Win The Running Man Lottery

How to write a best-seller:

Re-write a decades-old book (Richard Bachman’s Stephen King’s “The Running Man”) as a Young Adult novel, change the “game’s” participants to adolescents, season to taste with some “Death Race 2000” flair (the original 1975 film, not the recent re-make some of today’s young adults may have actually seen), and you have a sure-fire winner! 😎
😈

Actually, I loved the “twist” Suzanne Collins came up with for Katniss and Peeta! 😉

Authors gone wild! (I’ll say!)

Here’s a real gem:
Authors Gone Wild! 5 Ways Your Blog Is Out Of Control, by Tamela Buhrke

Section #4, “Take a stand”, is what really caught my attention.

my female characters will never date vampires.
This sentence implies all of her female characters are non-vampires, and that her vampires are all men. Not very realistic odds, considering 51% of the human race is female. This takes the overdone “vampire male romances human female” trope to a new extreme. Said trope was one of the major reasons motivating me to craft a “non-romance” vampire story.

Vampires are predators. I don’t want to encourage women (emphasis added) to lust after predators.
So if men lust after predators, this is okay? 😈
If all the vampires in her universe are male, she is then implying by default that only men can be destructive predators. 😯

Is it because I’m a vampire racist?
Vampire sexist is more like it! 👿

The sparkly-romance vampire people will disagree.
Even in Stephenie Meyer’s universe, females and males deal on equal terms with their inner predatory urges. Bella Swan’s desire to become a vampire makes this a key focal point.
Here I was, thinking “Twilight” was a bit sexist. Compared to Buhrke’s “only men can be monsters” ideology, I owe Stephenie Meyer an apology! (although Edward Cullen is still a Grade-A USDA Choice “waltz-through-Bella’s-bedroom-window-like-it’s-nothing” stalker 😉 …)

All of this is excellent motivation for me to finish my novel about an all-female werewolf pack. 😈
(yes, there are male and female werewolves in this universe…)