Oh no you didn't . . .

I'm just going to cut and paste this from my writing blog since I'd be saying the same thing twice. This is my unsent letter to Stephenie Meyer. This is what happens when you piss off a *real* vampire girl. *twitch*

Dear Ms. Meyer,

It fills me with chagrin (a word I’m sure you’re familiar with) to address you with such a title but I’m trying to be cordial here. Major emphasis on the word trying. I just might fail. You have been warned.

In an Examiner.com article dated July 31st, 2009, with excerpts quoted from Entertainment Weekly, you proceed to call the 1994 movie, Interview with the Vampire, based off of Anne Rice’s wildly popular book of the same name, “yuck” and the 1987 teen horror movie, The Lost Boys, whose cult status has, thus far, transcended 22 years, “creepy.” You then proceed to refer to yourself as a “vampire girl.” For this I am deeply troubled.

You see, when writers worthy of their salt write in a given genre, they do this little thing called research. A foreign concept to you, I know, but you should Google it. The very act will give you a definition. The thing is, with this research garners information and information garners knowledge. If a writer is unfamiliar with a particular genre, they research it thoroughly in order to accurately portray whatever it is they’re writing about.

In that same vein, in order to distort a popular element within a genre, one needs to understand what that element consists of in order to distort it properly. Kind of a strange concept to distort something properly, I know, but if you don’t know all the proper elements of wood, and the techniques required in order to shape it properly into something worthy of its base parts, you’re just going to get a big ol’ mess. When writers fail to do the proper research required of a particular genre, what they end up writing is a big ol’ mess of drift wood lit ablaze.

That’s where you come in, Ms. Meyer. Your research on vampires consisted of ten minutes scanning Google links so you could add some offhanded remarks about particular types of vampires in your books in order to further legitimize it as a “vampire” book. But you did not do the real research. You hid behind your religion, claiming that it didn’t allow you to view movies with an R-rating, thus saving you from the monstrosities in the likes of Interview with the Vampire and The Lost Boys, movies with true to form vampires. You’ve also commented in various interviews as having never read any other vampire books, not even Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which any writer with a solitary functioning brain cell writing in the realm of vampires would read.

Please tell me, if you’re going to write mysteries, how are you going to how know to write one without having read them? If you’re going to write an historical fiction, how are you going to understand the tropes and cliches of that genre without having read any other books? How are you going to write horror without having read anything else in that genre?

You’re not. If you try, you will fail. And you failed. You may have convinced your legions of Twitards whose first foray into the “vampire” world happened to be your books, but for the rest of us, who are real vampire girls and boys, aren’t fooled. In fact, we’re disgusted.

You hide behind your religion, using it as one of many excuses as to why you didn’t research but proceeded to write about the occult. Does your religion not frown upon meandering into the world of the occult? Because that’s where vampires are, if you are so adamant to call your glitter pixies vampires. Or is it because they’re so watered down and not actually vampires that it’s ok? Please help me, for I am confused.

Let me give you a very brief rundown on what vampires actually are. In folklore (that’s another thing you would have come across should you have actually bothered to research anything), vampires are corpses reanimated by being possessed by a demon or devil who survives by feeding off of the blood of others because blood is a life force. They are soulless creatures that are doomed to wander the earth forever in the shadows. Of course, over the years vampires have undergone pretty radical transformations but they’ve never deviated too far from that base concept of what a vampire is.

Vampires are supposed to be “yuck” and “creepy.” Their facade is merely human, thus they can resemble the heart throb or the hobo as a means of survival. But they need one thing to survive. Blood. I find it wholly ironic that you find the likes of Louis and Lestat “yuck” when you have pedophile Jacob Black falling in love with a newborn at the age of 17 and the vampires of The Lost Boys “creepy” when your perfect Edward breaks and enters into his beloved’s room without her permission to watch her sleep, kidnaps her, and disables her car engine in order to prevent her from seeing her friends. Is this the Mormonism talking or are you just that deluded?

