, Vampire Academy, Vampire Huntress, Vampire Kisses, and fine, The Twilight Saga, if we’re being obvious. There must be something in the water that’s making girls everywhere a little too bloodthirsty.

Remember the good old days when a teenage girl’s greatest ambition wasn’t about being kissed by a vampire? Better yet, remember when vampires used to be scary? I hate to sound like a hater—that’s “werewolf” to some of you girls—but back then, bloodsuckers conjured up the eerie silence of the night, punctuated only by the terrifying creak of a coffin being opened, the dreadful sound of a bat flapping its wings, and maybe even the tried-and-tested, spine-chilling wolf howl. But these days, the howling has increased a thousand fold, with the shrill, high-pitched shrieks of teens, tweens, and unfortunate adults piercing the silence. Once again, vampires have induced mass hysteria, but this isn’t your regular crowd of pitchfork-toting villagers out to burn the monsters at the stake. Let’s just say that if vampires truly exist, they’re probably hiding in their coffins because there’s an alarming number of love-starved women who are out to get them.

So why are girls suddenly as ravenous for the material as vampires are for blood? Certainly not for the gore and horror, as today’s cookie-cutter vampire stories are doing away with the grotesque Nosferatus and focusing on pretty boys like Twilight’s Edward Cullen. Whereas traditional vampire lore used to be a source of terror, a spotlight on society’s worst fears ranging from the political (parasitic institutions) to the spiritual (evil spirits and curses), the contemporary vampire tale is all about desire. By all acounts, today’s vampires are decidedly sexier, more passionate, and infinitely more human than the cursed embodiments of evil we used to see back then. Notice how the standard weapons of Christianity —crucifix, holy water, rosary—don’t even matter in these new worlds of vampiredom. Authors of chick-lit and paranormal romances have obviously decreed that vampires just aren’t evil anymore.

Take the case of Twilight, where the vampires have gone “vegetarian,” opting to live on the blood of animals instead of killing humans. While main pretty boy Edward Cullen is often all emo about the fact that he’s a monster with no soul, his beloved human Bella helps him realize that choosing true love can lead to redemption. Interestingly enough, our current young adult bookshelves are filled with hot vampires who have far too many redeeming qualities, much like the dazzling Cullens. All these enigmatic vampire boys are dark, brooding James Dean types (read: the epitome of everything attractive in a man) who are just “misunderstood,” which is why every angsty teenager or adult can relate.

It’s also why the ladies keep swooning over the bad yet beautiful vampires of this hot new genre. Forget necrophilia; the lack of a pulse is only a minor detail in the grand quest for undying love. If all the boys are so overwhelmingly good-looking, caring, and adoring, and they live forever, trust the women to come baring their necks for a bite towards immortality. More than eternal youth, women just want eternal love, and therein lies the appeal of undead romance. The new vampire genre awakens a desire for stability and security; it doesn’t matter if the heart stops beating, just as long as it’s frozen in a state of love for all eternity. We want undead romance because it’s intense, it’s perfect, and it’s forever.

And who can ignore the blatant sexuality of vampires? After all, bloodsucking is a strangely intimate thing. Skim through Anne Rice’s novels or watch True Blood’s “Fangbangers” at work and you’ll have an idea of the seduction involved in the vampire world, but popular young adult books also demonstrate how sexy a little restraint can be. In vampire-human romances, the bloodlust is easily equated to real lust, mixed with the appeal of the forbidden. And the human girl in the relationship, much like Twilight’s Bella, The Vampire Diaries’s Elena, and True Blood’s Sookie Stackhouse, often ups the thrill and suspense as she looks forward to being “turned” to a vampire and living with her beloved forever. Ah, the perks of having a teenage vampire for a boyfriend, and oh, the sexy possibilities!

There’s one thing for people to keep in mind when they let underage daughters, lonely wives, and fanatical girlfriends run wild in the paranormal romance section of the young adult aisle. Simply put, some people could just be depressed or repressed, so this endless fascination with vampires might be a small warning sign that we’re craving a little more something. Maybe it’s sex and passion for some, and beauty and romance for others. But here’s what we’re sure of—it has to be powerful, it has to be perfect, and it has to last forever.

