So no offense to those fabulous writers of werewolves, gnomes, and floating phantasms, but I'm getting a bit frustrated by the whole paranormal thing. Don't get me wrong. I love paranormal. I just don't love so much of it that I feel that I have to throw a fairy in my contemporary coming-of-age novel so I can get it published. And I get frustrated when, in order to buy a great contemporary YA romance at the bookstore, I have to wade past six or seven tables and end-caps full of books covered in amazing-looking girls drooling blood in order to find my pick buried at the bottom of a bookshelf. I can blame this lust for the unreal on the desire for escapism, the darkening of society and today's youth, or simply the money-attracting qualities of whatever is new and fresh, but truth? It doesn't seem new and fresh to me anymore. So just like I craved for the end of heavy metal ballads in the eighties, I'm waiting for the paranormal phenomenon to come to a dwindling and much-needed close. The question is - what will the new "next big thing" be?
