Get a Life.

Carrie Harris had a great review of Jeri Smith-Ready's book SHIFT over at her blog today and it got me thinking about paranormal books and the common trends we see there. Yanno, stuff to avoid.

"But one of my big pet peeves is when the characters in books like this seem to have no lives whatsoever. I'm left with the impression that they pretty much just floated through life without engaging in ANYTHING aside from maybe an occasional party. Their life doesn't start until they meet the sparkly mutant wombat/were-yeti/frankenthulhu/whatever."


We've all read books like this, right? So obviously there not bad books. Some of my favorite books include one or more of these common trends. But there are definitely some pitfalls in paranormal fiction to avoid.

• The boring protag who falls in love with hot paranormal guy
• The best friend who is completely oblivious (and usually ignored when hot boy comes in)-but I can see this one as being realistic with a lot of girls, so not such a HUGE no-no to me.
• Parents that are MIA or have no idea their daughter is dating a monster
• Protag chasing after hot paranormal guy even though he's a complete a-hole to her.
• The first half of the story the protag is trying to find out what's going on with strange hot guy--but you, the reader, already know because the back cover told you he was a vampire/fallen angel/werewolf/ghost/something-someone-just-made-up
• The awesome human boy who is totally into the protag never gets the girl

These are the biggest trends that I've seen and attempted to avoid, even though I can understand why the character(s) do these things. It's just been done enough. I'm sort of guilty of that last one, but he might get her later, you never know. What are some of the big trends you've noticed in fiction? Anything to add to my little list?

On an unrelated note, we've hit 500 followers! You guys are amazing. We want to do something extra special to say thank you, and we'll let you know as soon as we get the details hammered out. Seriously, you guys are awesome.