Popular New Titles:

The Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer: Spawning four books and three Hollywood movies so far, the series follows the love story of the handsome vampire Edward Cullen and Bella Swan, the human girl whose blood sings to him more than anyone else’s.

Vampire Kisses novels by Ellen Schrieber: Goth teenage girl Raven Madison falls in love and finds out that her handsome boyfriend, Alexander Sterling, is a vampire.

The Vampire Huntress Legend series by L.A. Banks: A Buffy-like heroine, Damali Richards, is the chosen Neteru, who must hunt and fight dark vampires with her guardian team.

The Vampire Diaries series by LJ Smith: Already adapted as a popular television show on The CW (starring Lost’s Ian Somerhalder as one the sexy vampires), the books focus on two vampire brothers, Stefan and Damon Salvatore, who fight for the affections of the human Elena Gilbert.

True Blood series by Charlaine Harris: If you enjoy the HBO series, read the books that spawned the show. The novels follow the adventures of Southern lass Sookie Stackhouse in a world where vampires have come out and revealed themselves in the real world.

House of Night novels by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast: The title refers to the “vampyre” boarding school where youngsters must go to become full-fledged vampires. The books follow the story of teenager Zoey Redbird and the dangers she faces as she goes to vampire school.

Vampire Academy novels by Richelle Mead: Set in another vampire school, the story is about half-vampire Rose Hathaway who must train to be the guardian of a mortal vampire, best friend Lissa Dragomir. The two friends encounter forbidden love and unknown dangers as the novels progress.

Night Watch novels by Sergei Lukyanenko: It’s not really young adult fare, but the 1998 Russian novel and its sequels have remained popular for the story’s unique mix of horror and fantasy. Due to the popularity of the books, they have already been adapted into two movies and a television series in Russia.

Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series by Laurel K. Hamilton: Like the True Blood universe, the vampires in this story have already come out to humans and are considered “normal”. Anita Blake is the main character who plays detective and solves mysteries about these supernatural entities.

The Saga of Darren Shan by Darren Shan: The new fantasy adventure film Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant is actually an adaptation of the first book in four trilogies by the author.

Source: Manila Standard Today
By: Bernice Bautista

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Y’all asked, so here it is – the UK cover for BURNED!

Yes, I like them both. I love seeing different interpretations of Zoey and the HoN world.

XXXOOO
PC

Source: PC CAST BLOG

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PC Cast has so far sold over 8 million copies worldwide, been translated into 39 languages, is a WH Smith top ten bestseller in the UK and is hugely popular with fans of Stephenie Meyer.

PC Cast’s Goddess of Partholon series is to be published in the UK for the first time at the beginning of 2010.

Written before her bestselling House of Night series (which so far has sold over 1 million in the UK) the Goddess of Partholon trilogy contains Cast’s favourite character, the sexy centaur ClanFintan and is a chance for adult readers to enjoy her writing.

When the Goddess of Partholon series was first published in the US it was awarded the Prism, Holt Medallion and Laurel Wreath awards and was also shortlisted for the National Readers’ Choice Award.

The Goddess of Partholon series starts with Divine by Mistake where feisty redhead and 35-year-old Oklahoma school teacher Shannon Parker is unexpectedly sucked through a fiery portal into the paranormal world of Partholon.

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Waking up in another world Shannon Parker discovers she has swapped places with Partholon’shigh-priestess and is revered as a Goddess by all.

While she can’t believe her luck who doesn’t like to have wall to wall wardrobes of made-to-measure silk dresses and wine on tap, not to mention the personal Spa and handmaidens being Partholon’s high-priestess is far from easy.

On her first day in Partholon Shannon is expected to be married to High Shaman, ClanFintan, a centaur who has no idea of her real identity.

Then there is the threat of Formorthian war on the horizon, and as the high-priestess of a warrior Goddess, Shannon must lead the people of Partholon into battle. Nothing a feisty high-school teacher can’t handle-right?

