So unless you’ve been living under a rock you know that indeed, the bookshelves are still glutted with paranormal romances galore, and yes, the vampire trend still seems to be bearing itself out despite years of “Twilight” knockoffs (as I’ve come to call them) crowding the display tables.
Is there no end in sight?
Alas, apparently not. The entire book industry not to mention vampire novel fans young and old are all atwitter (and yes, they are literally tweeting) about literary novelist (emphasis on literary) Justin Cronin, whose book “The Passage” comes out this Tuesday, June 8th. In Julie Bosman’s article “Literary Novelist Turns to Vampires and Finds Pot of Gold” in today’s New York Times, she writes of how booksellers are not only eagerly awaiting the novel’s release, but everyone already presumes it will be the bestseller of the summer, if not of all 2010.
Planned to be the first book in a trilogy, “[“The Passage”] stars bloodthirsty creatures that run in packs and savagely kill people at night,” and is the “sprawling saga of a girl named Amy who is one of the victims of a covert military experiment that went horribly awry and its bloody aftermath.”
Yeah: so this definitely does not sound like “Twilight” though Cronin is prepared for the inevitable comparisons since he’s riding a trend. And in case you were wondering, no, Cronin claims he’s not a “Twilight” fan himself–not the novels or the movies:

“”I have not read ‘Twilight,’ ” Mr. Cronin, 47, said of the Stephenie Meyer book that kick-started the recent public obsession with the paranormal, adding that he was reared on vampire comics, the 1960s television soap opera “Dark Shadows” and the 1931 film version of “Dracula,” with Bela Lugosi. “My relationship to vampire material definitely predates the recent renaissance.””
But boy did he benefit from Meyer’s success! Bantam at Random House paid $3.75 million dollars for the trilogy, and the book was options for a cool $1.75 million. As to what Cronin has done with the money so far–apparently he bought his daughter a horse. Awww.
So will you read “The Passage”? Do you think fans of “Twilight” will? Or do the books sound too different?