Carpe Corpus

I just finished Carpe Corpus, the 6th book in the Morganville Vampire Series, and I've got to say, I really enjoyed the series. And I'm done. I know that there's another book in the works, but I also know that the series was originally intended only to be six books long. And that felt like the end to me.

This is one of the things that I hate the most about the publishing industry. They're only concerned with money. A series is making money? Great. Keep churning it out. After all, we know people will buy more and more of these books. And...why? What would be the point of stirring up Morganville again. The themes are explored. The characters have made their arcs. It's like when they renewed The X-Files for more seasons than it needed. Let good things die. Let good things go out when they're good. There's no reason to repeat them ad nauseum.

My favorite thing about the Morganville books was the way Rachel Caine handled the vampires. There was lots of moral ambiguity. They weren't necessarily just blood-sucking monsters. They had depth and compassion on occasion. But overall, they were simply cold. I think that, truthfully, that is what living forever would do to a person. It would eventually make you jaded and unfeeling. And I particularly enjoyed her insight into vampires, especially at a period of time when vampires are really done to death.

I'm not sure what to read next. I've really been enjoying my foray into YA fiction. It's really been like discovering that there were all these authors that I didn't know existed, like a hidden treasure trove of delights. And YA fiction is good stuff. It gets to the point, pumps up the drama, pumps up the action, and is always just, well, fun. Send any recommendations you might have my way.

I'm really not sure how to end my own YA trilogy. I've been agonizing over it for weeks. I think there's a lot more pressure these days. Before, it was just me and my keyboard. And I could hardly force my friends to take the time to read a whole novel on their screens. Now Jason and Azazel have a bit of an audience. A few hundred people who are reading their current exploits, believe it or not, on computer screens, without compulsion. And I really don't want to let those people down, because I know that I form strong emotional attachments to characters I read about in books. But whatever is going on in my head, my muse seems to have left the building, at least for now.

Sigh.