Source: Female First

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Description:

Things have turned black at the House of Night. Zoey Redbird’s soul has shattered. With everything she’s ever stood for falling apart, and a broken heart making her want to stay in the Otherworld forever, Zoey’s fading fast. It’s seeming more and more doubtful that she will be able pull herself back together in time to rejoin her friends and set the world to rights. As the only living person who can reach her, Stark must find a way to get to her.  But how?  He will have to die to do so, the Vampire High Council stipulates.  And then Zoey will give up for sure. There are only 7 days left…

Enter  BFF Stevie Rae.  She wants to help Z but she has massive problems of her own.  The rogue Red Fledglings are acting up, and this time not even Stevie Rae can protect them from the consequences.  Her kinda boyfriend, Dallas, is sweet but too nosy for his own good.  The truth is, Stevie Rae’s hiding a secret that might be the key to getting Zoey home but also threatens to explode her whole world.

In the middle of the whole mess is Aphrodite: ex-Fledgling, trust-fund baby, total hag from Hell (and proud of it).  She’s always been blessed (if you could call it that) with visions that can reveal the future, but now it seems Nyx has decided to speak through her with the goddess’s own voice, whether she wants it or not.  Aphrodite’s loyalty can swing a lot of different ways, but right now Zoey’s fate hangs in the balance.

Three girls… playing with fire… if they don’t watch out, everyone will get Burned.

Source: Houseofnightseries.com

Title: House of Night series: Untamed, Hunted and Tempted

Author: P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast

Publisher: Atom/ Little Brown

Price: Rs. 299 each

Those who have read the first three books in the series: Marked, Chosen and Betrayed know what I am talking of. Well the next three books in the series are as exciting as the previous ones and perhaps even more. Overall, I think they are more exciting and gripping than the Twilight series.

Untamed

Zoey Bird is having a real bad time at the House of Nights. Her friends are avoiding her, her boyfriends have abandoned her and of the two best friends that support her, one is undead and the other is not even marked. And over this she has the feeling Nefret is no more working for the goddess, especially after she declared war against humans, but the question is if she isn’t working for the goddess then whom is she working for? And what is the significance of the ravens surrounding the school? Will what her grandmother foretold come true? Read to find out.

Hunted

The story opens with Stevie Ray brought down into Tulsa’s Prohibition- tunnels, injured by Stark’s arrow. Of course she is cured. Things go on fine for sometime or do they? Zoey’s dreams are haunted by Kalona and she is attracted to him despite not wanting to. Her human boyfriend and vampire boyfriend are both tiresomely possessive. Dark shadows seem to lurk around. She has the feeling Stevie Ray is hiding something from her perhaps. And no one knows what exactly is happening up there.

Circumstances force them to go back to the House of Night to find out that it can no more be called home. All seem to have been brainwashed and mesmerised by Kalona and Nefret and Stark seem to have changed for the worse. What will happen next? Will friendship, loyalty, faith in yourself and others bring bright victory or will the Fallen Angel win in the end?

Tempted

Zoey and her group of friends are able to banish Kalona and Nefret from Tulsa. But serious issues are yet to be sorted out. Zoey is having a tough time handling Erik and his jealousy from Stark — her warrior, and Heath — her human boyfriend or consort. The fledglings of House of Night seem to feel they were better off with Nefret, Stevie Ray seems to be hiding deadly secrets, doing things which may soon be the death of her. Most importantly in Zoey’s dreams Kalona still lurks and she is haunted by the feeling of being the incarnation of A-ya, the one who led to Kalona’s downfall by sacrificing herself in the history. She soon has to confront the evil again, distinguish between truth and illusions and protect herself from what Stark is scared of, the pre-told future. Will she save herself and in turn save others? Or will evil prevail again? That’s a question only the book can answer… And do read it as it has a surprising ending that can’t be guessed.

Shruti is a Std XI student at St. John’s School, Besant Nagar

Source: The Hintu
By: SHRUTI KAMATH

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