Thursday 28 January 2010

The Vampire Moment

Forget about all the hype surrounding iBooks and iPads, and let's just enjoy, until we can, the resurgence of traditional, pulpable fiction thanks to angels, demons and vampires.

Since Alma is Spanish for "Soul", no one can accuse us of cinically jumping on the first available bandwagon: we simply want to be truer to our name. And if I have asked my authors to revise their books between the publication in hardback and the mass-market edition to include as many supernatural elements as possible, it's only in order to encourage reading among the younger generations.

I have commissioned Simon May with a new collection of aphorisms, Thinking for Zombies, while Anthony McCarten's 2006 novel Death of a Superhero has been reissued with a new cover and under a new title: The Werewolf's Demise. I have also recast my own novel, Bestseller, no longer having the UK publishing industry as its background, but now set among the living dead.

I often wonder if we owe this new interest in ghouls and monsters to JK Rowling and her Harry Potter series, or if it's because many of the young readers who consume these books see them as an extension of their Playstations. It's probably a bit of both.

AG

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