Vampires, pretty much across the board, have only a couple of things in common; most of the time fangs and blood. The ONLY vampires, to my knowledge, that don’t have fangs but are still worthy of the title are those from the 80s movie, Near Dark. Oh how I would love for you to watch that and get a dose of real vampires in action. But it’s rated R so your religion won’t allow you to. But it allows you to romanticize pedophilia and abusive relationships. And people wonder why I’m against mainstream religions.

What bothers me the most is that you’ve passed judgment on a book/movie and a movie that have stood the test of time as belonging in the vampire world without having bore witness to either of them. Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire was first released in the 70s and it’s still going strong, with the movie having been released in 1994. The Lost Boys was released in 1987 and is still held as a cult classic to this day with new fans being born every year. Your books have been around since 2005. How about you keep your mouth shut and see where they stand in 2010 at the earliest before you go spouting off on other CLASSIC vampire literature.

Having never been exposed to any vampire classics (except your own works, which I’m sure you consider classics), and adamantly refuse to watch other vampire movies or read other vampire books, your opinion on the subject matter is invalid and worthless. Keep it to yourself. Do the leg work that the rest of the writers do and then maybe your opinion will hold some merit. Until then, shut it. Your opinion means nothing.

The difference between you and me, I’ve read your books and boy can I pass judgment on them. I’ve been a vampire fan since 1993, which is a solid 10 years BEFORE you had that sparkly dream of yours and even considered the thought of delving into the vampire world. You are in my world sweetheart, and you don’t belong. Aside from your pixies not having fangs, vampires don’t glitter. “The skin of a monster” and “glitter” are as oxymoronic as “jumbo shrimp.” If that’s a monster in your sheltered world, please pick up a Stephen King book. Please. And seeing as how you can’t accurately explain how the science in your Twiworld works, your entire world is invalidated. It’s called worldbuilding, which you’ve failed to do. Otherwise you’d know the answers to such questions as, “how can sperm survive 100 years?” and “why didn’t Edward flip out every time Bella went on the rag if he was so obsessed over the scent of her blood?” instead of passing off half-assed answers like, “only some fluids turn to venom” and “gross.”

And please answer me this, if your glitter pixies consider themselves “vegetarian vampires” because they only feed off of animals instead of humans, then if I stop eating red meat and just stick to poultry and fish, can I call myself a vegetarian? I think PETA would disagree, as would the Oxford English Dictionary.

You are a failure and a disgrace to every writer out there who actually does the work required of the job. Sure, you may think your offshore bank account says otherwise, but money does not equal talent. Just look at Britney Spears. Stop referring to yourself as a “vampire girl” when you know nothing of vampires. Stop criticizing other vampire works when you haven’t even so much as laid eyes on them. Stop writing in genres you know nothing about. If you insist on continuing, be a real writer and do the work required. That means research and reading. Fuck your religion. If you can write about the occult, pedophiles and stalkers, you can watch a real vampire movie and read a real vampire book. Stop being a hypocrite. It’s unbecoming.

And please, for everyone’s benefit, grab a thesaurus. There are other ways to describe skin color than “russet” and “granite,” among many, many, MANY other things. I’d also recommend Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Dave King and Renni Browne. You do know what self-editing is, right? Because I really don’t think you do.

If I didn’t think your guard troll of a webmaster brother would cockblock (cock is slang for penis, FYI, and the term “cockblock” is a pseudo-sexual reference to someone getting in the way of another’s sexual conquests but can be used in non-sexual blocking contexts, as I’m sure, because of your religion, you’d be unfamiliar with the term) this letter because your eyes are only deserving of seeing the praise (because, I’m convinced, you’ve got your head shoved to far up your ass that you wouldn’t understand where any criticism is coming from because your work, according to you, is perfect), I’d actually send it. Alas, I must suffice with posting it on my blogs. Maybe you’ll see it, maybe you won’t but all I can hope for is that your sales numbers eventually catch up with your writing “talent.” Which I’m sure won’t be until the final movie is released which isn’t that much time since the studios want to milk this cash cow quickly because, I believe, they have a good eye into the future of this whore of a franchise as well.

Forks is for Hogwarts Rejects,

Donna